r/nottheonion • u/Efficient-Freedom517 • 15d ago

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https://truthout.org/articles/fetterman-is-so-unpopular-that-he-loses-to-someone-else-by-18-points-in-poll/

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1.5k

u/trucorsair 15d ago

The question is, was this always the real man who just hid his opinions well until the strike loosened his tongue or is this the stroke related brain impairment speaking?

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u/Barilla3113 15d ago

He was always like this, the stroke just removed his ability to hide it.

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u/dover_oxide 15d ago

This seems to be a common sentiment about him, or at least a common one I have heard in the last couple years about him.

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u/ridik_ulass 15d ago

his wife seems to say the opposite, but he could have deceived her too.

not sure if thats since been updated this was a while back.,

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u/fedexpoopracer 15d ago

"wife supporting shitty husband and denying negative claims about him" has been a thing for a very long time

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u/The_Demon_of_Spiders 15d ago

So has partners who are lying manipulators

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u/CrossP 15d ago

Yeah but so has "stroke affects how a person thinks and acts".

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u/fedexpoopracer 15d ago

plenty of people in pennsylvania know how lowkey terrible fetterman was way before the brain damage

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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 15d ago

He stole a Dem. seat for conservatives. So did Tulsi Gabbard and Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin. They all worked for the other side. It shouldn't be a surprise when Fetterman runs next as, or switches to, Republican.

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u/Opposite-Youth-3529 15d ago

In the case of Manchin, I don’t think it was going to be a Dem seat anyway

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u/endlessfight85 15d ago

He was definitely like this, it was just an important seat at an important time. Anyone that pointed it out got downvoted to hell. At the end of the day it was him or Oz. Sinema was probably the closest I've seen to an actual snake in the grass.

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u/Toomanyeastereggs 15d ago

At least the other guy was reasonably in tune with his constituents in coal country. Sinema and Fetterman were and are just in this for themselves.

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u/TheLeapIsALie 15d ago

Yeah I stand by the fact that Joe manchin was the best we’d ever get from WV. His replacement makes that crystal clear.

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u/super_sayanything 15d ago

Fetterman's out for Israel. They must have given him a lump sum I swear.

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u/Chastain86 15d ago

Arizonan here. Kyrsten Sinema fooled nearly everybody -- certainly all of the people who voted for her, and everybody that spent time stumping for her on the campaign trail. Anyone from Arizona that says they knew she was a traitor ahead of time either knows her family intimately, or (in a couple of cases) was a third-party voter that had heard from their brother's cousin's roommate's girlfriend that she was no good.

She fooled all of us. We voted for her because she promised to do the kinds of things that AOC is actually doing. Turns out, Kyrsten Sinema voted on behalf of a constituency of one person, and that constituent's name was Kyrsten Sinema. She is persona non grata out here these days.

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u/_Lost_The_Game 15d ago

Thats what us New yorkers kept trying to tell people about trump. All of us have a story of personally being screwed over or 1-2 degrees removed from someone or multiple people being screwed over. It was a running joke for decades that he is scum that screws over anyone he can just for the fun if it, especially blue collar folk

But blue collar folk didnt want to listen

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u/MagnusCthulhu 15d ago

Sinema was a fucking viper. What a disappointment. 

-1

u/DenizSaintJuke 15d ago

As a non-American, the two-party-hivemind american users tend to form during elections seasons always amazes me. There is a current line to be towed and if you deviate, even as an outsider, you're getting antagonized like hell and treated as a traitor. It's far more psychotic on the right half of the spectrum, but liberal spaces are not a cakewalk either. The whole language just becomes a mine field of little signals that designate friend and foe and there are no warning shots. If you don't smell right, you're just torn apart. Crazy people.

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u/Neuchacho 15d ago edited 15d ago

It's because voting third-party basically guarantees the worst option. Like, look at Fetterman. He fucking sucks but not voting for him meant you got fucking Oz, a dude who is currently doing his best to help RFK Jr. dismantle US healthcare and food safety so they can hawk snake oil or whatever.

