As a general rule, no one wants to be the overdog. In the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and about other people, the figure of the underdog and the narrative arc of their struggle against stacked odds is synonymous with virtue. We can’t help but root for the underdog—we are compelled to sympathize with them, to identify with their plight, and to paint ourselves and the others we want to be viewed sympathetically in the mold of some under-resourced, disregarded, but plucky archetypal underdog taking on the powerful.
Even the richest of rich kids and the nepo-est of nepo babies manufacture narratives of their own hardscrabble experience, typically through some mix of psychobabble, solipsism, and retconned hardship—no matter how self-inflicted. Stories to tell themselves, and to others, about themselves, so they’ll be seen in a kinder light, and appear more sympathetic and relatable to kinder eyes. This is doubly true for politicians who, more than anyone, want to be on the side of money, power, and the elite, but don’t want you to think they are on the side of money, power, and the elite. That is why the Republican Party and its attendant conservative media have, over decades, constructed an entire bizarro universe in which they and their supporters can perennially paint themselves as scrappy underdogs fighting a power that is not monopolized by the wealthy, but by an elite cabal of Soros-funded activists, academics, greedy immigrants, layabout government bureaucrats, and race-hustling DEI consultants lighting their cigars with your hard-earned $100 bills.
The most notable recent example, of course, concerns Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and his so-called “break” with the “progressives,” which has essentially entailed Fetterman making his boilerplate AIPAC-fed talking points seem like something brave or principled or something other than heartless support for ethnic cleansing.
Unmoored to this same totally-made-up partisan alternate universe, conservative Democrats have to work a bit harder to sell the idea that they’re bold, courageous outsiders taking on the powers that be—because people want that, people vote for that, people like the underdog—while still taking the same, banal, power-serving positions as their predecessors. This is not a new phenomenon in politics: it is a constant, like time or gravity. The most notable recent example, of course, concerns Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and his so-called “break” with the “progressives,” which has essentially entailed Fetterman making his boilerplate AIPAC-fed talking points seem like something brave or principled or something other than heartless support for ethnic cleansing.
Nowhere in recent memory has the need to make an overdog seem like an underdog been greater and more grimly transparent than with Israel’s full-court-press efforts to convince the world that an occupying force with one of the largest militaries on Earth, with the endless backing of the largest military power the world has ever seen, is the besieged underdog that is ethnically cleansing a population of millions of civilians out of “self defense.” This has, in turn, prompted an equally cynical and half-assed effort by Fetterman and his team of dead-eyed, social media-savvy hipster aides to “change the narrative” and paint the Senator’s thoughtless support for Israel as edgy truth-telling, and his gutless falling in line with the DC establishment and the Israel lobby as a brave stand against Big Progressive.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel and the genocidal, scorched-earth response from Israel that followed, Fetterman quickly staked out a position that went admittedly beyond the normal pro-Israel liberal clichés and into the realm of sadistic glee and indifference toward the suffering of Gazans. In interview after interview, Fetterman shows a callous disregard for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed in the past three months, the majority of them women and children, and instead resorts to simplistic War-on-Terror style moralizing. “Now is not the time to talk about a ceasefire. We must support Israel in efforts to eliminate the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered innocent men, women, and children,” he tweeted. “Hamas does not want peace, they want to destroy Israel. We can talk about a ceasefire after Hamas is neutralized.”
As the Palestinian body count piled up—now well over 23,000, including an estimated 12,000 children—young Pennsyavia voters sought to convey their anger and frustration with their Senator. Fetterman and his team tried to paint Fetterman as a “heterodox” thinker; they were quick to mock these genuine concerns from his former supporters, belittling activists as irrelevant nuisances whose brains have been “warped” by social media.
Even though it is well known that Fetterman’s position on Israel was always firmly in line with standard-issue Zionist pablum, many of his progressive and left-of-center supporters have been understandably upset by his total lack of even feigned empathy for Palestinians. After all, Fetterman has staked out a position to the far right of even the extremely pro-Israel White House; he not only opposes a ceasefire, he opposed the idea of a temporary pause for hostage exchanges. As the Palestinian body count piled up—now well over 23,000, including an estimated 12,000 children—young Pennsylvania voters sought to convey their anger and frustration with their Senator.
