The Democratic Party Leaves John Fetterman

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party,” said Ronald Reagan. “The Democratic Party left me.”

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman hasn’t left the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party seems to have left him, certainly in his home state. The party has not only left Fetterman but is trashing him. Here in Pennsylvania, we’re hearing the hate loud and clear with a stunning ferocity by Democrats against one of their own. The knives are out. They’re slicing and dicing Fetterman in ways that I have never heard Democrats speak of a fellow Democrat.

“John Fetterman is a disgrace,” fumes Congressman Brendan Boyle, a Philadelphia area Democrat. “Our state deserves better than a lazy trust fund baby who is too lazy to do the job.”

A “lazy trust fund baby”? The large, hoody-wearing Fetterman doesn’t strike one as the image of a baby, let alone some spoiled scion. Before entering politics in his late 30s, he did plan to one day take over the insurance company that his conservative Republican father built in central Pennsylvania, though that never seemed to bother Democrats before, especially when Fetterman was flying rainbow flags and fighting for the legalization of marijuana as the Commonwealth’s lieutenant governor from 2019-23.

What Fetterman looks like is an old-school Democrat. His image is about as working-class as one could imagine in the august Senate chamber, where he’s often seen in shorts, sweatshirt, and tattoos. The Steel City blue-collar dude looks nothing like a Senate blue blood. He’s an Iron City, union guy, a “Yinzer” as we call them in Pittsburgh. He was the longtime mayor of a literal mill town, who roots for the Steelers on the football field (and played Division III football in college), and represents steelworkers. Fetterman and his family in Braddock live across the street from one of America’s most venerable steel mills, the Edgar Thomson Works, which remains part of U.S. Steel Corp. and has been an active mill since 1875.

As for Fetterman being “lazy,” that seems a rather uncharitable charge against a man who survived a major stroke and managed to get out of a hospital bed and (barely) run for office against Republican Senate nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2022. Fetterman worked hard to recover from that stroke. There were initial fears he might never speak again, at least coherently. And yet, the Democrats embraced him, even as he was so incapacitated that he couldn’t read from a teleprompter during his Senate debate with Oz.

He doesn’t 100 percent toe the party line at all times. He is the quintessential political maverick.

But those facts don’t seem to matter anymore, because Democrats today are seething at John Fetterman. His crime? Was he seen robbing a convenience store in his hoodie with the shotgun he used to patrol the streets of Braddock when he was mayor there in the 2010s? No, his sins were much worse in the eyes of liberals: Since joining the Senate in January 2023, the 6’8’’, 270-pound Fetterman has demonstrated repeatedly that he’s his own man.

Little Chuckie Schumer can’t push him around.

He doesn’t 100 percent toe the party line at all times. He is the quintessential political maverick. He sometimes even applauds Donald Trump when the president honors maimed American heroes at the State of the Union while dopey Democrat cronies stare at their cellphones and sit on their hands like petulant children. He bucks the party line on issues from Israel to immigration. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Let’s You and Him Fight, Bernie)

“I never thought it was unreasonable for any Democrat to want to make our border more secure,” said Fetterman in March 2024. “When you started just following the numbers that are coming again and then when you’ve reached 200,000 or 250,000 folks that are encountered at the border — I mean that’s astonishing. And then just putting that in the context of Pennsylvania. I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. That’s nearly the [population] size of Pittsburgh.’ And that’s our second-largest city. You can be very pro-immigration, but also demand and require that we have a secure border there as well too. I don’t know why that’s really controversial for a Democrat or any American.” (RELATED: Is John Fetterman Channeling Scoop Jackson?)

Well, it shouldn’t be controversial, but to Fetterman’s fellow Democrats, it is. So are his other positions.

Fetterman calls himself “a proud free market capitalist.” He does so in contrast to the Democratic Party’s new group of comrades, the democratic socialists, who he has the audacity to call out. He dared to label them the “dirtbag left.” He said of New York City’s elections last June: “It was a really big night for the dirtbag left, without a doubt. And some of the crazy things that they’ve said. You know, like clearly anti-America, you know, anti-Western civilization. One of them was even part of the group [that] wanted to end all Western civilization.” (RELATED: Meet America’s New Un-Americans… the DSA)

That is not how a modern Democrat should talk. The party is rolling out the red carpet for socialists nowadays.