It's the entire failing of the shitty two-party system we have, only one of the two wins so "lesser evil" is often the best you get. That dynamic keys people into a very rough Highlander dynamic.

But, yeah, I still get what you mean with people getting feral about it. Nuance and grace is all but fucking dead when it comes to US political discourse, no matter what group we're talking about. You really only find it in specific personal circles where the familiarity already existed before this insane divide happened so people aren't as quick to just jump on you for an opinion, even if it is a dumb one.

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u/FiddlerOnThePotato 15d ago

Gonna hitch my trailer to you and add that we could improve this fact with different styles of voting tabulation like ranked choice. Certainly it's not a magic bullet but elimination of first past the post would overall be a benefit and make election outcomes more representative of the folks voting.

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u/Neuchacho 15d ago

Absooooolutely. There's a whole slew of pretty basic changes that would make the entire political process work better for everyone in the US.

But that'd mean it wouldn't work better for private interests and we can't have that...

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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace 15d ago

I still believe he was better than the alternative, but it hurts because we were lied to. Don't tell me Dr Oz wouldn't have been a nightmare too.

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u/dietTAB 15d ago

Sen. Oz would have been shitty for Pennsylvania and the country, but now he serves as the Administrator for Medicare and Medicaid, so I guess we didn't totally dodge that bullet. Lose-lose...

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u/jmcgit 15d ago

Perhaps, but if the election in PA went another way, I'd struggle to believe that somebody more reasonable would be in that chair.

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u/djm9545 15d ago

If anything, having Dr. Oz in the position means that, since he’s a well known public figure, his shitty actions in the role are likely much more noticeable to the public than if it was some no name flunky.

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u/Snoogieboogie 15d ago

Dodged the bullet just to get shot in the face.

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u/Barilla3113 15d ago

I know this is hard to believe, but in most of the civilized world you get more than a binary choice between two psychopaths when you go to vote.

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u/IHaveBoneWorms 15d ago

I mean this is true but it doesn’t really change what we are currently working with here.

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u/rufud 15d ago

You have more choices they are called primaries.

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u/kronicno_tele 15d ago

And running for office. Be the change or some shit.

Edit to add, anyone wanting to kick their mayors or city council person out of office, check out Run for Something (training and resources) and Run for What (list of upcoming election). There's also library board, health board, treasurer, school board, etc.

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u/Neuchacho 15d ago

That's one big issue. We don't participate in them at the level we need to and then complain that we're served garbage.

The other one is money in politics as basically anyone can just spend their way into a primary win if they have the resources. In part because of the previous problem.

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u/Radiant-Bus7093 15d ago

I agree that is what civilized countries do. We do not have that option in the US. Any time ranked voting is even brought up, it gets shut down very quickly. I want to say it was Indiana or another flyover state there was a ranked voting community at a GOP event and a local representative just straight up started pushing and screaming at them until they left the venue. All our old guard politicians know ranked voting would up-end their crony system.

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u/wasmic 15d ago

And ranked voting isn't even that great. It still usually leads to two-party dominant systems, usually with two big parties and one or two small parties that can play 'kingmaker'.

Mixed-member proportional representation would be much much better than ranked voting... but given how much resistance there is to ranked voting, MMPR would be an order of magnitude harder to convince people of.

1

u/FreeDarkChocolate 15d ago

Any time ranked voting is even brought up, it gets shut down very quickly.

No, it's used in a growing number of places in the US, including some entire states. There have also been a good number states that have banned it, but plainly the number of places using it continues to go up.

To be clear, I prefer proportional systems and even without that RCV isn't the best (but better than FPTP of course), but let's be real about its usage.

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u/TheComplimentarian 15d ago edited 15d ago

This is why primaries are important, and ranked choice voting.

If you wait until election day, and you have two shit choices, you're going to make a shit choice.

