Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has been making enemies on the left in recent months. After Israel retaliated against Hamas after its Oct. 7 attacks, he staked out a position as a staunch pro-Israel partisan and taunted pro-Palestinian activists pushing for a cease-fire. More recently, he angered progressive activists with his willingness to compromise with the GOP on restrictive immigration policies. Then on Friday, in what was a bombshell declaration, he told NBC News, “I’m not a progressive.”
Fetterman’s recent statements and positions have confused some progressives and delighted some Republicans. It’s striking to see Fetterman butt heads with groups who saw him as an ally, given that he’s a politician who has frequently described himself as a progressive, campaigned for Sen. Bernie Sanders and received plaudits from America’s foremost socialist magazine for providing a compelling model of populism.
Is Fetterman changing before our eyes or is he, as he and his staff have insisted, consistently sticking up for what he has always believed in?
A bit of both.
Fetterman has never been a doctrinaire progressive.
Fetterman has never been a doctrinaire progressive, and certainly not a democratic socialist-type that affiliates with The Squad in the House of Representatives. Yes, Fetterman endorsed Sanders in the 2016 presidential race, and during his Senate campaign he took progressive positions on marijuana legalization, supporting organized labor and raising the minimum wage. But during his campaign, he didn’t take up signature progressive policies like Medicare-for-all, and he notably deviated from progressive orthodoxy on key issues. He supported fracking, to the chagrin of environmentalists. He pledged to “lean in’’ on the issue of “enhancing the security of Israel.” He criticized President Joe Biden over lifting Title 42, a Trump-era immigration policy that allowed the U.S. to expel hundreds of thousands of immigrants using the pretext of Covid-19 mitigation. In sum, prior to taking office Fetterman displayed idiosyncratic views and signaled that he held more conservative or centrist stances on Israel and immigration.
It’s not entirely surprising that many people missed this. Fetterman generated a lot of buzz for his style of populist communication — for example, his everyman attire and his plainspokenness. But a lot of fans and some online activists weren’t necessarily paying close attention to signs that he wasn’t going to be a straight-laced progressive. Instead, what happened was that they discovered Fetterman’s less orthodox views when the issues became salient. It was only after Oct. 7 that Fetterman’s views on Israel became more newsworthy. It was only after Republicans insisted on making aid to Ukraine and Israel contingent on immigration reform that Fetterman’s more conservative views on immigration were thrown into the national spotlight.
That being said, Fetterman hasn’t just expressed his views; he’s expressed them in a way designed to generate friction. It’s one thing to support Israel’s war against Hamas; it’s another thing to drape oneself in an Israeli flag, wave an Israeli flag in front of pro-cease-fire veterans engaging in civil disobedience, and dogmatically post about the issue on social media. He’s not just taking positions, but he’s taking them in a confrontational manner that serves to redefine his public persona. His insistence that he’s not a progressive when he’s described himself as such on many occasions might be a strategy for deflecting what are at times unfair accusations that he’s a hypocrite or has sold out. But such a statement also suggests that Fetterman’s political identity is evolving and that he may be moving farther away from a political lane he never truly fit.
Why is Fetterman doubling down on his non-progressive positions in such a pointed way? One answer may be that, on an issue like Israel, he's proactively signaling his positions to interest groups that helped him get elected. Pro-Israel groups played a significant role in supporting him in his race against Mehmet Oz. It’s also true that a key part of the coalition that helped Fetterman get elected were white voters without college degrees, the kind of voters who tend to favor more restrictive attitudes toward immigration. On top of that, establishing one’s bona fides as a “maverick” senator helps prove one’s status as an independent in a state that’s thoroughly purple. And one must also not rule out the role of personality and the way that some people — especially “very online” lawmakers like Fetterman — respond to their critics by doing more of the thing that made those critics upset.
It would've been very difficult for an orthodox left-wing candidate to win a race for statewide office in Pennsylvania. Fetterman figured out a way to convince enough progressives and blue-collar voters that he was their guy. But given his apparent glee in antagonizing progressives, it's possible that the left-leaning flank of that coalition might not show up the same way the next time around.