The GOP’s once sure-fire odds to retain their Senate majority in the midterms are looking bleaker every day, but according to a new report from Politico, some in the party are plotting a “coup” that could save them from a complete wipeout: flipping John Fetterman, the increasingly ostracized Democratic senator. Fetterman was first elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania in 2022, besting the Trump-backed Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and helping Democrats defy the odds and grow their majority in the chamber. Initially styling himself as a working-class progressive champion, he has since made a major shift away from his own party, voicing support for various initiatives and nominees from President Donald Trump and breaking the Democratic minority on several key votes.
What’s there to flip? He’s already voting Republican.
… implying he doesn’t already go along with their bullshit already? Cute. Stupid, wrong, but cute.
It’s not flipping. It’s making it publicly official.
This matters for leadership as Fetterman still caucuses with the Democrats.
All it took for him to align with MAGA was brain damage.
There was a guy I knew back in high school, he was an idiot, and he knew it, he was one of the rare idiots who would actually listen to someone smarter than him if you tried to explain things to him. He leaned fairly conservative to begin with, but when he said some stupid bullshit you could get him to change his mind if you explained why it was stupid.
At some point I heard that he died, turns out that was exaggerated a bit, but he did get a pretty bad head injury, spent some time in a coma, etc. but he is mostly ok
But the next time I ran into him I noticed that he’s just not as willing to hear things out and change his mind anymore, and I can’t help but think that’s the brain damage.
Start pattern matching people with obvious facial indications of fetal alcohol syndrome; they’re typically on an extreme and can’t be reasoned with.
On par with every other republican.
He wasn’t already flipped? This is news… how?
Fetterman is a big fat phony who hit his head one too many times. Brain damage and MAGA go together like flies on shit.
Guys always been a disaster. His stunts as mayor were ridiculous.
Flipping Fetterman? The brain damage already did that.
Trumps dictatorship dream is predicated on people voting the same way they did last time
I suspect the GOP are in for the shock of their lives
They’re not going to be shocked because they are rigging it in their favor. I think it’s the libs who are going to be shocked this November when there is blatant cheating and no one in power puts up a fuss. It’s not like the Republicans have never stolen an election with the permission of the Democrats before (2000 and 2024 to name two).
Oh sure but his support has atrophied and he is a toxic brand. They will struggle to win safe states let alone borderline states. These attempts to cheat may well end up angering his supporters even more.
You are still assuming that he actually has to win anything. He could straight up cancel elections and no one would do anything except huff and puff a bit. The Supreme Court and Congress are both controlled by his people and they would back him all the way, regardless of how illegal it is. He has no concerns about “the people” either. We have shown him how toothless and apathetic we are. And besides that, he has the backing of the Epstein class and all of their money.
He won the primary?!?!
WTF PA!!!
Not only did he win, he got more than twice the votes as the second place guy. He won literally every county, and not by small margins.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/results/pennsylvania/democratic-primaries/senate
Terror for non-white non-Christians, or status quo?
Idiot.
So when does it get better? I watched my parents and grandparents vote blue no matter who until they died. I’ve done the same my entire adult life and we continue to sink deeper into fascism. The democrats are where the republicans were 26 years ago. We literally can’t ratchet any further right without a full blown genocide. Even the civil rights leaders who were murdered by our government saw through the charade. We are paying for a genocide in a colony that has universal healthcare and free college and both parties support it. When does it get better what’s the plan here? Both parties are fascist war mongering pedophiles! When does it get better? What’s the plan? because I don’t believe we will see the extreme damage this administration has done reversed without a revolution
Try to get involved with the party locally and make your case to your IRL peers there. Real change has to come from the bottom.
This implies Shitterman needs to be flipped.
The flip part has to do with who is senate leader, and all the powers that come with it.
all the powers that come with it
Arguing over who gets to own the “Send more money to Israel” committee chairmanship
Let’s get real. The power in the Senate isn’t with the individual Senators, any more than the power in F-1 is with the drivers.
