John Fetterman is an apparition. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a bald head and a goatee, sometimes frowning and sometimes mischievous gnome-like. He almost always wears a hooded sweatshirt and has a large tattooed rectangle on the top of his right forearm. He’s not exactly the type of politician that first comes to mind as one of the most prominent figures in the Democratic Party. But it fits this election year and all the inconsistencies in it. On the one hand, the country seems to be catching its breath for the next brutal presidential campaign. On the other hand, it is currently charting the course for developments that could shape it well beyond 2024, and not for the better.
A new congress will be elected in the US next Tuesday. Who will have the majority in the next two years? Can Joe Biden still rule or should he be confined to administration for the rest of his tenure? Will Republicans take their radicalization not only to state governments, but also to the Senate and House of Representatives?
The answers to these questions largely depend on whether Fetterman is successful or not. Will he be the next Pennsylvania senator in Washington, the longtime mayor of suburban Pittsburgh who won a surprise victory and became Vice Governor of Pennsylvania four years ago? Or his Republican competitor, TV doctor and diet pill millionaire Dr. Mehmed Ozo? No race in this midterm election is closer – both candidates are exactly 47 percent according to the latest polls – and none are causing more tension.
Pennsylvania is considered the key to a majority in the Senate. Both parties really want this chair. The Democrats are in control. The Republicans to take it from them. This also explains why this was the most expensive of all Senate races. In all, $312 million in bipartisan campaign funds poured in, far more than Georgia, which until recently was considered the main battleground.
“I have risen again”
As Fetterman steps into the autumn sun of a park in downtown Pittsburgh on Saturday, three days before the election, it is clear what the task entails. On the one hand, the routine of many performances within a few weeks. The oppressive nervousness, on the other hand. Especially because there is a double pressure of expectation on him. A few months ago, in the middle of the Democratic primary, Fetterman suffered a stroke. After emergency surgery and a few weeks of rest, he was able to perform again. Today, his promise is one he keeps repeating, and it fits especially well with performing in Pittsburgh, the “iron city”: “It blew me away, but I got up again.” The crowd cheers, Fetterman pulls on his sweatshirt and concentrates.
Sometimes he still has problems speaking, as does the auditory processing of words. He therefore uses subtitles for television appearances, where he can reread what has just been said. Republican leader Ronna McDaniel ets to Fetterman: After all, other candidates could speak whole sentences. Oz, Fetterman’s rival candidate, in particular, rarely passes up an opportunity to bring an ugly tone to the campaign. When it comes to whether there should be a TV duel, he lets it be known that at any time Fetterman could raise his hand and yell “toilet break,” and that he might never have had this stroke had he eaten more vegetables.
When the duel finally takes place, Fetterman was not having a good day. Within the Democratic Party, voices soon began to cast doubt on whether he could handle the task. Oz is catching up in the polls and the hopeful is increasingly becoming a drag on his party. But Fetterman is not giving up. That makes him unique to voters like Keith and Molly Wilbert. “We love Fetterman because he’s real,” they say. Keith Wilbert himself had three strokes, he comes to the campaign event with a walker with two American flags attached, and he wears a cap on his head that identifies him as a US Air Force veteran. His wife is wearing a camouflage t-shirt and mirrored sunglasses.
Both come from families of steel workers, as they say, their fathers were union members. The fact that the Wilberts continue to vote for Democrats, unlike many of the white working class in industrialized countries like Pennsylvania, is a great achievement by the Fettermans, they say. Years ago, John Fetterman’s wife, Giselle, personally campaigned to get Keith Wilbert a job at another steel mill when his old job was about to disappear. “I could just call her,” says Molly Wilbert, “she never spoke publicly about how she helped us.” In the end, her husband was never able to take the job because the next stroke intervened. But the two have not forgotten that.
“We don’t need another reality TV character,” says Molly Wilbert, “we need someone with the heart in the right place.” Whether Fetterman has trouble pronouncing some words is not important to her. But that he wins, that the Democrats remain in the majority, all the more so. “If you lose your democracy, you lose everything,” Wilbert says. “And if America loses democracy, what happens to the world?”
It’s not just about the seat in the Senate. Oz is just one of Donald Trump’s many prominent Pennsylvania confidants. Doug Mastriano is also up for election, he wants to be governor. Mastriano was present at the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, he is one of the loudest voices still spreading the lie about the stolen 2020 elections. Under him, he made it bluntly clear that Pennsylvania would not only ban abortion and one of those states where Republicans are steadily eroding the right to vote. He himself would also refuse to acknowledge a possible loss of the Republican presidential candidate in 2024 – a plan that Donald Trump seems to be just as blatantly pursuing.
“You deserve someone you recognize”
Fetterman will not face Mastriano. But his chances are worse than Josh Shapiro, Mastriano’s opponent, who leads the polls. And senate control becomes all the more important to Democrats as more people like Mastriano storm into state governments. Also because Republicans in the Senate could block the filling of important offices, such as for judges, whose role becomes increasingly important as law enforcement attempts to reverse social progress.
John Fetterman is arguably the most important man in his party in these midterm elections, a highly symbolic figure: who can win today’s Democrat election, what will it take – and what can be left out? The question of who or what is “real” and how to use that politically has become complicated in the US after Trump. Especially since the Fetterman campaign only made it public after winning the primary that the candidate had nearly died a few days earlier – in a country where politicians normally give their full medical histories for granted. How real have the Republicans around Oz been saying this over and over since could someone leave their voters in the dark about their health status?
Fetterman has therefore brought a prominent guest to Pittsburgh. One that once delivered results for the Democrats in Pennsylvania that are now a distant dream. “You deserve someone you recognize,” Barack Obama shouts, and the crowd cheers again. He warns her that it will take more: “Get off the couch, put your cellphones down, go vote!” Later in the afternoon, the former president will appear in Philadelphia with Fetterman, Shapiro and Joe Biden. Obama has taken a veritable tour of those battlefield states where the Democratic candidates are fighting particularly close races. But it’s no coincidence that this tour finds its finale here in Pennsylvania. In no other state is the struggle more fierce than in this one, in no other state is it so clear that nothing less is at stake today than American democracy.
Because even with the election, tensions in and around Pennsylvania will not abate. Donald Trump reportedly wants to try and challenge the election here if Oz were to lose — right where his own defeat was decided: Almost exactly two years ago, on November 7, 2020, it was the votes in Philadelphia that won Joe Biden the winners. created. Well, according to Rolling Stone, citing sources close to Trump, the former president wants to hold a “dress rehearsal” for 2024, as he would have called it himself.
The clearer Fetterman’s win was, the less vulnerable he would be to such attempts. The Democrats would have won the battle in Pennsylvania—until it erupted again in just over a year.
This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed headlines and subtitles. Here’s the original.
Soource :Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
