Democratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has lost his unique leverage in Washington now that his party has pulled off a blue wave in the midterm elections.
The Democratic Party was handed control of the House and the Senate on Tuesday, dramatically reshaping Congress for the country.
In Pennsylvania, Fetterman has wielded the power of being the deciding vote in what was a narrowly divided Senate, as a Democrat willing to break with his party. But Democratic Senate gains across the country on Tuesday have pushed their seats from a minority of 47 to a majority of at least 54, after flipping at least seven seats, as of early Wednesday morning.
This means Fetterman, who has long faced criticism from wings of his party for obstructing the Democratic agenda by voting with Republicans, will now have less power to force his party to listen to the views he represents.
Democrats are never going to convince enough Republicans to defect, to reach 67 votes in the Senate. So Fetterman indeed doesn’t matter.
I can already see people like coming with criticism like “why didn’t the Democrats win that vote that requires 2/3rds majority? Surely because the Democrats don’t truly care. Both sides are the same.”
The last few times the Democrats held a majority in both houses, they rolled over for Republicans who were absolutely relentless in their attacks.
When Republicans held both houses, Democrats just silently let them get away with whatever, instead of going on the offensive the way they should.
Attack. Legislation isn’t going to happen. Investigate. Obstruct. Be so offensive that simply existing in Washington becomes unpalatable for Republicans.
Instead what they’ll do is send through the most milquetoast of progressive legislation, watch it get vetoed and when it comes to a point where it could actually happen, they’ll forget the ever brought it up in the first place. Like they do every time.
I really hope we can bully the Dems into investigating corruption. I am not expecting that we can, but I am hopeful that we can.