How do Democrats feel about John Fetterman?

I like him. I like that he breaks from the party sometimes. Shows he cares and is thinking, and hopefully it means he is not influences by money and greed, although possibly that can be in play from opposing forces. I don’t always agree with him, but I don’t expect to agree with my representatives all of the time.

Some like him, some don’t. Democrats don’t all have the same opinion. I like him in general. But like most politicians, I don’t buy 100% of what he is selling.

I would rather have a thinking centrist than a MAGA republican, that’s for sure.,

I have seen him on a few talk shows and I don’t remember specifically what he said, but he was ok. I don’t follow him too closely but I did hear something about a month ago that he said that was reasonable – not too far left but not too far right. I haven’t heard of what the recent things were. I didn’t see them online or hear about them on the news, so if anybody has a link to the recent stuff, please post it.

I sometimes listen to a radio show in the afternoon that tends to lean right, but they also talk about culture, crime, etc., not just politics. They were saying why couldn’t he wear something a bit better than nylon shorts and a hoodie. They were saying they get that he has sensory issues but couldn’t he put on sweat pants or something? I agree. I get it, I get it, I get it for those that are intending to lecture me about his stroke and all that, but can’t he step it up just one notch in the dress department?

Can you be specific of what you are referencing.

Um, well… Someone on the left needs to be objective on why they keep getting their asses kicked.

He’s a brain-damaged Zionist pig.

An absolutely loathsome person who for some reason decided to sell out every one of his convictions for Israel. Some politicians who have similar views to his makes sense, but Fetterman makes no sense.

As usual, Democrats usually come away from their losses with the lesson that they need to essentially just be Republicans. But who wants “Republican lite” when you can just have the real thing with someone like Trump? When Trump lost in 2020, did Republicans tone it down and move toward the center? Fuck no. They denied that they lost and moved further to the right. And it worked.

@Demosthenes So if Republicans moved more to the right and they won the election (Popular and Electoral votes), doesn’t that mean that is where the country wanted to go? Fetterman has moved more to the right because he realized how nutty the radical left is and that the Democratic Party, following that path, lost touch with the people.

@Demosthenes is a one trick pony. For him, everything comes down to the poor Palestinians.

Problem is that Fetterman represents the state of Pennsylvania, not the state of @demosthenes. And you don’t get reelected by your constituents (mayor, Lt Governor, Senator, etc.) unless they agree with your stances..

@Forever_Free I didn’t link anything specifically since that seems to be the standard these days. You can do your own research if you like. I’d suggest going to an uber-left site and seeing what they tell you to believe about Fetterman.

@seawulf575 If that’s the solution, then I don’t know what the point of the Democratic party is. Sham opposition like in a one-party state? I mean, the Democrats functionally are that already. Becoming more like Republicans isn’t presenting people with a workable alternative. Fair if you think there is no alternative. But I’d imagine that isn’t the view of all Americans. Of course you would admire a Democrat who is becoming more of a Republican. But I can’t imagine Republicans think much of Liz Cheney, for example.

@elbanditoroso I’m fine being the anti-genocide guy. You seem fine with yourself too.

@Demosthenes “They denied that they lost and moved further to the right. And it worked” No, what happened is that the left failed so bad that there was only one alternative. The left loves to act like they care, that they’re the “nice” ones and all. People can’t afford groceries, or rent, or utilities. Everything got worse with the Left in control. People stopped believing that the Left actually cares about them so they dropped them like a hot potato. That is all it was. If the Right does not course correct and improve things, they’re out too.

Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin to me. I get that most Americans see them as wildly different polar opposites, but they really aren’t, on many levels, especially the most important ones. And I think more people are seeing that. Many people didn’t vote in this election because the Democrats were not seen as a good alternative to the Republicans. So I have to ask again what is the point of the Democratic party if they’re not going to meaningfully differ from Republicans in any way?

For fucks sake – there is no left party in the US. We can’t keep going through this.

And the fact that this embarrassing confusion is happening in a thread about Fetterman – an explicitly pro-genocide monster – where Democrats are supporting him and his pro-genocide stance should tell you all you need to know about the difference between the “parties”.

@Demosthenes – Can you believe that in 2025 you’d have people thinking calling you a “one trick pony” for being to the left of Goebbels.

If we were in Nazi Germany (not a stretch) and were having a discussion about how to best approach the price of eggs, I’d hope more than just @Demosthenes and I would be telling you all to fuck off and stop being fucking Nazis and not be called a “one trick pony” when we brought it back to Nazi’s ideology and actions towards certain groups of people.

Anyway, I’m not answering as a Democrat because I’m not one and don’t vote Democrat, so I suppose I’m off-topic.

@Demosthenes I think the Dems have drifted so far off course they don’t really have any connection with the people of the country. At one point they claimed to be the party of the working man, but those days are long gone. They are too busy pushing agendas that are not popular, relying on billionaire donors, celebrities, and the media to make them look good, and shaming and scolding voters as their plan for winning elections. Fetterman even says as much.

You are saying the Dems having to move right makes them more like Republicans and this is true. But I don’t consider Fetterman a Republican. I see him as a Centrist Democrat…something that is rare these days. I think the Democrats need to reinvent their brand. But their recent elections for the Chair and Vice chair of the party show they aren’t willing to give up on the policies that people don’t like.

When I was younger I was once spat on and called a Zionist pig just because I was wearing a Jewish star. That was fun.

For my entire adult life I have said most Democrats and Republicans agree on about 80% of issues, it’s the 20% that separates them. I especially felt this way living in northern states. When I moved to the South it seemed more divided and more adversarial, but also the country has become more divided politically in general, so it might have been partly timing.

