Fetterman will probably quit

John Fetterman is not going to switch parties, not if he wants to remain relevant. To be sure, he's certainly talking about it. According toNOTUS, the Democratic senator said last week that he would switch if "Democrats make opposition to Israel part of their official platform." But Pennsylvania Republicans are not going to vote for him. He's a Democrat.

Obviously, Fetterman's progressive critics disagree. They say he's a Democrat in name only, so switching parties would merely be validation of the status quo. They point to his unconditional support for Israel, for "border security" and for the Iran War, as well as his frequent allegation that his party suffers from TDS – or "Trump Derangement Syndrome" – as if the consequences of a gangster presidency are not as bad as Democrats make them seem.

Fact is, however, that the status quo is Fetterman voting with the Democrats 93 percent of the time, according toPolitico. Moreover, GovTrack.us analyzed the ideological positions of all 100 senators to find that Fetterman is to the left of colleagues with more liberal profiles, such as Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff, both of Georgia. Progressives might ignore these facts, but others almost certainly won't. If he switched parties, he'd become instantly irrelevant, as Democratic voters would no longer trust him and GOP voters never will.

Does Fetterman fully understand that? Given how he behaves, some might think it's hard to say. For one thing, he appears to enjoy the role he frequently plays on Fox as the Democrat who tells Republican viewers they are right about everything they believe is wrong about the Democrats. For another, he often cites polling that shows his popularity among Republicans is growing. (He bragged recently that he's "a guy that votes 90 percent on the Democratic line [with] 80 percent GOP approval.") Then there's the fact that he seemed to sever his bond with Bernie Sanders, whose 2022 endorsement of Fetterman as a progressive warrior greased the skids for Fetterman's entry to the Senate. He blamed Sanders for supporting "train wrecks" who are so politically extreme that they make Republicans look moderate.

All of this suggests that John Fetterman believes the grass is greener on the other side. Indeed, it's apparently enough to convince his former chief of staff. Adam Jentleson toldNOTUS that his former boss would flip if the Democrats win the Senate by a single seat in the coming congressional elections "in order to stay relevant." He added: “I think, if he is the majority-maker, he will flip, because it would give him a massive amount of attention."

But you don't have to flip "to stay relevant" or get "a massive amount of attention." Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema got both without leaving. Indeed, they discovered that if you really want to be the best spoiler possible, it's best to stay put. Of course, spoilers don't last long, as Lieberman, Manchin and Sinema also demonstrated. In time, they became independents who caucused with the Democrats before conceding their base of support had fallen out completely. They quit before flipping. With 19 percent approval among Pennsylvania Democrats, a similar fate probably awaits John Fetterman.