The Fall Of Fetterman

By Zamboni

After the Epstein stuff came out last week, we cats wondered if Democrats had been clever enough to have purposefully engineered a shutdown resolution — via eight Senators who either weren't up for re-election until 2028, or who were already retiring — to pull off such a fabulous reveal. The jury's still out.

Still and all, it was quite a feat. It threw the GOP into a tizzy, put Preacher of the House Mikey Johnson on the defensive, and set up a vote this coming week on the release of the Epstein files. Nicely done, fellow Dems, whether you meant it or not. We'll take the win.

On the other hand, the end of the shutdown ginned up a whole lot of liberal screaming on social media about how Democrats who didn't sufficiently toe the line should be primaried. This, we do not love. It's not great to have our party split into generational factions, especially when we're in a national emergency. The enemy is Trump — so let's please not fight among ourselves. Our party has room for everybody.

In fact, there's a situation right now that shows how fruitless it is to hold our fellow Democrats to standards of purity that the Republicans would never dream of imposing upon themselves. It involves someone we cats supported in the 2022 general election: John Fetterman.

Fetterman won the Pennsylvania Senate primary and went on to defeat carpetbagger (and Republican idiot) Mehmet Oz in the general. Of course we were going to do everything we could to pull Fetterman over the finish line in November. But if we had been voting in Pennsylvania in the primary, we would have supported the so-called "establishment" candidate, Conor Lamb. Just our personal preference.

Since then, of course, we all know that Fetterman suffered a stroke, went on to win election to the Senate anyway, and has proven to be, um, not great on matters of party unity since then. People have been mad. And recently, he's had another medical incident that makes you wonder about his fitness for office going forward.

Fetterman was the anti-establishment candidate in the 2022 primary, but things haven't worked out so well since then. In addition to his medical issues, he's been a real disappointment to progressive supporters who have been aghast at his willingness to cozy up to the Trumpsters. We agree, but the election three years ago is now water under the bridge, right? So what can we do going forward?

We cats have a suggestion: In light of recent developments, Fetterman should resign his seat to take care of himself and his family, who surely must feel the strain of worrying about him. That would allow Governor Josh Shapiro to appoint someone to take his place — say, Conor Lamb.

Need we state the obvious? Conor turns out to have been the better choice. The "establishment" candidate is not always awful, and the "progressive" candidate is not always right. Let's be mindful of this going into 2026, please. That would make us cats PURR.