I wish I was being hyperbolic with that headline, but even here from a liberal enclave in Philadelphia, something feels suddenly different. And I'll tell you why I am concerned Dr. Doom from NJ has a shot to pull out a squeaker in Pennsylvania and give the U.S. Senate back to the Grim Reaper.
As you probably know, dear astute readers, Pennsylvania's Republican nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano (R-Traitor), has been almost completely written off at a national level in his battle with Attorney General Josh Shapiro for the Governor's mansion. No outside funding. No big donor dinners. He's not on TV anywhere, and many establishment Republicans are either sitting his race out, or even endorsing Josh Shapiro. FiveThirtyEight has Shapiro's chances of winning north of 90%. That's the good news. Hurray! We don't need an insurrectionist putting his thumb on the scale in 2024, nor do we need him to rubber stamp a ban on abortion... or much worse.
The bad news? It seems like the entire Republican machine, both nationally and here in PA, has shifted its energy towards salvaging the seat of retiring Senator Pat Toomey (R-Most recently seen obstructing health care for veterans and first responders). They are bringing truckloads of money into the state to buy expensive ads for Oz, and it just might be working. Polls are showing the race tightening.
And Oz's flying monkeys have swooped in with a few strategies:
-
Attacking Fetterman for the incident in Braddock where he chased an african american man and held him until police arrived after hearing gunshots. They are blasting these ads nonstop in the Philly area, and undoubtedly the strategy is to suppress the AA vote for Fetterman. Fetterman is responding, but it could have an impact on the margins.
-
On the flip side, they are scare-mongering over Fetterman's service as Lt. Governor on the Board of Pardons, implying he is soft on crime and the source of the uptick in violence because of his positions he has taken. They accuse him of petitioning for convicted murderers to be released... never mentioning those convictions were deemed wrongful. This seems aimed at the suburbs and cutting into Fetterman's cross-aisle appeal as a tough guy.
-
The Oz campaign and surrogates such as Toomey used the debate-about-the-debate schedule as a way to sow doubt in Fetterman's health after his stroke & heart issues last spring.
Taken together, they're doing little to build up Oz, whose favorables are underwater. They're trying to pull Fetterman down into the dirt with Oz, and make the election a lesser-of-two-evils choice. Again, looking at fivethirtyeight.com, we have seen a decided dip down in Fetterman's odds of winning in the last 2 weeks, similar to the other tight Senate races in Wisconsin and North Carolina. Instead of 83% chance, they’re now down to 76% and dropping. Note that Senate races in Pennsylvania are traditionally quite close, decided usually by a percent or 3, and polls in the last several cycles have hidden Republican votes. This one is going down to the wire.
Not snatching this seat for team blue would make the task of holding even a 50-50 majority extremely hard. We would have no margin of error on any of the other battleground races, and would dash hopes of sidelining flies-in-the-ointment Senators Manchin and Sinema.
Don't get fooled by the frivolous fun of crudités and kicking authority in the balls gaffes that carpetbagger Oz keeps making. You sit there and laugh, har har har, that's the kind of hubris that handed us 4 years of Donald T.. T... god I'm not even going to say his name. The thought of having to live with 6 years of Dr. Oz as our junior Senator would be a fate worse than when we re-elected (p)Rick Santorum. Maybe I’m just traumatized after years of Santorum and Toomey, but I’m definitely feeling deep concern, not confidence.
Please, do not sleep on this. The Keystone State is poised to live up to its reputation once again, and will be the key to Dems holding the Senate vs. a newly re-minted Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Make those calls, send those postcards, knock those doors, send that dinero. So much rests on this one race. https://johnfetterman.com/
+++++++++++++++++
Update: Thanks for floating this up the wreck list! My general response to comments before I head back to work… please, save your words about the media, polls, horserace and why you think Fetterman has this in the bag. I don’t really care. If you want to help ease the concerns, tell us what action you’re committing to: A few dollars, a few postcards, a few doors, texts, phone calls? That’s what gives us hope that Oz won’t steal this in a nail-biter.
++++++++++++
Update 2: Added a question mark to the title to soften that up just a bit. Some folks seemed triggered by the title and missing the intent of the diary. I don’t want it to be a distraction. This diary is clearly intended as a light-a-fire-under-your-ass diary, not a woe-is-me diary as some naysayers have decided. Not sure how much clearer I can make that. If you don’t like hearing the truth on the ground, i guess keep looking for the next happy talk diary instead. Hillary’s got it in the bag, she’s been leading in the polls for months. No way Trump will beat her in PA.