Fetterman increasingly alienating himself from the Democratic party, hanging out with MAGAs and trump

butters

High on a Hill
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Yes, everyone's entitled to change their minds about which party they support. Is Fetterman doing his best to reach out across aisles and potentially change minds, or trying to make sure he gets votes from enough republicans to keep him elected when his term is due, or simply deciding his values now align more with deplorables? Strokes are well-known to trigger personality changes but if it is the latter then he is such a freakin' disappointment. If he is just being true to his original intentions of doing his job trying to find common ground, great, but bannon and boyle? really?

Fetterman spotted with Bannon at DC MAGA hangout: Report

Having met with trump at mar-a-lago in January, he's now seen hanging out with bannon and dining with breitbart nob matt boyle in an established maga restaurant in DC.
 
It’s sad because these were the same people mocking him and his mental health after his stroke.
 
does anyone have an opinion based on observation as to what might actually be going on with Fetterman? I've read numerous accounts lately about how he's 'hard to work with' in the office, about mood swings and irascibility, but have no idea how much is true, how much people are trying to distance themselves from him for whatever reason, and what's is truly going on. I was a Fetterman fan, originally, but don't agree with some of his political stances more recently.

Visiting trump at m-a-l: I can't decide if he's just deeply filled with integrity that he'll walk right into the faux-king's court to debate since what matters most is changing trump's mind, or if he's cosying up more and more with people who are acting more sympathetic to him at the very time he's feeling most alienated.

Of course, it could just be as I stated before, that he's determined to hold his seat and if that means getting republicans to vote him in by adopting deplorable ways then he's up for that, too.
 
here's an example of another deplorable, run-run-run-run-runaway hawley, doing just that:

Republican Senator Co-Sponsors Bill To Raise The Minimum Wage To $15

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri proposed a bill Tuesday that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, his latest move to frame himself as a new kind of pro-worker Republican.
Hawley’s legislation is not in any danger of actually becoming law — his fellow Republicans hold a majority in the Senate and have been blocking minimum wage increases for years. But the proposal aligns him with a core Democratic demand and further separates Hawley from the traditional anti-union, free-market wing of the GOP when it comes to labor policy.
 
does anyone have an opinion based on observation as to what might actually be going on with Fetterman? I've read numerous accounts lately about how he's 'hard to work with' in the office, about mood swings and irascibility, but have no idea how much is true, how much people are trying to distance themselves from him for whatever reason, and what's is truly going on. I was a Fetterman fan, originally, but don't agree with some of his political stances more recently.

Visiting trump at m-a-l: I can't decide if he's just deeply filled with integrity that he'll walk right into the faux-king's court to debate since what matters most is changing trump's mind, or if he's cosying up more and more with people who are acting more sympathetic to him at the very time he's feeling most alienated.

Of course, it could just be as I stated before, that he's determined to hold his seat and if that means getting republicans to vote him in by adopting deplorable ways then he's up for that, too.
I will forgive him a lot as long as he shows up when it really matters.
 
I will forgive him a lot as long as he shows up when it really matters.
As a US Senator, he votes on 28% of the bills put up for a vote. This is the lowest percentage of the entire Congress.

He got a corrosive profile in last month's Atlantic from former AND CURRENT staffers. He's obviously in a deeply disturbed mental state. If you think Biden's condition was hidden from the public, consider Fetterman's handlers:
  • He has routine crying jags in the office that last hours at a time
  • He has yelled at constituents for no reason
  • He has "delusions of grandeur", such as when he told the press that NOBODY knew more about the Israel-Gaza situation than HE did. What special insight does he have? He smugly said he watches more TV than most people. Oh.
His staff says his mental instability is far worse this time than it was when his highly publicized episode in 2024 became public. His staff says they're trying their best to hide it this time because Fetterman got so upset the first time his condition was made public.

The guy is obviously unfit to hold office right now. But we live in the newly forming Dark Age of America, so that's not immediately disqualifying.
 
I will forgive him a lot as long as he shows up when it really matters.
I can cut him some slack, but if he's refusing to read memos, take calls before important votes, not taking briefings, not turning up for committee hearings and skipping almost every vote then he is not doing his job. Whether that's due to mental health issues or simple belligerence, it is not acceptable. He is where he is to give the people who voted him in a voice. If he's refusing to speak, refusing to inform himself on the issues at hand, refusing to vote? That's not doing his job.

the article that began kicking things off is based on a letter from 18 of his colleagues having problems with his work.

The crux of the article focused on a May 2024 letter from Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, addressed to Dr. David Williamson, the senator’s neuropsychiatrist at Walter Reed Medical Center, where Fetterman spent six weeks in 2023 to treat clinical depression. In that letter, which NBC News obtained, Jentleson expressed worry that if his boss “stays on his current trajectory he won’t be with us for much longer.”

