It pains me to write this, but us Democrats appear to have been fooled again. From Jezebel:
Since October, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has been working overtime to burn through the enormous goodwill he garnered among the progressive coalitions that got him elected in 2022, all to cheerlead a foreign government’s war crimes. Between declaring himself “not woke” last week and, before that, laughing at veterans arrested for protesting Israel’s horrific attacks on Gaza, Fetterman has become something of a right-wing troll who just occasionally criticizes Trump. Over the weekend, following Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Israel in response to Israel allegedly attacking its consulate in Syria, Fetterman quadrupled down, this time breaking with Biden (again). Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. would not join Israel in attacking Iran, and discouraged Israel from responding to Iran, something that Fetterman called “astonishing.”
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“The president is entitled to his own views and whatever he decides to do, but I would never capitulate to the fringe,” Fetterman said. By “fringe,” he is referring to the majority of American voters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Fetterman then seemingly suggested that Biden’s position—that the U.S. not get into a regional war against Iran—is “[empowering] Hamas,” because “Hamas is actually convinced that they are winning the PR war, and they’re never going to negotiate at this point. They think that they’re going to hold onto the very end.” (Welp, it only took six months, but we finally reached the “Biden is Hamas” stage of things!) It’s very weird to live in a reality where the Israeli military—with U.S. funding and weapons—has killed almost 15,000 Palestinian children in Gaza in six months and a once-beloved “progressive” senator is ranting and raving about it being a so-called “PR war.”
Great. Just great.
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Fetterman joins a long line of rising stars on the left that drove everyone crazy with his personal style but turned out to be hiding something important. In this case, that’s he’s fucking annoying. He’s “not woke”. OK, I’m not a fan. Fucking idiot.
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If you asked me what my ideal Democratic senator is, I would say “Jon Ossoff”. What do I know about Jon? NOT MUCH. I know he’s male. And Jewish. And a Senator from Georgia. I didn’t even know how to spell his name right. But to me this is a good thing. Think about the last time you remember Jon Ossoff in the news. It was probably right after his stunning election win. Since then… crickets.
Now think about the last time you heard about other Democratic senators in the news. It’s almost always bad. Someone: fucked up (Menendez); or they are ill (Feinstein); or they are being a pain in the ass (Fetterman, Sinema, Manchin). Generally, no news is good news. We might get the occasional incisive statement from Elizabeth Warren. We might get a good, punchy TV appearance from Bernie Sanders. That’s about it.
And Bernie himself comes with his own set of problems. By activating a group of fairly ignorant and ideologically slippery set of voters, he’s created what I’ll refer to as the Bernie Fan to Kook Pipeline. Think of all the names that you didn’t know before Bernie’s run that you might know now: those two idiots from Red Scare, Killer Mike, Nina Turner, and others who I can’t remember right now but I’m sure will annoy me again in the future.
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So give me boring. Give me faceless. Don’t give me any more of this bullshit, please.
UPDATE- ah shit I didn’t think this would make the rec list. I should have gone with a different title- like “Is he the new Sinema?”. As many people have pointed out, John has a good voting record and it’s mostly just his public statements that I find annoying.
Also, no disrespect to Bernie Sanders. I like Bernie. I’ve just noticed his campaign has an unfortunate tendency to attract kooks. I’m not sure why, but I would guess it’s because he’s not a standard politician.