I don’t actually think he will (in fact, I have absolutely no idea how Platner will conduct himself in office when / if he’s elected), but both of them strike me as fairly similar personality types. Impulsive, bad at predicting the consequences of their actions, inconsistent about everything except their desire to be the center of attention. The fact that they don’t like each other is beside the point. (Most attention hogs don’t like other attention hogs, for understandable reasons.)
Drives me crazy that this sort of thing is seen as “authenticity.” Give me a nice generic corporate Democrat who listens to focus groups and has been polishing their resume since elementary school. That’s someone who knows how to delay gratification and act like a team player.
Fetterman is, I suspect, less impulsive and more calculating than he is given credit for. His positioning is very consistent with focus group driven in his state. He overall is above water on favorability, more popular with Republican voters than Ds, even as he actually does vote with the Ds the vast majority of the time. Just critically not always. Able to sell himself as other than an obedient foot soldier. If he can survive being primaried he’d win a next election. Winning the general there is much easier if he is perceived as pushing against progressives and the left end of the Democratic party, and bucking what many of the voters there perceive as knee jerk trying to block anything Trump does.
What positions did he actually flip on between his ‘22 Senate campaign and as a Senator?
My take is that he is an asshole, not a completely reliable D vote but more often than not is, and that Oz winning the seat would have been a much more disastrous outcome.
Platner has stated positions that Fetterman did not run on. They are both appealing to working class voters as the swing they need, both selling being willing to go against the establishment powers, but through very different messaging. Maine working class Independents are a different group than the PA working class voters.
It serves them both well to call each other names.
This would be more convincing if he had been this way from the start, and not just after the stroke. I think he is exactly what he appears to be, a con man that lost the ability to stay in character.
Take it to the Fetterman thread if it isn’t about his actual actions compared to, or about Graham Platner, such as the earlier reported comments where Fetterman was attacking Platner.
Well anyone who is listening to focus groups and has been polishing their resume since elementary school is a con artist, giving the suckers what they want.
The current character positions him to win the next election cycle in PA better than being a loyal foot soldier or part of the progressive team would. When did an incumbent Senator last get successfully primaried in PA? I’m sure it has happened but not very often.
Maybe this is just who he is, post-stroke, authentically, but if he was a focus group driven politician positioning for re-election in this specific purple state, this would be a good character to play.
And that is not a character that would serve a Senator Platner’s goal to win next time at all.
ETA: sorry posted before seeing mod guidance. Please feel free to move to a different thread if felt appropriate.
You’re fine, it was a nearly simulpost, and while comparisons have been, and are likely inevitable (and have been allowed), if it’s a discussion of Fetterman specifically it’s best taken to the existing thread.
If anyone wants there posts here moved to the Fetterman thread, PM me or flag, please and thank you.
The phrasing “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu” is of course hyperbolic. AIPAC does not constitute foreign agents, and money is not funneling from Bibi to Collins. AIPAC is though an unflinching lobbyist of support for Netanyahu’s leadership in Israel, and Israel’s actions have been … let’s just say widely disapproved of by much of the not MAGA demographic that Platner hopes to win with.
Getting large support from AIPAC, and support for anything and everything that Israel does is a vote loser for many swing and Independent voters as well as many Democratic ones, including many American Jews. I do not read that as a dual loyalty trope; it is more akin to pointing out gun lobby donations that are large enough to warrant a bought and paid for charge.
Independents’ Sympathies Shift Toward Palestinians in Past Year
Americans’ shifting sympathies in the Middle East situation this year are mostly driven by changes among political independents. By 41% to 30%, independents say they sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, whereas in all prior years, they were more sympathetic toward the Israelis, including by 42% to 34% last year.
Being a strong supporter of Israel at the current time is popular in strongly GOP identifying voters. Less so for everyone else.
I am still a vehement supporter of the existence of the nation of Israel.
I am not a supporter of the current and recent behavior of the current government of Israel. For multiple reasons, one of which (certainly not the only one) is that I’m afraid it will lead to the destruction of the country.
Yeah. The article points out that there are cracks on AIPAC even from the right as well, and what I cited notes that:
Republicans continue to express greater sympathy for the Israelis than the Palestinians. Seven in 10 Republicans (70%) say they sympathize more with the Israelis, compared with 13% who sympathize more with the Palestinians. Although this remains a substantial gap, sympathy for the Israelis among Republicans has declined by 10 points since 2024 to its lowest level since 2004.
Yes some of that softening is coming from the Tucker Carlson camp, and some of that is a veneered Jewish cabal crap. But some even on the GOP side just don’t see American enabling of everything and everything that Israel does as either moral or in American best interests. (Or as @thornylocust notes, in Israel’s interest for that sake.)
Strong AIPAC funding can buy airtime but it correctly comes with baggage that team Platner would be foolish to not exploit.
So are the NRA and CPAC and their endorsement will be held against a candidate by many around here.
I know, I know… with AIPAC there IS a deeper darker issue at play, not just “Israel”, something ugly beyond mere policy.
But it doesn’t help them that institutionally they too tend to boast about how you’d better be on their good side, or that for practical purposes they have assumed the position of demanding unconditional, unlimited support for a faction. They make it too easy.
Ideally everyone would be proactively informed of who’s supporting whom, and they’d tell us “make of that what you will”, rather than wait for oppo research. But this is what we’ve got.
Which is strongly aligned with Netanyahu, advocates strongly for Israel’s military objectives, and has Bibi as a speaker quite often. Not to mention- donates to trump and other MAGA causes, such as - Collins.
Do I think he’s a beautiful leftist cinnamon roll of a messiah who must be protected and elevated at all costs? Absolutely not. Are there things that bother me about both him and his supporters? Definitely. Do I think any of that fucking matters right now? Not even a little bit.
Am I going to vote for him? Of fucking course I am what are we even doing here?
Well, I’ll tell you what we’re doing here. The same thing we do every single time a Democratic candidate gets any traction or momentum at all. Passively watch the media tuck a napkin into its bib and eat that D alive with a massive bowl of hot buttery hypocrisy to dunk them in before shrugging helplessly and losing again. What else could we possibly do?
I fucking live and vote in goddamned Maine.
Which no poster here does, IIRC. Maine is different, and weird- they like Platner, and all us calling him a Nazi is doing nothing but helping trump. Mind you- Platner wouldnt stand a chance in California- but Maine is not California. Do I like him? Nope, but I dont live in Maine either. Maine didnt even bother to join the USA until 1820.
And where the hell were all the “we must have YOUNG candidates, to hell with all the old fogeys! No more old people for candidates” posters? Collins 73, Mills 78. Platner? 41. Suddenly, they are in another thread.
And, Platner is not a Nazi. Period. Mind you, again, not someone I would pick, not here in California, his judgement seems flawed. Posters here toss around “fascist” and “nazi” so much the terms have become watered down and nigh meaningless. (Okay, I have called trump a “fascist wannabe”, but not an actual 'fascist"- he is a Right Wing Populist- which in History have become real Fascists too many times)
Platner is a bad choice- except for Maine. But in any case, he is 100% better than “in bed with the MAGAs Collins”.