More deets in the information landscape around John Fetterman.
I already why I'm unhappy with John Fetterman, but I think it's important to go over more troubling tidbits about how this political headache unfolded.
I described how I'd heard rumours that John Fetterman had been a deliberate spoiler in the democratic party primary in 2016. So far as I can remember I only heard the rumours after the primary was over.
I have heard many such stories and they almost never are heeded, especially by people involved or when it involves people's faves or who they think are friends, etc. It's really really hard to get through to people have latched onto an influential or seemingly powerful person that is saying what you want to hear, at least to your face, or at least allowing you to believe what you want to believe. And even worse if it involves people who feel special for being in that person's orbit. There are a few other people I've been trying desperately to warn various people about for a few years, often to no effect. It's very frustrating.
So I really appreciate PayDay Report republishing Tony Buba's take on John Fetterman and the frustration it must've been for Tony Buba knowing Fetterman's disposition all along for over a decade. It's good to let people know that these things are usually known locally if anyone cares to find out. If we're sensible, we'll learn from this and pass the knowledge on. Politicians rarely come from nowhere at all, even if they're carpetbaggers. And frankly I think it's really more important than ever for people involved in activism, and especially endorsing candidates, to be doing hard opposition research of their own. The problems are not limited to access journalism, though that's a problem. The problem is that activists and orgs and party committees too often do not do their own proper investigations. Or in some cases, perhaps they do. Often, the reports are already sitting out there, but not getting any traction. I imagine sometimes by design. Whatever the case, the outcomes are frustrating.
Tony Buba asked, "Why did people support John in the first place?" and remarked that "His politics were never progressive." And I would like to say in defense of many who did support Fetterman, that his 2016 campaign website made him appear progressive or at least populist. Not just that but I remember the website, it was hip and modern for 2016 in presenting him. It wasn't the stale old same old, for example. It highlighted working class issues. And it didn't come across as preachy and talking down in the way that his later attitude would reveal, including during his time as Lieutenant Governor of PA. There was definitely a social media aspect of John Fetterman's rise, and in retrospect, I think it was possibly driven by inauthentic interventions that most people didn't know about at the time, and many people still don't know about. Ordinary progressives just didn't know about things like Maga3x and Cambridge Analytica because stuff like that, like Qanon, was largely minimized by both mainstream and left independent media sources at the time and even long after it should've been clear they ought to have been paying attention, and long after it was clear that there were deliberate operations. To this day it's minimized and disregarded.
And yes, I believe there was some effort invested to attach John Fetterman to the coattails of Bernie Sanders in 2016. There was a campaign of people spreading this online. I remember that clearly. And there were widespread smears of progressives by corporate centrists. Yet despite actual dirt that has turned up again and again on John Fetterman, people would not just promote him, but liberals were promoting him as populist. The reasoning put to us here in Pennsylvania, the second time he was in the Democratic primary for senate, was to insist he could win over those Pennsylvania Trumpers. I always thought that was as dumb as Chuck Schumer telling the working class that Democrats could win without us. How many Trumper votes for John Fetterman could possibly make anything worth it? It just didn't make sense. But it was obvious the corporate wing of the Democrats is far more interested in catering to Trump voters than ordinary progressives or even garden variety liberal voters. I’m sure some Trumpers did vote for John Fetterman, but it's basically an accepted suspicion talked about in private that the reason John Fetterman won was because of a certain amount of racist Trump voters having prejudice against Dr. Oz and his Turkish immigrant lineage. The most frustrating thing about pointing that out is that people get very uncomfortable with that truth because they too refused to vote for Dr. Oz for entirely legitimate reasons that had nothing to do with his ethnicity, like him being a pseudoscience purveyor or a carpetbagger or a fake MAGA. But all the same people are offended when you bring the prejudice up as a key factor in the election as if you're claiming that anyone who voted for John Fetterman or didn't vote for Dr. Oz was a bigot to do so, even though that's so obviously not what anyone's claiming. But people have a hard time complexity and prefer all or nothing options I guess.
It does make me wonder who was trying to keep Malcom Kenyatta out. Surely nobody can blame me for being suspicious. All the progressives I knew in 2022 had wanted Malcolm Kenyatta over John Fetterman. So yeah, I found it interesting how quickly the center embraced supposedly "progressive" John Fetterman once he ran for Lieutenant Governor of PA. Until he came out as NOT progressive of course! I now wonder who else was interested in running for lieutenant governor at the time and who wanted to keep them out. Because how can I be anything but suspicious and cynical at this point? Tony Buba doesn't help dissuade me at all since he claims that John Fetterman was a spoiler in the 2016 senate primary "at the request of Governor Rendell" and I can't imagine that any progressives would've bought into John Fetterman if they knew Ed Rendell had any part in this. Ed Rendell is the Dem Pennsylvania governor who cut library funding. This is the first I think I've ever heard that Ed Rendell may have had some influence or preference for John Fetterman running for US senate in 2016. But Ed Rendell backing him for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania is an example I was thinking about when it comes to centrist corporate democrat types who have been cheerful about John Fetterman ever since. And it makes the rumours I heard of "his turn" in exchange for being a spoiler seem more tangible. I honestly don't know if anything works with that level of explicit mercenary dealmaking but who knows, because to me, a lot of these politicians seem like megalomaniacs to me, not just Donald Trump or limited to John Fetterman after his stroke. And apparently there's some evidence and theories on this according to Brian Klaas.
Tony Buba rightly points out the white privilege of John Fetterman to dress as he does, not that I have a problem with it, but many would have a problem with it if it was Rep. Summer Lee. Tony Buba also mentions how John Fetterman in 2013 acted as perhaps a vigilante and chased and threatened and detained someone with a shotgun. I have to admit that this didn't really surprise me. Marty Flynn, the state senator for my district, back when he was the state rep for where I live in 2014 was in what was described as a shootout in Harrisburg. So I may have been a little desensitized about about Dem politicians embrace of gun culture by the time I heard about this incident in 2022. Curious how I hadn't heard about it in 2016 or 2018 though.
I also don't remember hearing about the incident where John Fetterman was caught on video in the dark changing the sign on a nightclub in town that he thought was a nuisance. But there that information has been sitting on youtube since January 2010. It's entirely possible it was spun as badass and or downplayed in a way that would've been dismissed without the context of his other behaviour. So going round getting into car crashes and being accused of argumentative behaviour on airplanes is maybe not an aberration for him, and actually maybe is a pre-existing underlying condition.
I do think though that if it's gotten to the point where his wife is upset with him after sticking with him through all of that, and staffers are willing to tank their future careers working for any other politician by letting the cat out of the bag and even informing his doctors, there probably is some added health risk aspect to it that goes beyond his bizarre political all-over-the-placeness. So I really haven't changed my mind.
And in the end ,Tony Buba's guess that some liberals were taken with John Fetterman as their own Trumpy guy, but one that could be a "Harvard-educated Savior" sounds all too plausible. I have noted that there are influences and influencers who are all too ready to get attention to their content by selling people the hopium of a savior. People need to stop looking for heroes in spotlight seeking influencers, promote people without conflicts, and start valorizing the act of pressuring whatever politicians get into office.
But most of all, I think really some movers and shakers used their methods and resources and bamboozled a lot of dem voters with a lot of PR propaganda in ways they were not aware of, and that we should all apprise ourselves of, or it's going to keep happening, fooling the same people repeatedly.
Read the entire Tony Buba post on PayDay Report: