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Botched policies, ignoring reality and turning their backs on the voters that built the party are the key ingredients that Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., believed helped Democrats lose big last year.
In his memoir “Unfettered,” Fetterman unloaded on the Democratic Party and his colleagues’ missteps that he argued led to President Donald Trump’s victory over former Vice President Kamala Harris and a sea change in Washington, D.C.
Fetterman argued that the Democratic Party had lost touch with the working class, a key bloc of voters that at one point made up the backbone of the party.
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In particular, it was the attacks on men, be it through speeches or legislation, that helped turn the Democratic Party into an elitist organization too focused on “celebrity endorsements,” he said. In turn, those who voted for Trump perceived “Democrats as soft and gooey, with a platform built on ideals that weren’t based in the reality of the average person.”
“We became the party of the elites, one that had lost touch with its base,” he wrote. “Also, the continued speech and policies against men have not been without consequences.
“If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
Fetterman’s book, released Tuesday, comes at a particular inflection point for Democrats. The party had spent much of the year searching for a binding message to both rebuild their brand with voters and build unity among their ranks in Congress.
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That came with the government shutdown, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the majority of the caucus moved in lockstep with demands that the government wouldn’t reopen until expiring Obamacare subsidies were dealt with.
Schumer’s failure to prevent a cohort of Senate Democrats, including Fetterman, from crossing the aisle to join Republicans has earned him heat from progressives in the House and outside the walls of Congress.
Despite often straying from Schumer’s position, particularly throughout the shutdown, Fetterman wrote sparingly of the top Senate Democrat. Instead, he is briefly mentioned when reflecting on Schumer’s 2023 decision to change the dress code on the Senate floor to accommodate Fetterman, whose standard dress is a baggy hoodie and basketball shorts.
But Schumer caved on that initiative, too, in early 2024.
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“Schumer was forced to reverse himself and enforce a dress code aimed at me,” Fetterman wrote.
One policy area in particular that Fetterman felt Democrats had failed was immigration. He reiterated that while he was pro-immigration, Democrats’ unwillingness to tackle the growing crisis at the southern border under former President Joe Biden was something he couldn’t get behind.
He wrote that Democrats’ assertion that “an open border is a compassionate policy” wasn’t based in reality.
“It is chaos, both for those immigrants and for the citizens impacted by the overwhelming number of people coming in who need assistance,” he wrote.
And, further, that position likely played a large factor in Trump and the GOP’s across-the-board victories in 2024, Fetterman argued.
“Democrats were swearing up and down that the border was secure and telling its voters to not believe their own eyes,” he wrote. “I suspect this may have been the deciding factor in the 2024 election. You can’t tell people to not believe their own eyes and expect to win elections.”
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