FETTERMAN ISN'T DOING HIS JOB, BUT HE'S DOING EVERYTHING HIS REPUBLICAN FANS THINK A POLITICIAN SHOULD DO

This Wall Street Journal story (free to read here) won't hurt John Fetterman at all in the eyes of his current fanbase:

... behind closed doors, the first-term senator shows little interest in doing the job beyond cultivating relationships with conservative media figures and advocating for Israel, according to interviews with more than a dozen former staffers and lawmakers, as well as text messages and other internal records.

For example?

One morning in June, three paralyzed military veterans in wheelchairs from rural Pennsylvania arrived at the office of Sen. John Fetterman for a long-awaited meeting to discuss legislation that would improve their care.

Fetterman’s staff greeted them with bad news: The Pennsylvania Democrat had to cancel. He’d told his staff he may have eaten something bad and wasn’t feeling well, according to people familiar with the matter.

Less than an hour after his staffers met with the veterans in his place, Fetterman walked into his office, showing no signs of illness. He had an appointment he didn’t want to miss, he told staff: an interview on Fox News to discuss Israel and the war in Iran.

Another example?

Last September, when an aide told Fetterman that officials with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, known as CHOP, wanted to meet because they were worried about Medicaid cuts, he was dismissive.

Also:

In April 2025, veteran Pennsylvania state lawmaker Anthony Hardy Williams brought a busload of constituents to Washington from Eastwick, a poorer, flood-prone neighborhood in Philadelphia, to meet with their representatives in Congress and discuss Trump administration cuts to a grant program that had helped the area.

Fetterman was the only one who refused to meet with them, Williams said in an interview. At one point, they saw Fetterman walking the halls and yelled, but he didn’t acknowledge them, according to Williams.

Fetterman isn't just failing to stay in touch with his constituents:

Last May, several media reports highlighted Fetterman’s paltry attendance record at Senate hearings.... At that point, records transcripts show, Fetterman had skipped 11 of the 12 full hearings that year of his assigned committees—Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture.

Nevertheless, Republicans in his state love him:

In Pennsylvania, Fetterman’s shifting politics and public stances have led to a once unthinkable outcome in recent polling by the New York Times: He is more popular among Republican voters than the state’s Republican senator, Dave McCormick.

In that poll, Fetterman's favorable rating among Pennsylvania Republicans is 73%.

And why not? Sure, Fetterman seems to do nothing all day except go on cable news programs and bash Democrats, while burnishing his Israel-right-or-wrong credentials. He doesn't do the work. He just talks trash. A vile recent example:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is raising the stakes for Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed, offering the Senate hopeful up to $100,000 if he hosts a rally about 9/11.

“I’m offering $50,000 for you to do a rally with Hasan Piker on 9/11, the anniversary, and you can all explain to people why America deserved that 25 years ago,” Fetterman said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom on Wednesday.

But that's everything the hardcore Republican base wants from politicians. They don't like government. They don't expect politicians to do anything. All they want their pols to do is make liberals howl. They vote based on who will make their enemies the angriest and hurt them the most.

Polls show that the GOP's soft supporters are abandoning the party, but the hardcore base is still loyal because Donald Trump, in particular, still makes Democrats furious. Fetterman does the same thing. And that's really all his Republicans fans ask.

TRUMP'S MIDTERM "STRATEGY" IS TO THROW MONEY AT TOTALLY RANDOM STATES

A few days ago, CNN reported this:

The Department of Homeland Security is planning a surge in its efforts to investigate voter fraud in select states starting Tuesday....

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has accelerated efforts to make the department a central force in President Donald Trump’s hunt for purported widespread election fraud.

That's chilling -- but what are the "select states" DHS is focusing on?

Offices in nine states are expected to take investigative action from early September to mid-October, according to the guidance. Those states include Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut.

Why? Why those? Of the nine states mentioned, only Georgia has a tight Senate race. Why not Ohio or Texas, for instance? Sure, they're red states, and Trump wants to pretend that (imaginary) voter fraud by non-citizens is a blue-state problem. But in that case, why Missouri?

Yesterday, CNN reported this:

President Donald Trump’s extremely well-heeled political operation has begun an advertising campaign ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that Republicans have been eagerly awaiting.

