Fetterman 2.0 continues to go his own way
And Fetterman’s own way is not the way the Democrats expected:
The acquisition of @U_S_Steel by a foreign company is wrong for workers and wrong for Pennsylvania. I’m gonna do everything I can to block it. pic.twitter.com/9EqohwRhRJ
— Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) December 18, 2023
Isn’t this, though, a throwback to the days when Democrats wanted to protect American workers?
Fetterman is a prime example of a certain very common type of Pennsylvanian – no nonsense, often blue collar, crude, and kind of a “jagoff,” as they say. I thought he was actually a rich ideologue posing as the authentic article, but so far that seems to be, at least, less than the full truth.
It will be interesting to see what happens in Fetterman’s reelection. There is a lot of overlap between Fetterman’s base and Trump’s. At the same time, the Whole Foods progressive crowd is probably going to be pretty disappointed with him. Will he draw a primary opponent? Will he get the turnout in the blue cities that a Democrat needs to win PA? Will he make up for urban shortfalls with rural and small town blue collar voters?
It will definately be interesting.
He does continue to surprise. It’s like Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller put on a hoodie and started hanging out in DC
Fetterman is a more old school dem. You know, the top of the slippery slope to ‘The Squad’. A thinking man’s Joe Biden.
He’s a throwback to the days when Dems said they supported American workers but really did one of two things:
1. Subsidized a small segment of workers by a hidden tax on the rest of society or
2. Blocked efforts to make US companies competitive and, therefore, drove them into second class status and/or irrelevance.
Like the New Deal of 90 years ago, Dems found that they could advance policy that was economically a failure but politically a success.
One part of current populism should be called: MAA. Make America Argentina
The ‘Rust Belt’ used to be called the ‘Steel Belt’.
The ore required to smelt steel was purchased from Canadian miners just North of Lake Superior, and shipped across the Great Lakes to MI, IN, OH, PN and other states.
Most of industrial manufacturing has been outsourced overseas so that corporations can get a marginal increase in their bottom line.
Erronius
Yep, John “Frankenstein” Fetterman does continue to surprise; on the good side !!
If he keeps this up the demokrat party movers and shakers will organize that mob that will pursue him with sticks, shovels, picks and wooden flaming torches.
As for Pa voters, who knows what will happen when/if he runs again? He ran, or at least was presented as a liberal progressive and he received their votes and won. Now that the “real” Fetterman has emerged, time will tell if he gets the lib vote again.
How about this? Fetterman is such an old-school democrat that he’s practically a republican.
But he had to put on the mentally-deranged, not-all-there act in order to attract democrat voters. Now that he’s in, he can drop the nutcase act.
We have enough trouble keeping up with our potential enemies in terms of heavy construction that outsourcing our heavy construction even further sounds like a really, really bad idea.
John Fetterman was mayor and continues to live in Braddock, just outside Pittsburgh. Braddock is one-tenth the population today that it was in its heyday decades ago. Although his early years were in Reading and York, he absorbed the ethos of the seriously declined steel-making areas around Pittsburgh. It’s no surprise that he is reacting this way to the end of independence of US Steel.
Although I am inclined to think that acquisition by Nippon Steel is perhaps the best of the bad alternatives facing USS.
Dan D,
It’s not. Acquisition by Cleveland Cliffs would be best for everyone involved.
erronius: The other thing that helped offshore our industry was the EPA. They make it harder and harder to do anything here without it costing a s*** ton of money.
They are also behind hugely exacerbating any drought. They, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bureau of Reclamation / Department of Interior. Have you noticed that reservoirs seem to be low? Did you know that despite a drought in the West, aggregate water use in states that use water from the Colorado River is about what it was SIXTY YEARS AGO? Lake Mead really had no reason to hit RECORD lows, even with a drought. Except for the fact that the policy on how much water to retain changed.
Well…
Those record lows at Lake Mead and other reservoirs were exacerbated by a fairly recent policy penned by the EPA and put in place by ACE and BOR/DOI. Essentially, they release water well before the reservoir “fills” up, so that it never really gets “full.” At the highest, they are recommended to be SIGNIFICANTLY less than what we are accustomed to seeing. That alphabet soup has decided the reservoirs aren’t about reserving water, but purely about controlling river flow. So the determination on how much water to release, when to release, etc., is almost exclusively based on downriver factors. The only determination for release based on the reservoir is that it does not reach more than something 55% to 60% of its capacity.
Interesting. Normally, the job of freshman legislators who are Democrats is to vote the way Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi tell you to. If you don’t, you get a crappy office (at the least) or no money and a primary opponent.
Fetterman may turn out to surprise people. If he is really concerned about working people, he might go against his own party on immigration and clean energy, as well as taking on some of the cultural issues that blue collar types are concerned about.
Erronus…offshore competition was only part of the problem that faced the big integrated steel companies. So-called mini-mills, using electric arc furnaces, were pioneered by US companies such as Nucor.
When lower product or product input costs are available from offshore suppliers, then…absent significant tariffs…most US consumers are going to buy the lower-cost products. If US companies don’t take advantage of the lower cost possibilities, then European or Asian companies will.
I’m not thrilled to see foreign ownership of US Steel, but the real question si what can be one to make production in the US more economically feasible. This is largely a matter of tax & regulatory policy, workforce skills, and energy costs.
Gotta ask
Why is he being allowed to do this without much pushback from his own party?
There’s a reason and yes I am completely cynical.
Why is he being allowed to do this without much pushback from his own party?
TexasDude:
Fair enough. I’m cynical too.
However, as an ex-leftist I must say conservatives have a rather top-down, monolithic view of Democrats.
It’s the Planet of the Apes. We’re all doing the bests we can. It ain’t much. But it’s the bests we can.
I wager that Democrats have their hands full keeping Biden’s poll numbers dropping below 30-whatever this week, much less policing this Lex Luthor mutant Senator who has strayed off the reservation.
Wasn’t Fetterman the former small town mayor who spent a term or two making everything in town worse before he graduated to lieutenant governor and moving on to the Senate? Was that the real Fetterman, or is this guy the real man? Transformed by the stroke?
It’s right to praise him when he does the right thing, no question. But some of the cheerleading seems excessive considering his record in public office.
There’s a lesson in here. When stroke victims recover their mental capacity, they become Conservatives.
The me of a year ago would be dumbstruck, but Fetterman has become the Democrat politician I respect the most. Of course, that says more about the vile contemptible nature of virtually all Democrat politicians than it does about him.
And yes…who knows how long this will last.
But it’s still very refreshing to see. I’ll welcome any good political news out there, as there is so little