Fetterman v. Oz (And a Love Letter to a Conflicted Pennsylvania)

“Not everything stays the same, and, in many cases, it probably should not.”

During the second weekend of October, with four weeks to go before the November 8th election, New York and The New York Post published contrasting portraits of the Pennsylvania Senate race’s two major candidates: lieutenant governor John Fetterman, the Democrat, and physician and television host Mehmet Oz, the Republican. The New York piece titled “The Vulnerability of John Fetterman” was by Rebecca Traister and ran just days before Fetterman appeared on NBC News for the interview that would spark so many differing opinions, so many of which were contrasting, hysterical, and endeavoring to make viewers disbelieve their own eyes. (Not to mention those that seemed to take issue with the very concept of journalism: that it constitutes a dereliction of journalistic responsibility to raise eminently reasonable questions about the health of a candidate.) Traister’s a portrait of the candidate bore many of the hallmarks of a New York piece, particularly in its post-Sullivan era, replete with numerous mentions of “Black” and “white” (and not of course in the context of describing the contents of an atelier), adjectives galore, and the sort of overtly partisan bullet points one would expect from a campaign flier but arranged within a mildly compelling narrative arc and topped off by the occasional nod to journalistic objectivity that might make one ever so briefly mistake it for impartial analysis.

But the thrust of the piece was not obscured: Oz is intolerable, and Pennsylvania voters would be misguided beyond imagination to opt for anyone other than Fetterman. As for concerns about his health, Traister writes, “In the final weeks, Fetterman is banking on the hope that voters will see in his vulnerability a new way to appreciate his strength.” And this was shortly after she dismissed concerns Pennsylvania voters might have about crime, especially after Philadelphia recorded 561 homicides in 2021, its highest ever: “Oz’s aim increasingly became to depict this broad, tattooed giant as weak and deceptive, secretive and soft on crime—a playbook the right has used successfully against Democratic candidates of all kinds but especially those who are not white men.” Traister, in her endless sympathy for Fetterman and his campaign, condemned a Washington Post editorial that asked questions about Fetterman’s health as merely taking “up the frame offered by the Oz campaign.” Although to raise concerns about the candidate’s health is more than reasonable, what about his policies that despite his endless effort to cultivate an everyman image would, in all likelihood, make matters worse for said everyman, even when President Joe Biden insists that “John IS Pennsylvania”?

The New York Post piece, which was titled “Inside Dr. Oz’s miracle comeback against John Fetterman in US Senate race,” could not have been more different. For Salena Zito, its author, Oz was in the midst of a miraculous and triumphant comeback after trailing in the polls and surviving a caustic primary contest against financier David McCormick. Part of Oz’s supposed comeback, for Zito, can be traced to his statewide handshaking campaign, a far-cry from team Fetterman’s Twitter snarkiness: “Oz went big—taking turns driving with his staff in his navy Denali—to meet voters in almost every county in the state. He held 90-minute town hall meetings and didn’t leave until he fielded every single question. He hosted business round tables, visited parents groups, maneuvered around cow pies at farm shows. With each visit, he gave interviews to local radio, print and television outlets, addressing the specific concerns of those communities.” In Traister’s telling, Fetterman’s stroke-prompted vulnerability is a strength, while for Zito, it is anything but: “Not even a stroke Fetterman suffered in May, leaving him unable to process verbal questions, could derail his campaign.” (And this would be followed up by even more targeted comments on Fetterman’s health by Zito following the October 25th debate between the two candidates.) Both writers discuss the stakes of the race given the Senate’s current 50-50 composition, but Zito, to her credit, also focuses on the importance of the crime issue, which I will argue is among the most pressing challenges facing this state. And, in her telling, Zito provides data showing that crime during Fetterman’s tenure as Mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania actually rose. The focus for both, though, is on the purely political, and I would like—in this piece—to look slightly beyond that.