John Fetterman and the New Left

Why the Pennsylvania Senator left the Left

New Year, New Me. We all tell ourselves that, but John Fetterman got a head start late last year when publicly stated that he no longer considers himself a progressive.

The catalyst for this change seemed to be the October 7th terrorist attack in Israel, when he became one of the few Democrats from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party to side with the Jewish state over Palestinians.

“I do find it confusing where the very left progressives in America don’t seem to want to support really the only progressive nation in the region that really embraces the same kind of values I would expect we would want as a society,” Fetterman said of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

He followed that up by breaking with progressives over border security, insisting, “I would never put Dreamers in harm’s way or support any kind of cruelty or mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people. But it’s a reasonable conversation to talk about the border.”

Make no mistake, Fetterman is still a progressive. He wants a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare, and drug legalization. He’s not on a path to becoming the next Kyrsten Sinema.

He claims he’s abandoned the term progressive because it’s a purity test, but that’s not a correct assessment of the far-left in America today.