But the first offerings focus on something decidedly unpopular: Trump himself.

The new ads from Securing American Greatness, the nonprofit arm of the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., seem to confirm reporting from the Atlantic and Trump’s recent comments suggesting the campaign will largely focus on Trump rather than the Republicans in Congress who will be on the ballot this fall.

The ads really are all about Trump, as I'll show below. But before we get to the ads themselves, let's look at where Trump's PAC is spending money to run them.

Per data from tracking firm AdImpact, the spots have begun running in major media markets like New York, Washington, DC, Chicago and Philadelphia....

Why? Why those markets? Again, not one of these markets has a tight Senate race. It's possible that ads running in the New York City TV market, to take one example, will influence voters in tight races outside the city. The Cook Political Report lists three New York races that are close, either "Lean D" or "Toss Up."

But there are no key races in or around Chicago. So what are these people doing?

We knew the ads would primarily glorify Trump, but it should have been possible to feed his ego and remind pro-Trump voters, Hey, if you love the big guy, get out and vote for Republicans in November. These ads say nothing about Republicans in Congress.

One of the spots, titled “Toughest Guy,” looks exactly like an ad that could be run for one of Trump’s campaigns. It features UFC President Dana White praising Trump’s toughness, followed by Trump delivering high-minded lines about the primacy of America.

“We will be prosperous. We will be proud. We will be strong, and we will win like never before,” he says.

The ad doesn’t even allude to Congress or the Republican Party.

That's this one:

Here's the new ad from Trump's political operation — it's all about Trump. pic.twitter.com/7dRL5tHvsj

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) September 2, 2026

The second ad, “Tax Cut Prices,” is a little more conventional in that it focuses on things Republicans in Washington have done — at least some of which congressional Republicans were involved in.

“We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security, the largest tax cuts in American history,” Trump says in the ad. “The price of eggs is down 60%. I took prescription drugs from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs so that no one’s prices will go up.”

The narrator then concludes: “He’s fighting for you every day. Help him finish the job.”

Several of the claims in the ad are false or misleading, including on Social Security taxes, prescription drug prices and making data centers provide their own power.

But it’s also worth noting that some of them — including the latter two — didn’t even involve legislation from Congress. They were executive actions.

I don't think normies pay enough attention to the details of what happens in Washington to distinguish the items that happened because of congressional action from the ones that came about because of presidential edicts. The key here is that the ad never makes an explicit connection between Trump and Republicans in Congress. It's all about him.

And here's another pro-Trump ad from Securing American Greatness that began airing nationally today. pic.twitter.com/wY3eNpCZOv

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) September 2, 2026

They're just taking the old man's money, creating ads that make him feel good about himself, and spending money on them the fastest way possible, by buying ad space in the most expensive media markets.

As for the states Homeland Security is focusing on, I throw up my hands. Why those states? Your guess is as good as mine.

The people planning Trump's midterm speaking tour appear to be doing a better job of focusing it on contested races. NBC reports:

President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to hit the campaign trail for Republican candidates in 35 races this fall in the lead-up to the November midterm elections....

Trump cited a few of the races he expects to travel for, including Sen. Dan Sullivan’s re-election bid in Alaska....

He added that he’ll also travel to Texas and stump for state Attorney General Ken Paxton....

Several of the Republicans at the White House for Wednesday night’s event in the Rose Garden face competitive races, including Reps. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, Tom Barrett of Michigan and Mike Collins of Georgia.

Yes, those are key races. The Senate candidates are struggling in the polls. House members Van Orden and Barrett are on Cook's list above, and Collins is running to unseat Senator Jon Ossoff.

Trump spoke about all this as if he actually understand the point of the exercise:

Trump said he’s not aiming to stump for shoo-in candidates.

“If you’re leading by 40 points and you’ve been there for 25 years,” he said, “please don’t ask me to come to your area and make a speech, right?”

This reads like one of those pronouncements Trump makes because someone just explained it to him, and now he wants us to think he understood it all along because he's really smart, unlike the rest of us.

Trump's ad people and his Homeland Security secretary didn't make a similar effort. They're just doing stuff wherever because the old man wants them to do something. They're not bothering to target their efforts because the old man doesn't realize that's important unless someone reminds him.

