I respect you bringing substance to this discussion. Upon review I’m personally not all impressed about how Fetterman is shown to be progressive this way simply by relative comparison to the rest of the generally highly-conservative Senate. Even if these were fruitful votes (most honestly weren’t for aforementioned reasons of a divided Congress and non supermajority), I’d be the tallest person in the room with children, but that doesn’t make me tall, right? Finally, we unfortunately cannot contrast with an unanswerable counterfactual that is: Would he have been more progressive if he didn’t have the stroke? Because ultimately there are many other variables from year to year that cannot be fully adjusted for.

I thus prefer to look at Fetterman through the lens of shifted trailblazing policy stances and divisive topics pre and post-stroke:

• Fetterman moved from once referring to himself as a “progressive champion” and “We have started a progressive movement here in Pennsylvania” — Again, these Pre-stroke. Only later in 2023 did he change his tune.

• Since 2023, Fetterman suddenly became much more staunchly anti-immigrant and parroting of Republican Border policy talking-points. His position has heavily shifted on ICE, once being much more strongly opposed to ICE. Contrast, “law-abiding citizens seeking a better life” to Biden “Bungling” and “destroying” the border by late 2023.

• Pre-stroke, Fetterman once strongly supported Single-payer Medicare For All, but now no longer does post-stroke.

It seems he has long been supportive of Israel, which in the backdrop of Charlottesville and genuine antisemitism of the right through the 2010s, combined with peak power of AIPAC and a large Jewish cohort in PA, I can somewhat understand. I can further imagine that his stroke could have reduced his ability to see nuance following O7 and still resorting to default programming of, “antisemitism bad!”

Maybe my definition of progressive or left-leaning is different, but I find it hard to call anyone a progressive whatsoever who has shifted and actively holds regressive positions on that which the broader progressive coalition fully promote.