How Fetterman Could Have Avoided Tuesday's Fiasco

I Put My Neutral Political Strategist Hat On and Solve the Problem

Thanks to American Thinker for running this piece. You can visit the website at: https://www.americanthinker.com/

Pennsylvania senate candidate John Fetterman was physically at the debate against his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

He was not mentally there, though and that sound you heard vaguely in the distance Tuesday night was the simultaneous skin crawling of millions of people.

It was painful, embarrassing, and cruel – not the least on the part of Fetterman’s campaign, such as it is.

Calling it political malpractice by his staff fits the bill nicely.  Sadly, though, it is not surprising.

The entire thrust of pretty much every Democratic campaign this cycle has been so tone-deaf - Trump, Jan. 6, Trump, fascists, handmaids tale, Trump, stupid voters, evil voters – it boggles the mind and is so exactly off it almost makes one wonder if it has been intentional.

Looking across the country - https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/24/the-danger-of-bubble-wrap-or-how-democrats-learned-to-love-ignoring-voters/ - one sees a concerted effort to talk about anything but what the voters want to talk about. 

It is as if the DNC took a couple dozen 27-year-old human resources and "assistant to the vice president for inclusion and engagement" types from Brooklyn, DC, and Silicon Valley, locked them in a room with one another, barred them from contact with the outside world, fed them only cruelty-free quinoa, given them only cruelty-free haircuts, and handed them $400 million dollars to ignite in a climate-friendly manner.

True, the Democrats are in a message prison of their own making – crime, inflation, swamp thinigism, woke cultural enforcement, etc. – are all issues of their own making.  Even still,  a cocaine-addled raccoon throwing darts at an issue board would have done better.

In general, therefore, the term malpractice fits.  But it is specifically political malpractice in Pennsylvania because the only thing Fetterman had to say (putting on my neutral political strategist hat) in early August to avoid Tuesday night was the following:

"Hey - no kidding, the stroke took a lot out of me and honestly it was pretty touch and go for a few days there and it's going to take a while - definitely through and a bit beyond this campaign - to get back to normal. I'm committed to running the best campaign I can right now but every voter has the understandable right to factor in my current health in their choice. I get it; I'm pretty sure I would too, if I didn't know already who I was voting for. Really, I might not be back at 100 percent for a good six months or more as I recover. But I do know that me being in the Senate at half-speed for six months would be far, far better for Pennsylvania than Oz at full-tilt in the Senate for six years because there’s no recovery from that."

Done and dusted: The truth(ish - very very ish, even for politics) comes out(again, very-ish), a joke is told, a political barb is thrown, Fetterman stays up a bit in the polls, Oz gets some traction trouble, and the health issue becomes an "asked and answered" speck.  Doing so would not have guaranteed a Fetterman victory, but it would have cleared a much gentler path for him on that issue.

As for defending being a sketchy trust-fund baby mayor who is aggressively soft on crime and far more woke than his carefully crafted big working guy image lets on, he’s on his own.

If I lived in Pennsylvania,  I would not vote for him and I hope he loses (though I wish it would have been to a better candidate.)

But I also hope his staff doesn't simply cut/paste the above line and use it (I've held off on sharing this for weeks, but after the debate…). But if they do, they will have to face up to the (it would be very well-publicized ) fact that they are soooooooo bad at what they do that they had to get their core home stretch campaign strategy from a Substack column – heaven forfend! – would clearly highlight the Democrat’s incompetence factor.

Now that – unlike Tuesday night – would be funny.

P.S. - if it does get lifted and it still works - even at this late stage - I expect a check from the Fetterman campaign, a check that features man many zeroes.