The Fetterman Contingency and the Band of Malcontents
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First, the Senate is akin to a high school cafeteria. And Fetterman these days is much more comfortable sitting, quite literally, with the Republicans. He never shows up for Democrat-only gatherings, such as the caucus’s regular luncheons.
Fetterman gets along well with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the two text one another regularly. Yet the GOP leader has largely let Britt and McCormick handle the Keystone account.
After resisting it because he didn’t want to prompt chatter, Fetterman has now started to hang out in the Senate GOP cloakroom during long votes. For a time, he would remain alone and spend time between votes reading through his phone until Britt came out to join him for meals. This was a way he didn’t have to enter either party’s mini-Capitol clubhouse. Now, though, Fetterman is spending hours with Senate Republicans in their cloakroom and in some leadership offices.
Recently, he was present in the GOP cloakroom when a conversation — which included Baptist-pastor-turned-Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) — turned toward the theological, and the socially liberal Fetterman got a look on his face that said, ‘Is that what you guys talk about here?’ one GOP lawmaker recounted.
For reasons associated with Graham Platner the question “of what value is a Malcontent to our coalition?” has again raised its ugly head. I have always found this question to be a bit dumb because the answer is now and always obvious; under current conditions of partisanship every Senator who votes “D” for majority leader is better than every Senator who votes “R,” and the gap is not particularly close. This includes such Malcontents as Manchin, Sinema, Lieberman, and indeed Fetterman, up until the (depressingly likely) moment that he declares “R.” I have heard all of the arguments about how the Malcontents “hurt our messaging” and similar nonsense, and as far as I’m concerned it’s all quite garbage; nobody outside of West Virginia has ever voted Republican because they’re upset that Joe Manchin isn’t sufficiently with the Democratic program, notwithstanding what a band of social media trolls may insist.
What the Malcontents do, unfortunately, is generate anxiety. Sinema/Lieberman/Manchin/Fetterman create intense anxiety because they are a) unpredictable, and b) so evidently unhinged from the rational arguments that Democrats take for granted. And to an extent I get it. I really, really intensely dislike Sinema and really hated Joe Lieberman. Fetterman is such an enigma and has serious mental health issues, but I really blame the people who enabled his run. I’ve never been able to gin up a good rage against Joe Manchin since it’s so obvious that he was the best we could possibly expect from West Virginia. But this is they key; to believe that a Malcontent is worse than a Republican is to indulge anxiety at the expense of political good sense. Sinema was better than Martha McSally and Fetterman has already been better than Dr. Oz and Lieberman was better than any of the GOP stiffs he thrashed over the years.
I have no idea what Platner will be like as a Senator if he wins; I suspect that he’ll be a Bernie/Angus King light malcontent rather than a Fetterman or Sinema, but I don’t really know. The fact that Fetterman seems to hate Platner is a point in the latter’s favor. But I have zero patience for anyone who convinces themselves that Collins would be a better outcome than Platner for progressive politics… especially as a defection from Fetterman would make it extremely difficult to take the Senate without winning Maine.