Well, at least he'll make his speeches in the right battlegrounds. Of course, the speeches will be all about himself -- his greatness, his grievances. He won't even mention the names of the people he's campaigning for. But at least they won't waste money sending him to Connecticut.

MAYBE THE SUPREME COURT SHOULD HAVE FEWER SEATS (AND OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT A FIGHT I DON'T TRUST DEMOCRATS TO WIN)

This past Sunday, Congressman Jim Cyburn brought the notion of Supreme Court reform into the Democratic mainstream.

“Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker asked Clyburn if he agreed with former Vice President Kamala Harris’s request for court expansion in an interview.

“Yes, I do,” the South Carolina Democrat said. “I think we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress and we ought to expand, and 13 is a pretty good number. A baker’s dozen, it would be a good number to have on the court.”

The party's leaders usually recoil in horror whenever a Democrat or progressive proposes a major shakeup like this, so Clyburn's statement represents a real change in the party establishment's thinking.

House Speaker Mike Johnson subsequently announced a plan to have the House vote on a constitutional amendment fixing the size of the Supreme Court at nine justices. This is pure theater -- a constitutional amendment needs to pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote, after which it needs to be ratified by three quarters of the state legislatures. That's not going to happen.

But this is just an early effort on Republicans' part to persuade Americans that what the GOP prefers is what the Founders would have preferred and what Democrats want is evil, weird, and un-American.

If Democrats hold both houses of Congress and the White House after the 2028 election, they'll have every right to change the makeup of the Court, the size of which is not specified in the Constitution. They can do it simply by passing a law.

But if they get serious about this, there'll be a massive propaganda camapign against it. The entire right will be opposed, and portions of the "liberal" media will undoubtedly join in. (Already, MS NOW has published an opinion piece headlined "Rep. Jim Clyburn’s Supreme Court Plan Isn’t Worth Discussing.") Democrats will need to out-message Republicans on this, and I hope they're up to the task. Some of what I'm seeing from the liberal commentariat right now seems to assume a nerdish understanding of the federal judiciary that most Americans simply don't have.

13 justices for the 13 districts has got to be the throughline; the age limits, senior status and rotations can roll into that. THIRTEEN JUSTICES FOR THIRTEEN DISTRICTS. MARCH.

— bskwitter.bsky.social (@bskwitter.bsky.social) June 25, 2026 at 8:39 PM

How many Americans know there are thirteen federal courts of appeals? If you're going to go in this direction, you'll need to start by doing some education. Well-educated Democrats often forget that ordinary Americans don't have the knowledge base they have. They can't win this fight in the court of public opinion unless they recognize how much ordinary Americans know.

Democrats could counter the suggestion that we need to stick with nine justices by saying that if you really want to do this the Founders' way, we should have only six justices, the way we did at the beginning, in 1789. If Republicans are such defenders of tradition, why don't they want that?

The key point Democrats need to make -- and make over and over again until all of America understands it -- is that the number of justices on the Court has changed several times in our history.

We're in the mess we're in because Republican presidents have appointed 15 of the last 20 Supreme Court justices. That's created a Court that's far to the right of the American public. I don't know whether Democrats want to stress that point, because to a large extent it's just luck of the draw. (Jimmy Carter had no vacancies to fill during his four-year term in office, and Joe Biden had only one, but Trump -- partly because Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on Merrick Garland in 2016 -- had three in his first four-year term.) But it still suggests how out of whack this Court is, and I think it's worth bringing up.

For sheer vindictiveness, I'd like Democrats to pass a law reducing the Court to six justices, with the (Democratic) president in charge at the law's enactment being given the discretion to remove three justices of his or her choosing. (Presumably the choice would be the three appointed by a president who went on to be convicted of dozens of felonies.)

But that's not a serious proposal. I think Democrats need to settle soon on a set of reforms and settle on a campaign built on talking points that explain why this is a reasonable thing to do and not a violation of the Constitution or federal law. They mustn't let themselves get outmessaged.

EVEN IF EL-SAYED EMULATED OBAMA, HE WOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO PUT PIKER-GHAZI BEHIND HIM

Michelle Goldberg's latest column is a nuanced and well-meaning assessment of Abdul El-Sayed's Hasan Piker problem. She acknowledges that there's a double standard at work here: for instance, Trumpworld insider Laura Loomer is much more bigoted than Piker and much more powerful.

