It looks like Fetterman decided to stop taking the thinner on his own, apparently AMA (Against Medical Advice):
“I want to emphasize that this was completely preventable. My cardiologist said that if I had continued taking the blood thinners, I never would have had a stroke. I didn’t do what the doctor told me,” Fetterman also said.
Fetterman has not been the same since his stroke. Significant personality changes (which is not unusual).
Is he still better than Oz would have been? Yes. But he’ll be a one-term Senator. No way he survives his upcoming primary challenge.
If the “primary challenge” is using his alleged health issues as a pretext to send a candidate into rural Pennsylvania whose platform is “fuck Israel and fuck guns” then you’re going to get Oz or worse in the seat. The way people can show that the alleged concern over his competence is not a planted op from the progressive saboteur wing of the party is to nominate “Fetterman without Fetterman’s personal issues,” a.k.a another normal Democrat who can win, as his replacement, rather than going the route of finding out what happens when you run a Rashida Tlaib clone in a statewide election in purple-land.
Who has proposed supporting a radical left-wing candidate in the primary?
Moderating:
@songsoflovetrouble, I very clearly advised you upthread in a prior note that uncited allegations of “progressive saboteur”(s) were outside the scope of the thread, and to drop the subject or to spin off your own thread. That will be an official warning for disregarding moderator instructions. To all, please do not reply to this hijack going forward in this thread.
That is the issue.
When i started taking Warfarin I was heartbroken to find that I couldn’t eat Kale. I did not know that people actually did eat kale.
It is the vitamin K in green, leafy vegetables that interferes with the warafin.
More independent evidence the Fetterman’s mental state is declining.
The sources in this thread are all trash. Anonymous reports and unsubstantiated claims. This is a full on partisan smear campaign.
Fetterman has to go. Not necessarily immediately. But he needs to resign and there needs to be an election for a replacement in 2026. The New York Times cites a letter by his former chief of staff to Fetterman’s physician.
“John has pushed out everyone who was supposed to help keep him on his recovery plan,” Mr. Jentleson wrote in the letter to Dr. David Williamson, the medical director of the neuropsychiatry/traumatic brain injury unit at Walter Reed. “We do not know if he is taking his meds, and his behavior frequently suggests he is not.”
He said in the letter that people around Mr. Fetterman often witnessed the “warning signs” his doctor had warned of, including “conspiratorial thinking, megalomania (for example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news — he declines most briefings and never reads memos); high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room.”
I like the guy, but it’s time to move on. 2026 is likely to be a good year for Dems and if they can’t win PA under such circumstances, we’re screwed anyway.
It seems like it’s not just a hit piece since the stories are not just coming from random RW social media posts. The NY Magazine isn’t a RW mouthpiece. Presumably, they are reporting from sources they trust rather than just writing about things they saw on Truth Social. And also his former chief-of-staff had concerns:
I doubt Jentleson is trying to score points with MAGA by creating a false narrative. No doubt the RW media will amplify any concerns to make Fetterman look as bad as possible, but it seems like there are legitimate stroke-related issues to be concerned about.
From the little I see, they make excuses for him. This is from Fox News:
Senator says Dems eat their own
Of course, they will say something different if in an actual race for re-election and Fetterman remains a Democrat.
That’s not evidence. That should be obvious just from the blurb with the thumbnail.
That’s worse than hearsay. It’s an unidentified source relating what they allegedly were ‘briefed’ on by unidentified other parties who may or may not have even been at the event themselves.
Clicking through to the article:
The interaction at Fetterman’s Washington office, described to The Associated Press by the two people who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity,
So the quote is second-hand, but the incident is attested by 2 sources in an AP article. This may be middling evidence, but it is definitely evidence. I agree that anecdotes can get distorted during the game of telephone, which is why I cited the letter to Fetterman’s physician. Also, the NYT and the Intelligencer are a little more reliable than AP, which is fast and cheap.
There’s accumulating evidence of Fetterman’s erratic behavior following a stroke. I personally don’t have a problem with the him tacking right; I honestly wish him the best. But it’s time to plan an exit.
Maybe he’s just trying to act Presidential? /s
He had his stroke in May of 2022. He was in the worst condition right after the stroke, and has been improving since. His aphasia (or similar condition, I think it’s more of an audio processing thing) has been improving; so have his gross motor skills.
It’s not surprising that some of his staffers disagree with him politically and are willing to use attacks (that, had they come from Republicans, would be rightfully denounced as ableist) against him.
I think there are two main aspects to stories like this: Can he still do his job? How will the voters react? For the first, he can still do his job even if it’s more difficult than before. But the second is a a subjective choice that the voters make individually. Regardless of how well he can do his job, if the voters are uneasy about his abilities, they will pick someone else. Fetterman of today doesn’t seem like the Fetterman who won the election. Regardless of whether it’s from the stroke or from changing policy positions, he doesn’t seem to have the same charisma or leadership quality he had before. Maybe he makes it through the primary, but I don’t see him winning the election. I think the best case for the Democrats to hold that seat is for some other Democrat to be running for that seat in the next election.
I think people are too quick to dismiss these anonymous reports. It’s not surprising that people wouldn’t want to be quoted on the record about such a sensitive topic, especially if they work for Fetterman. It’s possible the sources are lying, but New York magazine and the AP are credible reporters; I think it’s safe to assume that they’re not printing gossip, but are speaking with people who they actually know to be in a position to observe his behavior.
I’m sure every Senator has some disgruntled staffers and former staffers, yet most Senators aren’t having their cognitive abilities called into question. So I think the burden is on those who claim it’s a conspiracy to undermine him to explain why only Fetterman is having these questions asked about him.
Really, this thread reminds me more and more of the summer, when certain posters were desperately trying to attack the credibility of everyone saying Biden was in cognitive decline.
It seems like the main concern is psychiatric rather than neurological; he was hospitalized for depression in 2023, and is alleged to not have been taking his meds. Some of the behavior described seems highly consistent with some sort of bipolar disorder.
Sure, but in the post I was responding to as well as many of the articles surrounding this, the current concerns about Fetterman are causally linked to the stroke, at least by implication:
The title of the article in the OP:
I get what you’re saying; but if that’s what the headline is trying to say, it’s SERIOUSLY misleading.
If Joe gives a speech criticizing Trump, and then three years later Joe robs a bank and is shot by police, it is technically correct to say, “Joe shot dead by police after criticizing Trump”, because he did criticize Trump and some time later he was shot by police; but no reasonable person would read that headline as “Joe criticized Trump and then some time later was shot in an unrelated incident”.