The Courtship

On Saturday, October 10, stepping off Air Force One at Andrews, the President was asked whether he had talked to Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania about changing parties. "I'd love to see him as a Republican," he said. "He does better as a Republican than he does as a Democrat." Also: "It's going to be hard for him to get the nomination as a Democrat, but I'd love to have him as a Republican," and "He's a very solid person," and "John Fetterman's a great guy with magnificent parents." No poll in existence has tested Mr. Fetterman as a Republican, so the first claim is a feeling. The second claim is true. Senator Fetterman has not answered the invitation in the twenty-two days since, which is also an answer. The last thing he said on the subject he said on a stage in Austin two weeks before the President asked: "Let's see what happens if I happen to be 51," and "wait until after the midterm and see what happens," and he has not amended a word of it. The paper has watched a great many courtships this fall, Republicans in close races wanting the President's endorsement and not the President, and this is the one that runs the other way: the President wanting the man, in public, by name, and the man saying wait. The paper is not here to rate Mr. Fetterman. It is here to rate the courtship, and what it finds is that the suitor already has everything he is asking for, and knows it.

Here is what the President has. On the night the strikes on Iran began, February 28, Mr. Fetterman posted, "Committed Democrat here. I'm a hard no. My vote is Operation Epic Fury." On March 4 he was the only Democrat to vote against the war powers resolution. On May 13 it failed 49 to 50, and with three Republicans voting to end the war his vote was, for the first time, the one that decided it. On June 23 it passed 50 to 48 with him against. On July 30 it failed 50 to 49, his vote again. On September 24 it failed 49 to 50, his vote again, and he issued no statement; a Pennsylvania congressman, Chris Deluzio, wrote that "John and 49 Republican Senators" had voted to keep the war going. That is five Senate votes, and the Senator from Pennsylvania was the margin in three of them. He was the lone Democrat for Pam Bondi and the lone Democrat for Mike Huckabee. In March 2025 he wrote, "I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever vote to shut our government down," and in November he was one of eight to end the shutdown, and in February he was the only Democrat to vote for the Homeland Security bill. The Inquirer went through the whole record this month: he voted with his party's majority 99 percent of the time in the Biden years, 80 percent in 2025, and under 78 percent this year, and on the 134 votes where the White House had a clear position he agreed with the President a quarter of the time, more than any Democrat but one. His own number is "I vote a 91% Democratic line." The paper has no quarrel with the arithmetic. It notes that the 9 percent is the war.

Here is what the President has not had to give. The paper ran its test, which is to find one time the Senator asked this administration for something for Pennsylvania and got it. It found FEMA releasing $600 million in pandemic reimbursements to Pennsylvania hospitals in May after his letter in April, and $13.5 million more in July, and his office's statements both times said the money was "owed." It found him claiming credit in May 2025 for the Nippon deal he had "vowed to jam up," which was the Biden administration's block and a sweetened bid. It found nothing discretionary: no tariff carve-out for Pennsylvania steel, no exemption, no reversal, nothing the President did because John Fetterman asked. On the Russian diesel the President is buying from Mr. Putin, twelve senators of both parties wrote on October 13 that the deal was "a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies," and Mr. Fetterman, who a year ago posted that he "enthusiastically" supported Tomahawks for Ukraine, did not sign it and has said nothing. So the ledger of the courtship is this: the President gets the war votes and the confirmations, and the Senator gets called a great guy with magnificent parents. In Pennsylvania that is known as a bad trade, and in the Senate it is known as a Tuesday.

