The Pennsylvania Senate Race Tests the Vibes Theory of Politics
Programming note: While Phil is off today, the D.C. Brief is highlighting a must-read story just published out of TIME's Washington bureau from Charlotte Alter on the Pennsylvania Senate race.
John Fetterman is a vibe guy. It’s the salt-and-pepper goatee and the tattoos, the shorts and Carhartt sweatshirts instead of suits, the campaign merch with local slang like yinz. (That’s Pittsburgh for y’all.) If the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Democratic Senate nominee is able to prevail in November, it will be thanks to his everyman vibe.
The race in Pennsylvania could determine control of the Senate, and for much of it, Fetterman had the clear edge when it came to vibes. He was able to tag his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime New Jersey resident, with carpetbagger vibes, rich-guy vibes (Fetterman mocked Oz for owning 10 homes and using words like crudité), and quack-doctor vibes (several Fetterman videos lampoon Oz’s history of pushing “miracle cures” as a daytime-TV doc).
But at the candidates’ lone televised debate on Oct. 25, the vibes on display were very different. Fetterman suffered a stroke in May, and has been dealing with the lingering effects of what his doctor calls an “auditory-processing disorder.” Even with the aid of closed captioning, he struggled mightily to string basic sentences together. Suddenly, a contest the Fetterman campaign had cast as a Pennsylvania native son vs. a slick huckster seemed to morph into a race between a stroke survivor grasping for words and an articulate doctor with plenty of them.
If Fetterman is able to eke out a win in November despite the debate disaster and the political headwinds buffeting the Democrats, it will be a validation of his central political insight. You might call it the Vibes Theory of Politics. The people who decide elections, Fetterman thinks, don’t obsessively follow the polls or listen to wonky podcasts. They vote based on vibes. “People assume that everyone reads Ezra Klein,” Fetterman told me earlier this year. But for most voters, “it’s not like they have their position papers laid out.” He’s hoping they don’t care much about debates, either.
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