[[[ UPDATE 05.15.22: John had a stroke the day this article was published! Please feel better soon, my friend, and yes, he’ll still punch you in the mouth from his hospital bed! ]]] John Fetterman is currently Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and he is also running to be a Senator from the same State. Sure, he’s 6’8″ tall. Yes, he doesn’t wear a tie. Of course, he prefers to wear hoodies. Because John Fetterman is tough. John Fetterman is what a Democrat used to be — and must be again: Of the land, against the elite power, for the common good. Now, I realize John Fetterman may not want to punch you in the mouth right now, but I am confident he would if he needed to, and the idea he could punch you if he were threatened into it is just the sort of inherent, but unspoken, return to earth the Democrat party needs in order to deal with the ongoing foolishness, and intimidation of, far Right Wing radicals. John Fetterman suffers no fools. A year ago, in my Human Meme podcast episode — The Great White Bridge as Throughline — I celebrated John Fetterman as a possible future Democratic President, along with the now self-politically immolated former mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms as his second.


Don’t just take my word for who, and what, John Fetterman is, and what he stands for — just look at his biographical history for standing up, and doing the right thing because it must be done:

At 23, John joined up with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and threw himself into the program, mentoring his ‘little’ – an 8-year-old boy who had recently lost his father to AIDS and whose mother was also battling the disease. Before she passed away, John promised that he would continue to look out for her son and make sure that he would graduate college. Fifteen years later, John and his ‘little’ had both held up their ends of the bargain, with his little’s graduation from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA.

The disparity between his own life and that of his ‘little’ motivated John to quit his job and join AmeriCorps, where for two years he served in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District, helping to set up the first computer labs in the neighborhood and teaching GED classes to young mothers and fathers.

Here’s a fancy commercial for John:

This is John on the campaign trail:

Here’s John chatting with a reporter:

This is John joining in a special interview:

I like John Fetterman as the face of the New Democrat Party because it’s time for the next generation to step forward and lead. We don’t need fancy suits and special speeches. We need the plain-spoken truth. We don’t need slick hair and pressed pants. We need to see how real people live to survive, and sometimes you’re just big, and messy, and maybe even a little ugly, just like Fetterman and me and millions of other Big Uglies just like us! It’s our turn to topple the world and he heard!

The Blue Collar middle is ready for a return to the center of attention. Bring back the hard hitters and the harder workers. Find the nourishing common ground between the edges of the middle instead of trying to flay the seams of the extremes to eat them. John Fetterman has that everyday loveliness about him that resonates honesty, and ingenuity, along with a plodding forethought of horse sense of just how things need to be instead of just how things have been.

The Democrats need to get younger, stronger, faster and hardier in order to be competitive as their Old Guard ages out — and John Fetterman, at the young age of 52, plugs all those fine niches in the future of the Party.

Things are about to get tough, and nasty, in the USA with the rise of radical Fascism, a discredited Supreme Court, and the ungracious thump of a return Trumpian engagement. We, the People, need someone who knows how to fight the power, without losing ground, while also gaining the truth along the way, and gathering the invincibility of the inevitable: The good folks deserve to be heard, and honored, and included, and we don’t want the government looking into our private lives for their own, vapid, authoritarian, benefit.