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What in the fresh hell, Pennsylvania?
Has the Motte discussed John Fetterman? If so, I missed it... I admit there are enough races I'm watching across the country that it is hard to keep track of them all. But in case you, too, have missed it, John Fetterman is the Democratic candidate for the seat of outgoing Senator Pat Toomey, one of 7 Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment circus. Seven days before winning the Primary, John Fetterman had a stroke.
I am not a medical doctor. For all I know, Fetterman will make a full recovery, eventually. But as of right now, the guy is one step above monosyllabic. Which made tonight's debate absolutely excruciating to watch. Over the course of the night, PredictIt shifted ten cents in favor of Fetterman's opponent,
the Wizard ofMehmet Oz. And yet most media accounts of the debate are steadfastly reporting only the substance, such as it was. No surprise--the media has been carrying water for Fetterman for weeks. But like... really? You can't report a single sentence saying, "Fetterman was clearly not up to the task." Watching people hit Twitter to unironically praise him for "doing really well, for a stroke victim!" is shocking. The level of partisanship required to vote for Fetterman at this point simply boggles the mind. On the flip side, #Festerman was briefly trending on Twitter before (I presume) someone elbowed their censors.Of course, we can trust our outspoken President to just tell it like it is. Perhaps President Biden understands better than anyone, given the possibility that he, too, might simply be functioning as a sock puppet for the Democratic establishment. The counterargument that criticizing Fetterman's cognition is some kind of "ableism" is just hollow. This is not a man who can do the job of Senator, at least not right now, and to pretend otherwise just seems exploitative to me. (And calling that a "bad faith" argument seems willfully ignorant. The man can barely speak, that's much more than an "auditory processing" problem.)
Of course, voting has been open for a month in Pennsylvania, and the state has already declared its intention to turn a blind eye to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling as it counts undated ballots. So in addition to potentially electing someone with the mental faculties of a young child to high federal office, Pennsylvania is also setting up a judicial crisis for its election process.
And all because Oz is, well, a Trumpist. If this is what midterms look like, 2024 is going to be... just something else. I can't even imagine. It's simply too much.
That's really not it, and if you think that's it you don't get it at all, you're viewing a real life state election from a fakakta national lens. I'm just going to speak as a lifelong Pennsylvanian Republican voter here so it probably will feel more like a political ad than a high quality post, but it's not like the OP was all that deep anyway.
Oz is a truly terrible candidate on so many levels, and I'd probably rather have a blithering retard than Oz. I'm voting for the Libertarian, Erik for PA, flatbrim phillies hat and all
Oz lives in New Jersey. I understand that this doesn't matter to people who aren't from PA, and that some people who do live in PA have no pride in their state, but he doesn't live here, he has never lived here. If we're caring about Voter Fraud this week, he blatantly committed voter fraud when he pretended he was living in his in-laws' basement to vote in PA. No one ever saw him hanging around Bryn Athyn or New Hope or Doylestown, he just declared it was true. But hey, people are just allowed to do that right, he filled out the paper work to say he lived there and claimed he was paying his ultra-wealthy in laws a "market rent," it doesn't matter if he actually lived there; life-ruining voter fraud charges are for uneducated felons who were told they were allowed to vote, not rich people pretending they live in their in-laws basement.
The 2nd amendment is my number one issue, and I don't trust Oz on it, he was against it before he was for it. Oz wrote a series of Op-Eds over a decade detailing his support for a "New Zealand style gun ban," that is disqualifying to me. Even in his current campaign he supports red flag laws, another hard line, giving the state unlimited power to take guns away. I generally dislike Politifact, but they've collected all the op-eds here, work your way down the list. Even his attack ads on Fetterman have an anti-gun tinge, the shotgun thing is probably my favorite aspect of Fetterman.
Oz was pro-abortion before he was against it. He spent years on his talk show stating that heartbeat bills were an absurdity, he did fetal tissue research for years, and he stated clearly that the harms caused by illegal abortion outweighed those caused by legal abortion. Now he's flipped completely.
Wikipedia gives the best summary on his trans stances:
That hits all the wrong notes for me. I'm against trans-ing kids and think putting them on national TV is the most disgusting exploitation of mental illness one could commit regardless; and so called "Conversion therapy bans" are fascism, the state inserting itself into the therapeutic relationship and into the clerical relationship and announcing that only this one thing can't possibly be a delusion.
And it goes on. Oz was against Fracking before he was for it, he wrote articles about how he believed in Climate Change before he didn't, he was a Muslim before he married into a Christian cult and never talked about religion again. Oz simply isn't it, intellectually or by identity.
And I didn't even have time to get into his fucking talk show where he shills diarrhea pills to moron housewives.
To describe Oz as a Trumpist with any positive valence is to confirm that "Trumpist" has no meaning whatsoever beyond momentary political convenience.
Doesn't much of that apply to Trump himself? Trump was, as far as I've understood it, way more liberal on "values questions" before he made the decision that GOP would be his route to power.
Agree but Trumps personality traits are hard work, perseverance, and promoting Trump himself.
People will make fun of Trump for being a rich kid silver spoon but he has created a lot of businesses that mostly promotes Trump. An alliance with the right was easier to make for both sides as the right didn’t have someone with no limits on how far he would go to fight for his adopted people.
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