The September video is the part the paper cannot get past. On the ninth, the first night of the Republican Party's midterm convention in Dallas, a recorded message from Mr. Fetterman introduced Senator Dave McCormick, his Republican colleague. "Yes, I'm a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today? Because, well, I'm a commonsense Democrat," he said, and "I'm always going to reject the extremes and socialism and the anti-American way of life," and that he and Mr. McCormick "will work with President Trump." The hall, by NBC's account, barely clapped. The two senators had already filed a joint fundraising committee in July, Common Ground PA, so that a donor could write one check for both of them. Six days after the video, cornered in the Capitol, he raised his voice: "I'm not going to be a Republican! If I turn a Republican, then I'll be a liar." Eleven days after that, asked at a festival in Austin why he did not become an independent, he said, "Because I'm a lifelong Republican," was corrected by the moderator, and said, "I guarantee you, that's gonna break through." It did. The paper counts six denials since May, in the Washington Post, the Times, two statements, a hallway and a stage, and it believes all six, because the Senator is right about the one thing that matters: there are no Republicans, as he said in Austin, "with a 90% Democratic vote line." He is not leaving. He does not need to. The President does not need him to. Everyone in this courtship knows it, which is why it is a courtship and not a proposal.

The voters are the part the Senator cannot get past. Quinnipiac, October 1 through 5: 37 percent of Pennsylvanians view him favorably and 46 unfavorably; among Republicans it is 72 to 19, and among Democrats 13 to 69. In June the same pollster asked whether he should stay in the Democratic Party or leave it, and 52 percent said leave, including 57 percent of Democrats, and the pollster's Tim Malloy wrote the sentence the paper would have written: "The Democrats would like to show him the door. The Republicans seem to be welcoming him in." The Siena poll in September had 57 percent of the state calling him more of a Republican than a Democrat, and Siena's Don Levy said, "I can't think of another case exactly like this." A Democrat in Lewisburg, Joseph Jaskula, 72, told the Inquirer, "I'm so disappointed in him, I can't even see straight." A Republican in Butler, Nicholas Morabito, 32, said, "He's a voice in the party, standing up for what's right." In June, among Pennsylvania Republicans, Mr. Fetterman polled better than Mr. McCormick, 77 to 68, which is the thing the President meant and the thing the Senator should think about: the people who like him most are the people who will never be allowed to vote for him, and the people who can are leaving. Three Pennsylvania Democrats, Mr. Deluzio, Brendan Boyle and Conor Lamb, are circling 2028. "I don't think there's any Democrat in Pennsylvania who wants him campaigning with them," Mr. Deluzio said in September, and in the eight weeks since no Democrat in Pennsylvania has asked.

The paper will give the rest of the record, because it is part of the man and the man is part of the courtship. The Inquirer counted his attendance at the hearings and meetings of his three committees this Congress: 26 of 158, about 16 percent. He has missed 9 percent of floor votes, against a Senate median of under 3, not counting his treatment for depression, which the paper does not count either. He has one law with his name on it, a post office. His texts to staff, published in September, called a children's hospital's request for meetings on vaccines and Medicaid cuts a wish for "free trips to DC," which he later called a "dumb joke," and answered a request to attend the funeral of three murdered police officers with "3 hours??" His memoir says, "I am not collegial, and as a senator, you need to be to get anything real done." On the Epstein files, last November, he said, "Everything should come out," and the Senate then passed the release by unanimous consent, so that for once he was not asked to decide. The paper's view of all this is that the Senator is a man who has been ill, who has recovered, who says true things about his party's worst instincts, and who has decided that the way to be the most independent Democrat in the Senate is to be the forty-ninth Republican on the war and then insist on the label. It is a lonely way to be right about socialism.

The paper's forecasts, dated November 1. Senator Fetterman will not change parties before this Congress ends in January, and he will never answer the October 10 invitation in so many words. If the Democrats win fifty-one seats on Tuesday he will be the fifty-first, as he said himself in Austin; he will caucus with them, hand them the majority, and vote with the Republicans on the next war powers resolution anyway. The President will go on calling him a great guy. And nothing will arrive in Pennsylvania because the Senator asked for it, because the President has never been asked, and the thing he wants he is already getting for free.

Four clowns, and the paper will say where they go, since it promised not to rate the man alone. Two are the President's, for courting in public a vote he already owns, with compliments about the man's parents, the way you flatter the help. Two are the Senator's, and they are not for the war votes, which he is entitled to cast and should be made to explain; they are for "Let's see what happens if I happen to be 51," said in Austin two weeks before the President asked and left standing, unamended, in the twenty-two days since, which is the one sentence in this whole affair that sounds like a man naming a price. The paper would like to be wrong about that. It will check in January.