Individual Senators do have power when their peers are trying to pass something or prevent something.
That’s how some Senators, like Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, were able to get her state special concessions negotiated in order to pass an unfavorable bill, such as the OBB bill which was anything but beautiful.
The senate majority leader has a lot of procedural power.
Significantly less than the House Speaker, as a point of comparison. Also, the Majority Leader tends to be the Senator with the largest lifetime fundraising haul. When a Senator (like Cruz or Paul or Lee or Sanders) doesn’t need the money to win reelection, they can get out-of-pocket very quickly.
Individual Committee Chairmen have significant power. And Majority Leader gets to nominate the Chairmen. But the future prospective Chairmen back the Majority Leader in exchange for the nominations. So it’s a Chicken-Egg situation, where the real pull comes from electing more Senators to back you, not strong-arming them with procedure once everyone is sworn in.
One consequence of the Platner primary win in Maine is that he’s personally at-odds with Schumer out of the gate. By contrast, both Schumer and Fetterman are nakedly Zionist. Platner is more of a threat to Schumer’s future reclamation of Majority Leader than Fetterman, as a result.
He does if republicans have less than 51…
Like, that’s how we decide which party gets actual leadership positions with power, and which party gets empty suits with no real duties.
If Fettermann caucus with Dems or Republicans, that really really fucking matters…
And it’s depressing no one understands, like, this should just be shit everyone knows before they graduate highschool…
You’re right, and I am aware of that. I was just using the opportunity to express disdain for Fetterman. The cynical part of me doesn’t mind the omission because regardless of whoever is the leader the Republicans always seem to manage to get what they want these days. Although that’s probably just a bias based on my frustrations and fixation on the bad they’ve managed to do, in no small part because of Perle like Fetterman.
That is more complex to express than fuck Shitterman though, so I went the lazy route.
We badly need:
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Term limits
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A recall process for all elected officials
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To abolish the senate
Why abolish the senate?
Because it is, by design, an undemocratic institution that gives rural voters multiple times as much power as voters who live in more populated areas.
I think reforms are in need there specifically on gerrymandering but also ranked voting.
The senate isn’t an undemocratic institution that’s literally insane to say about something that relies on elections to get into
It is insane to say an institution where representatives of 10% of the population can thwart the interests of the other 90% (Source) is democratic. Russia has elections, that doesn’t make it a functioning democracy.
Or, just get people to vote the way the GOPs do.
Look up Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority. Jerry was a televangelist who grabbed the GOP by the grassroots.
He used his extensive mailing list to find the small local GOP clubs that decide who is going to be the next sheriff or country clerk. If there’d been twenty people at the last meeting, Jerry’s folks would show up with fifty.
That’s kind of smart. Find elections that are so volatile, you can easily amass a small group to tip the tides. Win that election, and use your newfound influence to snowball the effect into larger and larger wins over time.
Only problem is that it’s predatory on small town folk who have a working, albeit delicate, political system. It’s using their delicate platform as a stepping stone for self-promotion, denying them a voice on their own platform in the process.
Only other problem is that it apparently works, if people are fucking doing it.
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What, they’re not betting it all on cheating this time or something?
Flip Fetteman? They can have him. Garbage politician that only won his seat because he was against Dr.Oz.
He put on a pretty good front up until his stroke right before the primary. It’s debatable whether what he has become since is who he was all along, but he definitely won for more reasons than merely not being Oz, the carpetbagger.
quietly
Bro, he was on FOX News just last week. The anchorman was just shy of openly fellating him.
Switching parties is not unheard of and certainly not a coup. Not like he was voting against the GOP much to begin with, so leaving him out of the Dem count won’t change much anyway. Just like Manchin and Sinema, they take the DNC money and resources but don’t agree with any of the party platform or priorities once the election ends.
Calling it a coup removes meaning from the word “coup” and then we won’t be able to describe what’s happening when it actually happens.