The 20% that has been blaringly different the past 40 years was abortion rights, and more or less the last 30 years healthcare for all and keeping social security in place and not letting it be privatized. There is plenty more.

The Israeli war is not the priority for most Americans. There is more than one war going on in the world. Most Americans are probably more oriented towards domestic issues, even though geo-political issues are actually the most important for the survival of the country. The world is small.

Fetterman is a piece of shit.

The Democrats are a right-wing party and the Republicans are extreme fascist party. Both parties are pro-genocide, pro-war, anti-worker, anti-union, anti-labor, anti-consumer, pro-monopoly, pro-monopsony, anti-competition.

Being in the “center” between a right-wing party and an extreme fascist party isn’t a “moderate” position, it’s a radical position.

I don’t know of any right wing party that is pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, pro-universal healthcare, pro-social and economic equality, pro-civil rights for minorities. The Democrats stand for these things. There is SO much more than Palestine, for fucks sake.

@jonsblond Apparently not.

@jonsblond – It would probably be a complete derail to explain the difference between left/right and liberal/conservative. But let me just point out that:

- abortion, LGBTQ, civil rights, etc are not on the left/right spectrum. These are liberal/conservative (or libertarian/authoritarian). Left/right is primarily used for economic terms.
– The issues you list are common among many of the Democratic voters – not necessarily the party.
– The Dem party most definitely does not support universal health care. They are the reason we don’t have it, like many things. They are the firewall.
– Electing a guy who wrote the crime bill that damned an entire generation of black americans and then claiming to be pro-civil rights and equality is obscene.
– You don’t care about the fact that you are paying a terror state to murder a captive population, and you think that there is “so much more” than Palestine. But your party leaders didn’t get the message. They believe it is so important to fund genocidal maniacs that they decided to hand over an election to the other wing of the party. We begged people who cared to tell them that there is more at stake than burning kids alive in tents. But Dem party said “no, there isn’t”.

@jonsblond – Your politics align very closely with Republicans in Massachusetts. They support the violent MAGA stuff and regressive economics, but support pro-choice and LGBTQ rights.

Two right wing “parties” doesn’t make the one that is 2% better a non-right-wing party.

If you asked me, political classification like this is about as useful as the MBTI personality sorter. People have one or a few key issues that are important to them and identify with the party or ideology that caters to those issues. We are all in the Overton window though. Except for a few here.

He’s a DINO. And Republicans didn’t win the election, Elon Musk tampered with the voting systems. And give me a clapback all you want but I’m not responding anymore on this thread.

@LifeQuestioner Elon tampered with the voting system? Lol. You know who you sound like?

It’s fine if you don’t care about Palestine. But ultimately you’re just saying “the issue you prioritize doesn’t matter”. So I could say the same for you. Palestine is one of the reasons I don’t see much of an important difference between Democrats and Republicans because they don’t differ on that. If you don’t care about it, then I guess they would seem more radically different to you.

But I have to question how much Democrats themselves care about those issues when they pontificate about the threat to LGBT people for example but then prioritize fucking supporting Netanyahu.

I don’t care about Palestine. They are led by terrorists who they elected to lead them. Those terrorist have a charter that calls for genocide. I’m not sure how anyone can support them. But Palestine really has nothing to do with Fetterman bucking the Democrats.

@Demosthenes When we fought with Russia against the Nazis we didn’t love Russia. War is complicated. Are you saying Netanyahu is against LGBT rights? I know nothing about his stand on that. Israel is certainly safer than Palestine for gay people. Israel is safer than most of the rest of the Middle East for gay people.

I’ve listened to a lot of Palestinians interviewed, and from what I have heard most of them are against two states, against the Israelis being in charge, against a democratic as you suggest, and against letting all of the Jews stay if there was one state run by the Palestinians. There are exceptions, and I do think many Palestinians don’t feel completely free to speak, especially in the West Bank.

What I wonder is where do you get your information that Palestinians want one state, with equality for all, where Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouins, all are equal, all can be Prime Minister or President, all can be head of the military? Or, are you (the world) going to force that on the Palestinians and they will learn to love it when they see their life is better? Are you going to make the Jewish people leave who can’t prove their families were there before ‘48? Can everyone stay who is there now?

@jonsblond “I don’t know of any right wing party that is…pro-universal healthcare, pro-social and economic equality… The Democrats stand for these things.”

Very few Democrats are ACTUALLY for those things and actively conspire to prevent them from becoming law. You may see marginal incremental improvements that are woefully inadequate to meet the moment, but the DNC is also now a party for billionaires and as @hat correctly points out, they serve as a firewall against FDResque policies. And even on pro-choice issues, the DNC has repeatedly failed to codify Roe v. Wade into law, they fucked up royally with their Supreme Court justices but they’ll fight tooth-and-nail to kill off any hope of a progressive candidate from rising up and crushing the Republicans.

@jonsblond “There is SO much more than Palestine, for fucks sake.”

This is a profoundly stupid statement to make. Genocide is literally the worst thing. We warned that supporting genocide would lead to Trump, and it did. So you got what you asked for. I’m sorry the leopards are eating your face, but that’s what happens when you support genocidal politicians and their policies, just because they happen to also do some things you like.

Sorry guys. Nobody hates the genocide in Gaza more than I but I am also for trans rights, women’s bodily autonomy, gun rights and governmental foreign aid. There really are domestic issues on which the two parties differ. I consider myself possibly a Democratic Socialist but I would still rather live in a blue state than a red one. And from all the splinter groups and candidates that I get texts from, I don’t know that the DNC has the power you think it does.

As far as the original question goes, I don’t have an opinion about Fetterman one way or the other.

^Finally an intelligent response.