Since 2022, I’ve often been wondering if I was the one who suffered cognitive damage and the Republican really won the Pennsylvania Senate race.
For those of you with short memories (See: Biden, Joseph Robinette), Democratic candidate John Fetterman suffered a stroke just days before the Democratic primary. He was incommunicado for months and off the campaign trail, but he led everyone to believe that the event wasn’t serious.
It became clear during his one debate with Republican nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz that the event was, indeed, quite serious — and that he was still suffering the ill effects. Fetterman has recovered well, however. Not only that, but a man who was basically a progressive poster child has turned into one of the few Democrats with occasional flashes of sanity.
Take Wednesday, when the folks at HuffPost decided to run a piece about whether the White House and the courts being at loggerheads over some of President Donald Trump’s policies constituted a constitutional crisis.
Fetterman, who they went to for the heavy lifting for the piece, seemed to dismiss the idea as ridiculous.
“When it was [President] Joe Biden, then you [had] a conservative judge jam it up on him, and now we have liberal judges that are going to stop these things,” Fetterman said.
“That’s how the process works,” he added.
The piece itself was based around the premise that “[s]ome of Trump’s allies, including [Elon] Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance, suggested this week that courts have no authority to block the president’s policies and that they should be impeached.”
And, of course, there were no shortage of Democrats with febrile rhetoric to peddle.
Is America facing a constitutional crisis?
“This isn’t hyperbole to say that we are staring the death of democracy in the eyes right now. The centerpiece of our democracy is that we observe court rulings,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
“No one is above the law, and whether we like it or not, the courts interpret the law.”
They also got the token Republican: Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, usually reliable for HuffPost-amenable pull-quotes.
“I mean, we have a judicial system,” Murkowski told reporters.
“If you don’t like the ruling, you can appeal the ruling, and you can follow that through. But we are a nation of laws, and it is not necessarily for you or I to be the final arbiter here. This is why we entrust the judiciary, with this response.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, meanwhile, said “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal courts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority.”
However, Fetterman “rejected claims from others in his party about the country facing a constitutional crisis” and “urged everyone to tone down the rhetoric about President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk moving to dismantle federal agencies and the subsequent court rulings halting some of their efforts,” HuffPost reported.
Yes, he’s a Democrat, so he naturally called the moves “provocative” and “certainly a concern,” but no existential worry for the republic.
“There isn’t a constitutional crisis, and all of these things — it’s just a lot of noise,” Fetterman said. “That’s why I’m only gonna swing on the strikes.”
Again: Either I’m the one whose brain shorted on the eve of the Pennsylvania election, or Fetterman is one of the few men to grow wiser thanks to a major neurological health scare. I’m not sure which — but either way, the hysterical wing of the Democratic caucus probably isn’t happy.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.