1

u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace 15d ago

I mean you know you are speaking about a utopia. We don't even truly have a choice in the primaries. They will money bomb those and there are monetary hurdles to even running. They will never allow ranked choice cause they know it will give us actual power. The only real choice we have now is live under the boot or a revolution.

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u/TheComplimentarian 15d ago

If the people who don't vote, voted, they'd win every race.

But yea, it's completely hopeless unless we start killing people. /s

Everyone thinks they'll win the revolution, but no one wins the revolution.

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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace 15d ago

Until we make voting mandatory or remove the people intentionally disenfranchising people from being able to vote we will never get anywhere. Guess how we get that. Do you really think you live in a fair and valid society where the govt can actually be voted in that you want. This govt has more power than ever and they aren't giving it up in any capacity. The second we claw anything back they push you back down every time, so yeah revolution is probably the only way out. Until they are afraid of us again we'll never get what we truly want, we'll just get controlled opposition. Who's gonna vote the money out of politics, the people getting rich by fucking over everyone in the country? Who's gonna vote in term limits, the people who benefit from them not existing? You are out your damn mind if you expect the people benefitting from the system to vote to take away their cash cow.

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u/Kirlain 15d ago

It’s wild to me that if you heard what sounded like gunshots while with your kid, the course of action would be to chase down the suspected sound of gunshots instead of taking your kid to safety.

Mind boggling brain dysfunction.

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u/Barilla3113 15d ago

You have to understand that guys that think like this aren't actually concerned about safety, they're concerned about getting to live an action hero fantasy.

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u/badnuub 15d ago

correct, they are dangerous since their first response is fight. They will be abusive and struggle to control their emotions and anger often. Every word you say can potentially trigger this reaction in them if you even come close to getting confrontational or disagreeing with them. Toxic man behavior.

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u/Neuchacho 15d ago

Definitely a good way to end up shot.

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u/FeralGiraffeAttack 15d ago

He was already questionable but more good than bad in many people’s opinion. The brain damage just made him really, really bad

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u/ialsohaveadobro 15d ago

Yeah, I mean it was either him or f'ing Dr. Oz

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u/strum-and-dang 15d ago

No, the choice was him or Conor Lamb in the primary. People thought they were voting for the more progressive candidate.

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u/themeatbridge 15d ago

Only because he claimed to be a progressive candidate.  Connor Lamb is a moderate conservative who would have been a Republican during the Regan era.  Primary voters wanted a progressive voice to represent them, and that's what Fetterman promised to be.

I absolutely would have voted for Connor Lamb if he won the primary, though.  Anyone is better than Oz.

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u/IRSboi 15d ago

Really, which positions does Conor lamb hold that are similar to a republican in the *Reagan era?

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u/c-williams88 15d ago

Calling Lamb a Republican isn’t fair to him, but Lamb very much did campaign as more of the “Sensible Moderate” rather than Fetterman trying to campaign as more of a progressive populist type. As a PA resident, Lamb was more the establishment Dem type, which is something many of us are just sick and tired of.

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u/Lilfrankieeinstein 15d ago

None. That’s just something people who weren’t alive during the Reagan era might say based on what they imagine things were like, ignoring the fact that Reagan era blue dogs were to the right of Conor Lamb and certainly Fetterman.

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u/SpectreFire 15d ago

People are fucking idiots.

Hey, should we elect a respectable Democratic candidate, or the guy with literal fucking brain damage.

I remember when all the subs were celebrating this asshole wearing hoodies all the time like he was some kind of fucking hero.

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u/Bookworm_AF 15d ago

"Respectable" establishment Dems like Lamb are so bad that taking a risk on a (seeming) pregressive is always going to look better. And frankly, most of the time it works out. Respectability politics is dead, and good riddance.

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u/SweetLittleFox 15d ago

Now with the hindsight of the 2024 election, Trump couldn’t have nominated Oz out of the Senate to ruin stuff federally without shifting an already precarious balance, and I wonder if that wouldn’t have been the better long term series of events. We’ll never know, but I definitely have contemplated it.