Moreover, a modern Democrat must be consumed with Trump hatred, and Fetterman is not. Quite the contrary, last April on X he urged fellow Democrats to “drop the TDS.” But of course, Democrats like Trump Derangement Syndrome. And they don’t like anyone that Trump likes. And Trump actually likes Fetterman.

“It was a totally fascinating meeting,” said Trump after spending an hour-long meeting with Fetterman at Mar-a-Lago in January 2025. “He’s a fascinating man, and his wife is lovely. They were both up, and I couldn’t be more impressed.”

That assessment did not please Democrats. While Fetterman was breaking bread with Trump, liberals were comparing the president to Hitler.

Worse, Fetterman proceeded to work with President Trump, as well as with his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Dave McCormick — a Republican. They all worked terrifically together for the steel industry. Fetterman knows how good Donald Trump has been for the local steel industry, as has Fetterman’s fellow Western Pa. senator, who he has worked with in a bipartisan way (along with Republican Senate colleagues JD Vance, Josh Hawley, and Marco Rubio and Democratic senators Sherrod Brown and Joe Manchin). Fetterman said last week of McCormick (and by extension Trump): “We are in different parties, but we are both Team PA. We have delivered hundreds of millions of dollars back to Pennsylvania, fought for improved transportation and affordable housing, and the Steel Way of Life.”

To the party faithful, Fetterman’s bipartisan work with Trump and Vance and McCormick is heresy.

Primarying Fetterman

For such reasons and more, liberal Democrats in the Keystone State have had it with John Fetterman. Damn it, the man is a menace! They can’t contain their disdain for the senator.

Joining the likes of Rep. Brendan Boyle is fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Chris Deluzio, who denounces Fetterman as “pathetic.” “Between the laziness, disrespect, and willingness to carry water for a foreign government,” rages Deluzio, “this man has no sense of duty.”

With such comments, it sounds like Deluzio would seriously consider not supporting Fetterman’s reelection in 2028, eh? Oh, you got that right. Deluzio threatens: “He is not up for the high office he was elected, and we in Pennsylvania will do something about it in 2028.”

They sure will. They already are. And indeed, the national party is apparently behind this effort to sabotage Fetterman. Witness this statement from Penn. State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, who says of Fetterman: “When he’s not on FOX cheerleading Trump & endless wars, he is attacking the very neighbors who gave him a chance.” According to Kenyatta, “2028 can’t come soon enough.”

Well, there you go. Fetterman’s fellow Democrats are not only not supporting him; they’re planning to run against him.

Personally, I’ve seen this coming. Though many blue-collar Pittsburghers like Fetterman’s image and independence, the far-left element despises him. I’ve watched closely as the Bolshevik wing of his party has slowly but steadily turned on him. They’ve done so with such contempt that I’ve been telling people locally that the Democrats are going to “primary” Fetterman. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the hardcore leftist ideologues in the increasingly left-wing Democratic Party primary him with a democratic socialist, a DSA member.

Of course, if they do that, it will be a suicide mission. They’ll lose. And yet, Democrats are following that model elsewhere.

Look at Florida’s Senate race, where State Rep. Angie Nixon upset Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman in Florida’s Democrat Senate primary last month. Vindman was famous, if not infamous, for his TDS. It would be hard to run to the left of Vindman, though Nixon, as a democratic socialist, did so. Vindman had $16 million in campaign funds in his war chest versus Nixon having less than $1 million. She crushed him by 12 percent. And now she’ll easily lose overwhelmingly to the Republican incumbent in November, Ashley Moody. (RELATED: Why Democratic Socialists of America Cannot Win in a Democratic America)

But revolutionaries believe in the revolution. Don’t tell them that challenging John Fetterman with a democratic socialist is bound to fail. No, the true believer believes.

Room in the Republican Tent?

While the Democratic Party is leaving Fetterman, some are wondering if Democrats are pushing the PA senator into the arms of the Republican Party. Suspicions rose again last week when Fetterman in Dallas made a surprise video appearance at the Republican midterm convention, where he spoke of unity.

“A big room of Republicans in Dallas,” observed Fetterman. “Yes, I’m Senator John Fetterman, Pennsylvania. Yes, I’m a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today? Because, well, I’m a common-sense Democrat. I’m always going to stand with America. I’m always going to reject the extremes in socialism and that anti-American way of life.”

Note those key words from Fetterman: “Yes, I’m a Democrat.”

