John Fetterman: The Great Pretender

On Saturday, US Senate candidate John Fetterman was at Northampton Community College for a rally. Some say 200 were there. Others say hundreds, The Fetterman camp says 1,000. I know one person who was not there. Me. I met Fetterman long ago, during his first run for the US Senate. I liked him then, but he has morphed from working class liberal into a phony who affects a grunge look to disguise his wokeness and elitism. He's no Everyman, as he likes to pretend. Instead, his political views are aligned with the most extreme elements of the Democratic party.  I'll be voting for Dr. Oz. 

Originally, I planned on voting for neither of these candidates. But on Friday night, I had an opportunity to meet and listen to Mehmet Oz (his parents immigrated from Turkey) at a fundraiser hosted by Democrat Nat Hyman. 

Hyman stated that he first met Dr, Oz when his wife's mother was very ill and had been written off by local medicos. Dr. Oz performed a successful heart operation that extended the life of his mother-in-law by 15 years. So Oz is a bit more than a TV doctor who sells miracle drugs, as he's been caricatured in Fetterman ads. He's a bona fide heart surgeon who has saved lives, as opposed to a grown man like Fetterman, who has relied on his mommy and daddy to pay his bills until he became Lieutenant Governor. 

Oz in many ways is a manifestation of the American dream. His father started with nothing, but was able to attend a medical school in Turkey at a time when it was full of prominent Jewish physicians who fled Nazism. As a result, his father had a superior medical education. America was in need of medical talent, and at that time, Muslims were not considered the pariahs that Team Trump portrayed them to be. So Oz's parents became American immigrants, and he was born in Cleveland. 

Dr, Oz followed in his father's footsteps and became a prominent physician himself. He spent nearly all of his adult life in the medical profession and wellness business, and it is only recently that he decided to get involved in politics. 

I'm aware he's a carpetbagger. So was Hillary. That's not particularly troubling to me. What concerned me was whether Oz embraces the same extremist views as Donald Trump, the person who endorsed him in the primary.

He's far from an extremist and is actually more like the long line of moderates, both Democrat and Republican, who have represented Pennsylvania for many years.  

He explained his approach in a way that is completely nonideological. He noted people (and politicians) are very good at identifying problems, from inflation to immigration. Where politicians fall flat is that they completely fail to do anything about solving the problems they are so good at identifying. "Can you fix the problem?" is the question he believes is most on people's minds. That would be his focus, and without regard to ideology. 

Oz had a question himself for the independently-minded voters at Hyman's home. Between himself and Fetterman, "Who do you think is more radical?" Obviously, it's the pretender with the hoodies and shorts. He wants to end the filibuster (at least while Dems are in control). He would like to enact criminal justice reforms that, though embellished by the Oz campaign, do appear to be extreme. This could explain why the Philly FOP has endorsed Oz. Fetterman says we should invest more in public schools, but himself has a history of 67 property tax liens. 

Fetterman is far from an Everyman. His ideology is more like that of AOC. That's OK, but what drives me nuts is his attempt to pretend he's a working class tough guy. He's actually the son of rich Republicans. 

I'll be voting for a man who actually saved lives instead of the fake.