Administration officials she targeted were purged from the National Security Council, and on Friday, she claimed credit for the deportation of the British right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos, who’d become her enemy. Loomer is also openly bigoted in a way that outstrips the most offensive things Piker has ever said. Over the weekend, she called Angie Nixon, the Democratic Senate nominee in Florida, a “ghetto bitch” who speaks “Ebonics.”

But Goldberg sees El-Sayed's need to distance himself from Piker as an acknowledgment of political reality:

We can and should denounce double standards, but successful candidates must also navigate them. And right now, El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, is letting this one trip him up.

She think El-Sayed needs to have a Jeremiah Wright moment.

In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign faced a crisis when comments from his pastor Jeremiah Wright emerged, including a clip of Wright damning America. Obama turned what could have been a fiasco into one of the best speeches of his career, one in which he tried to explain the anger of disappointed civil rights activists to white voters and the anger of the dispossessed white working class to Black voters. It was a masterpiece of empathy, and at the time it felt that it changed the trajectory of his campaign.

I’m not sure if El-Sayed is capable of something similar, of weaving his visceral grasp of many voters’ fury and despair at Israeli ethnic cleansing with a recognition of the terror American Jews feel in the face of rising antisemitism. But if he was, it might be a turning point in this race.

I strongly suspect that it would not be a turning point in this race.

In 2008, a Republican president in his eighth year in office had completely lost the support of the American people, and it was clear that the next president was likely to be a Democrat. Obama was inspiring and telegenic, and his life story made a lot of white Americans feel good about themselves for supporting him. He was also safe, a left-centrist Democrat who didn't intend to challenge economic neoliberalism. And he had star quality. The Cinderella story of his campaign drew eyeballs to news outlets. (Another advantage he had was that the media hated his opponent in the primaries, Hillary Clinton.)

So our mainstream political culture was eager to allow him a do-over. That political culture will never feel the same way about Abdul El-Sayed. Even if he delivers an Obama race speech of his own, El-Sayed will continue to be treated as a suspect "other." He'll never be fully embraced because he challenges the status quo in a way that Obama never did.

Also, our political culture, even on the "liberal" side, appears to be more "wired for Republicans" than ever, despite the fact that we're experiencing a GOP presidency far worse than George W. Bush's. Also, El-Sayed, unlike Obama, is a Muslim, and the political culture still isn't sure whether anti-Muslim bigotry is a serious problem, even when it's accompanied by (right-wing) anti-Jewish bigotry.

In The Gurdian, Mehdi Hasan writes about this double standard. Hasan notes that a bigoted adviser to Abdul El-Sayed's opponent, Mike Rogers, has gotten a free pass from the media.

His name is Lorenzo Sewell.

And you’ve probably never heard of him.

... He has publicly and proudly described Islam as a “conquering religion” and a “death cult”. He has called El-Sayed an “Islamic jihadist” who wants to impose “Sharia law all over this land”. The United States, he insists, is “not a nation of Muslims. We are a nation of Christians.”

... But Sewell’s vile rhetoric is only part of the story. On 18 August, the pastor co-organized the “Christian Crusader March on Dearborn City Council Meeting” with the far-right anti-Muslim agitator Jake Lang. Lang was charged with assaulting police officers with a deadly weapon over his actions on 6 January 2021, before receiving a pardon from Trump. He also says he doesn’t believe the Holocaust happened “at that level” and has used the N-word and was arrested in Texas in June on a charge of making a terroristic threat.

The Dearborn “Crusader” rally co-organized by Sewell and Lang attracted neo-Nazis waving a swastika flag and wearing Nazi armbands. There were also reports of pro-KKK material being distributed during and after the event. Dearborn police made 22 arrests that day.

The response from the media: crickets.

The media analysis platform Ground News aggregated 242 separate stories mentioning Piker from across the political spectrum over the past three months – almost three stories a day.

... I searched the websites of the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN. Not one of them appears to have mentioned Sewell in its coverage in 2026. The Times covered the “Christian Crusader” rally in Dearborn, including Jake Lang’s role in it, but made no mention of Sewell – or of Sewell’s connection to Rogers.

So maybe El-Sayed should give us an Obamaesque speech. But it probably won't do his campaign much good.