Fetterman: The Senate's Next 'Trump Democrat?'

Over at Rolling Stone is a story detailing how Trump has all but sabotaged his own party in a crucial Senate race. The good news is that perhaps even Trump will not claim that the election was "rigged" when the Democratic candidate -- a loony lefty recovering from a stroke -- defeats the Trump-endorsed telvision quack, Mehmut Oz:

John Fetterman may soon join Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the Senate. Let's call them Trump Democrats as a way of reminding people who got them in. (Image by Governor Tom Wolf, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

He's going to "fucking lose," unless something drastically changes, Trump has said privately of his chosen man in the Keystone State, according to two sources who've discussed the midterm election with the ex-president.

In recent weeks, some Trump allies have repeatedly flagged polling for the former president showing Dr. Oz down, at times by wide or double-digit margins, to his Democratic opponent. Trump has sometimes responded by asking advisers how it's possible that someone who was that popular on TV for so long is doing so poorly in the polls. When Trump has inquired if the polling has been "phony" or skewed, multiple people close to him have assured him that -- as one of the sources describes to Rolling Stone -- "this is not a matter of the polls being 'rigged,' there are major problems with this campaign and, more specifically, this candidate."

The bad news is that Trump--

Forget it: Whether or not Trump manages to drag Oz over the finish line, what kind of principled opposition to the Democrats would he make, anyway? Sure, he might be a crucial vote in a closely-divided Senate, but that's about it, and it doesn't bode well even for that that Oz is losing to someone I heard described recently as "crazy before he had a stroke." Oh, and there are those other weak Senate candidates Trump foisted on voters elsewhere.

One of Trump's former advisors sums it up well at the end:

"President Trump was best served at the minimum staying neutral in the primary," says Sam Nunberg, a former Trump adviser who has been critical of Dr. Oz. "Instead he wholeheartedly endorsed one of the most flawed candidates the Republicans have nationally nominated."

I fail to understand the hold this man has on the GOP.

-- CAV