Like Democratic spoilers before him, Fetterman will probably quit before switching parties

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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 to NOTUS, 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 to Politico. 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 told NOTUS 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.

What anti-Black racists fear about a Black Helen

Today, Martin Longman explored whether Helen of Troy could have been Black. The question arises from the controversy surrounding The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan's decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Greek mythology's most beautiful woman in the world.

Marty concludes that choosing "a Kenyan [to play Helen] is no less plausible than an East Asian or a Northern European. The freakout over Nyong’o is simple racism." I recommend reading the piece, but I would like to add another layer to Marty's argument, which is that the freakout is about sexuality, too. Nyong’o is drop-dead gorgeous. She is sexually appealing in ways most straight men would otherwise covet. That's the nut of the controversy, as much as race. Anti-Black racists hate their desire. It makes them feel bad. Someone must pay.

Brass tacks.

Helen is supposed to be the pinnacle of female sexuality. Making her Black means the pinnacle of female sexuality is Black. Fact is, anti-Black racists agree. They love everything about Blackness except for the Black people who do it better than anyone else. You could say that all standards of female sexuality in America bend toward Blackness, and the anti-Black racist would accede, because it's what they want – lips, eyes, butts, skin, everything. They just don't want the women they covet to actually be Black, because that would force them to question what their own desire suggests to them, which is that Black female sexuality is superior. That is a wrong that must be righted. So they call Nyong’o "unattractive."

Ha!

I admire all the smart writers and journalists and social scientists who place what are fundamentally racist controversies in a broader context of culture and history for the purpose of bringing the truth about white supremacy to a wider public. But I am not that bright and see things in simple terms. The controversy is about sex and what sex means to white supremacists, and to them, sex never means sex. It means dominance and control.

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