John Fetterman, the Democrat running for Senate in Pennsylvania, is not well. That much has been made clear by his recent public appearances. His speaking has been concerning, to say the least, and the lingering effects of his massive stroke, brought on by ignoring his doctor for half a decade, have shown him to be completely unfit to run for the office he’s seeking.
More recently, Mehmet Oz, the Republican in the race, has made Fettermans’ health an issue, specifically regarding the coming non-partisan debate scheduled in Pittsburgh. Would the Democrat, who can’t currently form coherent sentences and has been running a meme campaign, show up?
We have an answer: Fetterman has officially chickened out.
Laughably, Fetterman’s excuse for not showing up is that Oz made fun of him. No, I’m not kidding. The clown who has spent his entire campaign making New Jersey jokes is now really upset that his opponent finally hit back. It’s pathetic.
Apparently, Fetterman can dish it out but he can’t take it, which is predictable. He wants to be able to hit Oz with a variety of unfair attacks, but he doesn’t want anyone to question his health, which is actually a legitimate issue. Someone who is so sick that they can’t debate should not be running for the US Senate, and it is very much an open question whether Fetterman will ever even fully recover. Certainly, his long-term prognosis is cloudy at best given how bad his stroke was.
What this comes down to is that Fetterman is stalling. He and his handlers know he’s incapable of standing on a stage for two hours and debating the issues. But will he suddenly be better in late September? And debates are usually done by mid-October. That leaves a small window to get this thing done, and I’m thinking it doesn’t happen at all.
Fetterman knows he has the media making excuses for him and asserting that his health is off-limits. He may feel that he’s got nothing to lose by using the basement strategy all the way until November. I think that’s a miscalculation, though. Oz has been making headway in the polls and with over two months left until election day, there’s a lot of time for Fetterman to be further exposed. As it becomes clearer that he is ducking the debates because he can’t physically do them, that will resonate with some segment of voters. Whether it’s enough to get Oz over the finish line, I don’t know, but there’s hay to be made there.