Are cargo shorts, tats and a goatee the future of the Democratic Party?

PA Senate candidate John Fetterman and his family.

If you’re going by who won the Pennsylvania Democratic primary for the Senate with more than twice the vote of the next candidate, it certainly would seem so.  John Fetterman checks boxes that few Democrats running for office check these days.  He wears cargo shorts and a hoodie on the campaign trail, and he doesn’t look like a campaign consultant from New York City dressed him in the morning, the way all the Republicans running in fleece vests look.  Currently the PA lieutenant governor, he was mayor of a working-class town in Western PA smack in the middle of the congressional district his opponent, Connor Lamb, won in 2018 and in the backyard of the district he represents today.  Lamb had the endorsements of “scores” of top Democratic Party officials, according to a report in the New York Times.  He was supposed to be the guy who checked all the boxes:  He is a Marine veteran, a former prosecutor and a moderate known for “working across the aisle” in the parlance of the D.C. Thinking Class.

And yet Fetterman trounced Lamb 60 percent to 26.5.  The map run by the Times this morning showed Fetterman carrying every single county in the state.  Every one.

Fetterman, who stands 6 foot 8 inches, played football in college, he owns guns and shoots them and isn’t ashamed of it, he’s for fracking, he’s for legalizing pot, he supports Medicare for all, and he supported Bernie Sanders in 2016.  So not only is he checking boxes, he is picking up the support of party liberals, moderates and conservatives alike.

The primary race on the Republican side is officially too close to call.  Trump-endorsee Dr. Mehmet Oz leads businessman David McCormick by a few thousand votes.  Oz, who graduated from medical school in Pennsylvania, lived most of his adult life in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, while he starred in the “Doctor Oz Show” on television.  He moved to Pennsylvania this year, something he shares with his opponent in the race, McCormick, who until recently lived in Connecticut while he served as CEO of one of the largest hedge funds in the world, Bridgewater Associates.

Both Oz and McCormick are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Whoever Fetterman ends up running against, it’s not going to be an easy race, although the Cook Political Report flipped its prediction to “lean Democratic” when Fetterman won last night.

With Certifiable Trump Loon Douglas Mastriano winning the Republican primary for Governor with more than twice the votes of his nearest competitor, it’s going to be an interesting six months between now and election day in November.

And I live in Milford, Pennsylvania now! 

Watch this space.