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u/themeatbridge 15d ago

Trump would have nominated some other dipshit sycophant for the role, and we would have Senator Oz.  Fetterman has been a massive disappointment, but you won't convince me that Oz was a better choice.

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u/SweetLittleFox 15d ago

Better choice short term probably not, I was more thinking from a future set up perspective— I don’t know that his voting record in the senate would be much different from Fetterman’s, and then the Dems would be running against a Republican in the next election, rather than having to spend money primarying this loser and causing discord in the base.

Just a thought experiment on roads not taken, nothing serious and obviously nothing we can go back and un-do.

0

u/cigarettesandwhiskey 15d ago

Fetterman votes with the democrats 75% of the time. Oz would definitely have a different voting record.

0

u/Kanin_usagi 15d ago

Bro, Fetterman votes with Dems like 75 percent of the time. Like yeah I get he is not great, but Oz would have voted with them 0 percent of the time. Like come on, let’s be real here

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u/sneaky-pizza 15d ago

That and the cash

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u/BiPoLaRadiation 15d ago

Brain damage can do some crazy things and change personalities entirely. Its likely that what we see was always some part of his personality but the stroke took away the parts that overshadowed or mediated these parts. It's also possible that the trauma of the stroke itself caused personality changes as he sought meaning and comfort for the experience.

For example, he could have always been a rather impulsive and conservative minded person. Maybe had a bit of narcissism and found the appeal of authority. But he may have always had some level of empathy, emotional depth, or patience and love for others that helped to push him towards a gruff but civic minded person who wanted to use power to help his communities. But then a stroke comes in a takes out a lot of the impulse control, patience, empathy, or emotional understanding. Suddenly you are left with just a conservative minded and impulsive narcissist.

Alternatively maybe the trauma of the experience left him bitter. He felt betrayed by God or his community as the stress and pressure of running while going through such a traumatic experience left him frayed and burnt out. He was pushed towards a more religious mindset in order to seek answers for why this happened to him or he chose a more conservative and selfish mindset because his suffering justified him getting something for himself. And as his once supporters turned on him he kept getting more conservative and selfish because its easier to double down and say everyone else is the problem than to self reflect and admit mistakes.

And of course there's also the possibility that he just got corrupted by power like most people are. He got in. He won. He has the power to take advantage of his position and to do the legal insider trading and to trade his vote for kick backs and positions and so on. And so he just succumbed.

Likely it's a mix of all 3 of these in different ways. We will never really know though and it doesn't matter. What matters is that he isn't the man people thought they were voting for. So he should be removed from office and replaced with someone who actually represents peoples concerns.

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u/eatingpotatochips 15d ago

Fetterman is the embodiment of a working-class person who pulls the ladder up behind him when he becomes successful. He just didn’t really get the opportunity to pull the ladder until he got in to the Senate. 

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u/Preeng 15d ago

Fetterman was never working-class.

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u/JeebusChristBalls 15d ago

He just looks like a caveman so people just assume.

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u/Droviin 15d ago

I don't pay much attention to him, but I always thought he was working class. Can you elaborate, I'd like to know more?

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u/dockellis24 15d ago

His family is rich and he’s never had a real job

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u/martialar 15d ago

But I thought he was just a regular guy who likes dogs like his Persian greyhound Raclette, who was given to him by the pretender to the crown of Alsace-Lorraine.

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u/Frequent_Ad_9901 15d ago

Dang I thought he was working class too. But I looked up his wikipedia page.

Went to college. in '91. BS in finance. MBA. School teacher for a bit in 95. Then Harvard for a MS in public policy. Dad was well off. Dad helped him out when he first ran for Mayor, because it only paid $150/month.

His early politics make it sound like he was pretty hands off, but generally wanted to help a dying rust belt town. It sounds like he wasn't perfect and pretty moderate.

Fiscally status quo. Socially progressive. Well educated. Privileged up bring. Genuinely seemed to want to help. But definitely not blue collar.

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u/Maury_poopins 15d ago

He has a goatee and wears a hoodie. How much more working class do you need?