Fetterman is not a Republican nor an ideal fit for the GOP. Not only is he not a conservative, but he’s very liberal. That fact is quantifiable. Consider his Heritage Action Scorecard, a compilation done by the Heritage Foundation to determine how conservative members of Congress are. The answer in the case of John Fetterman is not very conservative at all. In fact, zero — literally. His Heritage ranking for the current session of Congress is 0 percent. His lifetime score isn’t much better, a paltry 4 percent.

Ideologically, he aligns with Democrats.

A Democrat colleague of John Fetterman who gets this is Vermont’s Democratic Sen. Peter Welch, who told Politico last week: “John Fetterman is a friend and an important member of our caucus. It’s a waste of energy to get spun up about his voting record or place in our party — he votes with us 90 percent of the time.”

Fetterman confirms that. “I’m a lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party,” he notes, correctly.

But don’t tell that to Democratic Party partisan robots like Conor Lamb, who ran against Fetterman in the 2022 Democratic Party primary (as did state rep. Malcolm Kenyatta) and clearly plans to do the same in 2028.

“I don’t think anything I say, or anyone who is a Democrat says, affects him all that much,” Lamb told Politico. “The fact that the Senate Democratic leadership thinks they can keep them on their team by saying a few nice things about him in public just shows that they haven’t learned who they are dealing with.”

Lamb is known locally as a sellout, a graduate of Pittsburgh’s renowned Central Catholic High School who has repeatedly run for office as a moderate while selling out his Catholic faith on key moral issues like abortion, marriage, and the LGBTQ agenda. Lamb does what his party asks.

Lamb is not among the small 22 percent of self-identified Democratic voters in a New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll that have a favorable opinion of Fetterman. That figure stands in sharp contrast to 73 percent of self-identified Republicans.

But at least Republicans know (better than most Democrats do) that John Fetterman votes with Democrats far more often than he does with Republicans.

By comparison, former West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin’s lifetime Heritage Scorecard ranking was 21 percent. Fetterman is often compared to Manchin, though their numbers don’t match up. Manchin was less liberal. Where they do bear comparison is in their outspoken independence. Fetterman is the most vocal independent Democrat in the party since Manchin. He’s not afraid to criticize his side when he feels it deserves it, nor to commend the other side of the aisle when he feels likewise. He’s truly independent.

And there is no room for that in today’s left-wing Democratic Party, despite its proclaimed gospel of tolerance and DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion. With the Democrats, you either toe the party line, or you are ostracized, excommunicated, or worse — you are primaried.

That’s what John Fetterman faces.

More Independent and Less Progressive

But again, Fetterman seems highly unlikely to join the GOP.

“I don’t see him becoming a Republican,” says Lowman Henry, CEO of the Lincoln Institute, and a major player in PA politics. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if John Fetterman switches parties and runs as an independent. Independents are the fastest-growing segment of the PA electorate. They’re far outgrowing the other two parties. He could be a Joe Lieberman. He could get 37 percent of the vote.”

In a three-person race, that could win.

Henry observed this irony to The American Spectator: “There’s enough room in the Democratic Party for radical socialists but not enough room for a guy who votes with them 90 percent of the time but occasionally stands with the other side.”

Ultimately, Fetterman may be forced to go the independent route. And not just for party reasons. He has said that he’s moving away from progressivism. That’s another label, like the Democrat label, that Fetterman says is leaving him. In June 2024, he was already talking about the “progressive” label leaving him.

“I’m not a progressive, I just identified myself as a regular Democrat,” Fetterman told CNN’s Dana Bash. “Now, eight years ago, I was a progressive, but the situation has changed, and I’ve been very clear that I didn’t leave that label. That label leaved [left] me, and I think it’s much more important to be focusing on Donald Trump instead of those kinds of purity tests and those kinds of issues.”

Where this all goes remains to be seen, and will be very interesting.

For now, it clearly looks like the Democrats will primary Fetterman. If they succeed in ousting him, especially with some wacky socialist, they will likely lose to the Republicans the following November, just as Florida’s Democrats will experience with their revolutionary socialist candidate, Angie Nixon.

In the meantime, we in Pennsylvania are enjoying watching something increasingly rare — an independent-minded Democrat, a senator who actually thinks for himself and puts his country above his party.

Would the Republicans take him? Would he join the GOP? That’s highly doubtful. But this much we seem to know: the Democrats don’t want him. John Fetterman hasn’t left the Democratic Party (yet), but the Democratic Party is leaving him.