Like it or not, voters are going to discuss Fetterman’s condition, and trying to browbeat them into silence won’t work.
Like it or not, voters are going to discuss Fetterman’s condition, and trying to browbeat them into silence won’t work.
H erewith, some news for those within the press who are attempting to bat away scrutiny of John Fetterman’s health with mawkish, bullying indignation: Nobody believes you.
We don’t believe that you can’t see it. We don’t believe that you think it’s unacceptable to discuss. We don’t believe that you think it’s a distraction. We don’t believe that you are truly unable to grasp the difference between Fetterman’s issues and the fact that Senator Tammy Duckworth lost two legs fighting in Iraq, or that you think “wheelchairs and glasses” is a convincing retort. We don’t believe you’re actually upset about this — and, if you are . . . well, that doesn’t matter, either. There is nothing bigoted or illegitimate about opposing the election of a senator because he has clearly been incapacitated by a terrible stroke, as the Chicago Tribune did in 2016. The latest reporting on Fetterman — which contains sentences such as, “In small talk before my interview, it wasn’t clear he understood what I was saying,” and, “We spoke using Google Meet, because the stroke had made it difficult for him to process what he hears” — makes clear that his health is an electoral problem, even as it tries to pretend otherwise.
This is Joe Biden’s “stutter” all over again. As with Fetterman, that defensive narrative didn’t work because we could all see it was nonsense. Sure, you can get away with gaslighting the deputy HR director you use to settle your scores at work, but you can’t gaslight voters who have access to before-and-after videos and honest before-and-after accounts, not to mention critics who’ll tell them the truth. We know what Joe Biden was like in 2000, and we know what he’s like now. We know what John Fetterman was like in 2015, and we know what he’s like now. We are capable of watching the new broadcasts you’re trying to undermine, and of processing the words written by the journalists you’re trying to cajole, and we can see that they are highly alarming. You can’t make us unsee them with talk of -isms or -bilities, and you can’t conflate wild diagnoses-from-afar — a bad habit that ought to be condemned — with a fair evaluation of the visible consequences of a medical event that has been confirmed. The primary job of a senator — an official who serves a longer term than the president — is to process information. Auditory aphasia interferes with that. You know this.
We can also see how closely this stuff tracks with the polling. When Joe Biden’s approval rating was in the 50s, the suggestion that he was senile was met with outrage. When he hit 33 percent, the editors of the New York Times started reading up on Brutus. That’s what you’re doing, too. Back when Senator Mark Kirk had a stroke, the Atlantic insisted correctly that “politicians don’t get a free pass to only tell their version of events,” and proposed that it was “fair to ask whether [the stroke] has changed him for the worse.” Specifically, the magazine wondered whether the event had “affected his mental state, or his judgment, or his ability to do his job.” While some bristled at these questions, the Atlantic noted, “those closest to him expect[ed] and welcome[d]” them. Why? Because they reasoned that “during his reelection campaign Kirk will have to calm concerns about his health.” Kirk lost — in no small part as a consequence of his stroke. The only thing that makes Fetterman different is the letter in parentheses next to his name. And to everyone except his media allies, that’s irrelevant.
A few weeks ago, I submitted on The Editors podcast that John Fetterman ought to drop out of the Senate race on the grounds that he is unable to do the job for which he is running. Today, this seems even clearer. Many people will disagree with me, which is their prerogative. As a matter of judgment, I may even be wrong. But like it or not, we’re going to debate it, and trying to browbeat us into silence won’t do any good.