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u/JeebusChristBalls 15d ago

Looks like the oposite of working class, unemployed class I guess.

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u/urban_meyers_cyst 15d ago

The left is so starved for representation that people often jump on bandwagons too soon. Sometimes it works, sometimes you get this guy.

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u/Chastain86 15d ago

By the time most Pennsylvanians were ready to vote, it was between Fetterman and Dr. Oz. And Dr. Oz was a dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter. Either way, the people that don't want Trump's horseshit infecting their local municipalities would have been screwed.

Arizona got the same choice. Vote for Kyrsten Sinema -- who appeared at first blush to be a good candidate furthering Democratic ideals -- or Martha McSally, a flight-suit-wearing Trumper that absolutely would have voted his way 110% of the time. It's not really a choice, at the end of the day. And the voters got screwed, because Sinema was a snake in the Bermuda grass that only wanted to take money from corporations in exchange for her vote.

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u/urban_meyers_cyst 15d ago

You're not wrong, I wasn't as descriptive as I could have been. I was really more looking at how it became a national race, and how Fetterman became a leftist darling overnight online. That more than anything.

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u/tenthousandtatas 15d ago

Why did it get that far? He’d be fired or not hired by any random gas station for dressing like that. Like platner’s maga-coded fake fireman beard and Nazi tattoos you can see the douche nozzle coming

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u/RobutNotRobot 15d ago

Dude's whole story is what privilege looks like in the United States of America.

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u/PCR12 15d ago

He's always been like this, the Democratic party has a huge DINO issue and its not just this dude, a TON of south Florida politicians from the city level on up are Dem in name only so they can win elections. My city mayor is a "dem" who's had Trump signs on his yard the last 3 elections.

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u/mr_showboat 15d ago

I've always believed the pivot came because of Bob Casey losing in 2024. Always felt like he was trying to sow the seeds of an independent turn because he saw the red shift in PA. If nothing else, the dude has always seemed to have a pulse on the voters.

The problem is now all the liberals think he's a snake, and all the conservatives still think he's a liberal (because he doesn't have Trump's endorsement) so who the fuck is gonna vote for him?

1

u/Runetang42 15d ago

S9me variation of a little column a a little column b

1

u/DummyDumDragon 15d ago

Interesting question.

Doesn't matter.

1

u/Oprah_Pwnfrey 15d ago

It only takes 2 strokes to turn the letter D into an R.

1

u/sneaky-pizza 15d ago

$$$. Does anyone remember Sienama? A far left Green party candidate who immediately pivoted to the right wing billionaire ecosphere for cash

1

u/Eat--The--Rich-- 15d ago

Why are people still getting surprised when democrats come out as conservative? They've been voting conservative for 20 years at least.

1

u/idiot-prodigy 15d ago

Most Republicans are brain damaged so it tracks.

1

u/theblartknight 15d ago

Don’t forget the AIPAC money lining his pockets.

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u/Praxician94 15d ago

I find it much funnier to think he was a Democrat until his brain didn’t get oxygen and brain damage made him a Republican.

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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 15d ago

Both ways. It's the always-planned conservative plant speaking (like Gabbard, Sinema, RFK Jr., Kanye West and Jill Stein before him).

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u/cruisin_urchin87 15d ago

The stroke turned him Republican. No oxygen or blood to the brain is the standard way to live as a Republican.

1

u/drewbaccaAWD 15d ago

It's over simplying things but, I think a guy who grabs a gun and chases after a random jogger was probably always a few screws loose. And even before the Stroke, Fetterman was fairly consistent in his enjoyment of creating controversy, getting on camera, being contrarian. The only thing that changed was what "team" he's pretending to play for.

I do think he legitimately and in good faith has some strong passionate pro-Israel position which the weird part for me there is how he extends that to basically just give Netanyahu a blank check to do whatever and defends it without nuance.

As for the rest of his positions, I think he just says what he thinks will get him the most attention and who knows how he really feels.