John Fetterman is doing everything short of putting on a red hat at this point, and the Democratic Party seems perfectly happy to hand him one.
As Conservative Brief reported, the Pennsylvania senator has launched a joint fundraising committee with Republican Sen. Dave McCormick called Common Ground PA, which is now registered with the Federal Election Commission. That is correct: a Democratic senator and a Republican senator from the same state are now splitting a fundraising operation like two roommates sharing a Netflix password. The committee is linked to four joint fundraising PACs, including Fetterman for PA and Friends of Dave McCormick, because nothing says bipartisanship like pooling your donor Rolodexes.
McCormick campaign spokesman Mike DeVanney framed the whole thing as donor enthusiasm. "This is a donor-driven effort," he told The Center Square. "This group of donors value the collaboration exhibited by Senators McCormick and Fetterman for Pennsylvania and want to support both of them." Translation: rich people in Pennsylvania apparently want to hedge their bets.
Naturally, the left is thrilled. Just kidding. Fox News analyst and liberal commentator Jessica Tarlov summed up her feelings on X with the devastating two-word review: "So so bad." Meanwhile, Rick Wilson, who famously bolted from the Republican Party after Trump's first election win, speculated that Fetterman is "gonna flip." When the guy who switched teams is predicting you will switch teams, the writing might be on the wall.
Fetterman has been nudging himself toward the exit for a while now, particularly over Israel. During a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity, Fetterman laid out his red line with the precision of a man who has already thought about this a lot. "My real concern is the Democratic Party is going to put it into the platform, you know, as an anti-Israel party, that Israel does not have the right to defend itself and to exist," he said. "And the second that becomes a formal part of our platform, that's the one thing that would push me out of this party."
He also took a flamethrower to the progressive wing at the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize event, calling recent Democratic Socialists of America electoral victories a win for the "dirtbag left" and arguing that their agenda is fundamentally incompatible with the party he joined. "It was a really big night for the dirtbag left," he said, which is probably not a phrase you will find in any Democratic National Committee talking points memo.
To be fair, Fetterman still votes with Democrats most of the time, so the party switch remains speculative. But when you are raising money with the opposing team, publicly trashing your own party's activist base, and drawing a line in the sand on national television about when you will leave, you are not exactly radiating "ride or die Democrat" energy.
At this rate, the only question is whether Fetterman switches parties before or after the Democratic Party changes the locks on him first.
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