Fetterman and his team tried to paint Fetterman as a “heterodox” thinker; they were quick to mock these genuine concerns from his former supporters, belittling activists as irrelevant nuisances whose brains have been “warped” by social media. Tweets from Fetterman Chief of Staff Adam Jentleson were equal parts glib and smug:
Friendly media has mostly played along with the charade. Politico framed Fetterman loudly taking a right-wing position on Israel as him being a rogue free thinker who is, roguely, uninterested in being popular:
“‘I’m not a progressive’: Fetterman breaks with the left, showing a maverick side,” reads a sycophantic headline in a December NBC News article by Sahil Kapur. Kapur, quoting Jentleson, would go on to add that, contrary to what internet-addled critics suggest, Fetterman never misrepresented himself as a progressive, he never adopted the progressive label or courted progressive votes:
A claim that Fetterman’s main Twitter account repeated, and that was easily and summarily debunked in the community notes:
A USA Today column by Ingrid Jacques published a week later would double down on this Sassy Fetterman narrative. “It’s a new year and a whole new John Fetterman: He’s kissing his progressive ways goodbye,” the headline reads. Jacques buys into the self-styled Fetterman-as-maverick framing hook, line, and sinker: “[Fetterman] is not afraid… to speak up for what he thinks is right, even if that means bucking the progressive mantra.”
Note how swiftly opposition to ethnic cleansing is reduced to a partisan-ized “progressive mantra,” and supporting the continued bombing, starving, and collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza is “speaking up” for what one “thinks is right.” Progressive activists don’t have sincere convictions, only TikTok-fueled neuroses. Indeed, this is how Fetterman explained the massive gap between Democratic voters, and Democratic officials like him in the Senate and White House who continue to support Israel’s destruction of Gaza despite the fact that poll after poll shows over 75% of Democrats support a ceasefire.
“I really don’t know,” Fetterman told Jake Tapper when asked about his unpopularity with the Democratic base. “I know that a lot of people are getting their perspective from TikTok.”
The substance of what Fetterman is advocating fades into the background and “the story” becomes an underdog tale of one unpopular man of conscience standing athwart history, shouting “No!”—and being commended by a credulous media for that, rather than for what he is actually saying.
Acknowledging that the widespread contempt for Fetterman’s position is borne from genuine opposition to mass slaughter and displacement would undermine his alleged “maverick” rebrand. He can’t look like he’s “standing up” to popular sentiment, so the manifest popularity of the ceasefire position must be pathologized as a social media brain disease emerging from Sinister Actors From the Orient.
This is an object lesson in how the media vapidly reduces the content of politics to pure form. For the Fetterman-as-maverick-bucking-Progressive-dogma rebrand to stick, the substance of what Fetterman is advocating fades into the background and “the story” becomes an underdog tale of one unpopular man of conscience standing athwart history, shouting “No!”—and being commended by a credulous media for that, rather than for what he is actually saying. The content of his position is important only insofar as it departs from the popular majority now and the consensus position of progressives past, thus situating Fetterman in the cookie-cutter role of the seemingly less powerful party taking on a domineering foe (even though—again, it must be stressed—Fetterman has cast himself in that role because his position on Israel is callous, heinous, and out of step with the majority of people with a conscience).
That there exists some radical pro-Palestinian Democratic Party status quo that Fetterman is “bucking” is essential to maintain any pretense of an underdog narrative. But, of course, there isn’t. It’s the position of the angry base, the masses, the majority of Democrats who simply have no purchase on Capitol Hill. Fetterman is simply taking an easy, cheap, racist, pro-power position that will no doubt pay dividends in campaign contributions next cycle. It’s a boring story, but it is the story.
But Fetterman’s Maverick gambit in the media, before our eyes, shifts our attention from a substantive debate of morality and ideology and the stakes of continued support for Israel’s unprecedented brutality, into a high school cafeteria narrative about how “haterz don’t bother” Fetterman. Clearly, they don’t, and neither do the hundreds of weekly images of dead children. This doesn’t make Fetterman a “heterodox” thinker, or a brave truth teller. It makes him an asshole.
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