“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not,” Jentleson wrote. “We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed: conspiratorial thinking; megalomania (for example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news — he declines most briefings and never reads memos); high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room, such as swearing up and down that he didn’t say something everyone heard him say a few minutes prior.”
to be quite frank, looking at that last paragraph, he appears far more aligned with trump than democrats!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/co...lleagues-staff-skips-senate-duties-rcna205596

Fetterman denies he's missed most votes, says he's attended 90% of them. I expect there's some official record of all the voting taking place and how many of those he has participated in but I don't have the patience to track that down... perhaps some bloodhound here could find those stats? How important is a procedural vote? Is it truly just a 'throwaway'? Perhaps it is, I don't know. Is it a part of the job? Undoubtably.

“I’m here. I’m doing that job,” Fetterman (D-Pa.) said. “For me, if I miss some of those quotes — I mean some of those votes — I’ve made 90 percent of them and, and we all know those votes that I’ve missed were on Monday; those are travel days, and I have three young kids, and I — those are throwaway procedural votes. … That’s a choice that I made, and if you want to attack me for that, go ahead.”

But a bombshell New York magazine report this month alleged that current and former staffers are concerned about Fetterman’s mental and physical health. Top Democrats have yet to come to Fetterman’s defense, and at least one Pennsylvanian progressive organization called on Fetterman to resign, citing the senator’s voting record and “disdainful attitude” toward constituents.
“You have failed to fulfill the most basic duties of the office by avoiding contact with your constituents who can’t even leave voicemails after business hours, refusing to hold town halls, yelling at visitors in your office and inexcusably missing more votes than any other member of the current Senate,” the letter from Indivisible Pennsylvania read.

^^ that in red seems pretty damning, to me.
 
Even with republicans being the majority in the senate and Fetterman voting in lock step with democrats that awful 28% voting on bills can only help the republicans and would probably be something Bannon would encourage to continue.
 
Yeaah. 🙄
My dear butters the other idiot who drops your name for PB cred just chimed in saying nothing. Bless his heart - he tries so hard to get attention.
 
I don’t know the senate rules or what exactly Schumer could do but Shapiro is the governor and can/will appoint a more competent person in place of Fetterman.
 
I don’t know the senate rules or what exactly Schumer could do but Shapiro is the governor and can/will appoint a more competent person in place of Fetterman.
As I understand it, he can ask Fetterman to stand down and, if he did, would appoint a temporary replacement until a special election chose his permanent one. Where do things stand if Gov. Shapiro asks but Fetterman refuses? What then?
 
Fetterman’s vote probably won’t be critical until 2028 - and the political landscape will look a whole lot different by then.

I haven’t seen a huge change in his stances on key issues, so I’ll reserve judgement on his mental competency until I witness it for myself.

Democratic Senators (and House members) are fairly inconsequential at the moment. DonOld & the MAGAt republicans should be the focus, imho.

👍

🇺🇸

We. Told. Them. So.

🌷
 
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Great question.
Normally, I would try and give a by the book answer but we are in a war over democracy. It seems his staff already have documented concerns. Get a therapist to evaluate Fetterman. Declare him incompetent. Remove him from office. We can no longer play by the rules with so much at stake. I’m not asking a medical professional to lie, Fetterman has issues, unlike trump who we know doctors have lied on his overall health and when he contracted Covid. I’ll leave it to others to bring up how we still have never got any medical reports after his assassination attempt. If fetterman can’t do the job, as his voting record seems to suggest, then senate dems and the governor of Pennsylvania need to do whatever they can to give the people of Pennsylvania adequate representation.
 
Great question.
Normally, I would try and give a by the book answer but we are in a war over democracy. It seems his staff already have documented concerns. Get a therapist to evaluate Fetterman. Declare him incompetent. Remove him from office. We can no longer play by the rules with so much at stake. I’m not asking a medical professional to lie, Fetterman has issues, unlike trump who we know doctors have lied on his overall health and when he contracted Covid. I’ll leave it to others to bring up how we still have never got any medical reports after his assassination attempt. If fetterman can’t do the job, as his voting record seems to suggest, then senate dems and the governor of Pennsylvania need to do whatever they can to give the people of Pennsylvania adequate representation.
still, it has to be done legally, otherwise what's the difference between dems and republicans? And if illegally done, it can be challenged and overturned in court.
 
The right thing would be for Fetterman to voluntarily step down. California just filed a lawsuit that you posted about. Newsome should win. IMO the court should rule against the executive branch for overreach. I am of the belief… No, we’ve seen that the trump administration knows that it has no standing but will take advantage of the time consuming process of our courts. He will remove the troops before a ruling but who knows the damage he could do in between.

My dear butters, you are right, I don’t want my party to be like the fascists on the other side. I’m venting my frustration at a republican rigged system that we all continue to try to play by. I know the right answer - I wish we would not have to risk our social safety nets and civil liberties in order to reach a democratic purity.
 
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