Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. and U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman has not fully recovered from the serious stroke he suffered in May. His campaign has acknowledged his obvious struggles with “auditory processing” and speech, but the persistence of those struggles has contrasted with the campaign’s rosier predictions of a return to the rigors of campaigning, including debating his opponent, Mehmet Oz.
If Mr. Fetterman is not well enough to debate his opponent, that raises serious concerns about his ability to serve as a United States senator.
None of this excuses the antics of Mr. Oz’s campaign, which has decided that its candidate will benefit from dragging the race deeper and deeper into the muck. The low point thus far is the Oz campaign’s cruelly satirical “concession” that it will fund “any additional medical personnel [Mr. Fetterman] might need to have on standby” during a debate.
Mr. Oz has decided, oddly, to distance himself from his own campaign’s actions, as if it’s an unaffiliated super PAC. That’s not how this works: Spokespeople speak for the candidate. That’s why they’re called spokespeople. If Mr. Oz’s staff has gone rogue, he should fire them.
And if Mr. Oz would like to suggest his opponent is not being straightforward about his health — a serious but legitimate charge when competing for the intense and important work of a U.S. senator — he can do so without sandbox bullying. It was unbecoming when Donald Trump pulled these kinds of stunts, and it’s unbecoming now.
That said, Mr. Oz has raised legitimate concerns. If Mr. Fetterman’s communication skills have not yet recovered sufficiently to effectively debate his opponent, many voters will have concerns about his ability to represent them effectively in Washington. While he has gamely undertaken more campaign events and media interviews in recent weeks, Mr. Fetterman still speaks haltingly and relies on closed captioning to fully understand his conversation partners.
Mr. Fetterman’s campaign asserts confidently that he will make a full recovery, and that he is doing the hard work — including speech therapy — to accelerate that recovery. That is hopeful and laudable, but stroke recovery is notoriously unpredictable. The campaign’s early predictions proved optimistic; the more recent predictions of “several months” to a “complete recovery” may prove optimistic, too.
Mr. Oz is pressing the issue in an adolescent manner; nevertheless, a live debate is the best way to assure voters Mr. Fetterman is up to the job. The Republican’s antics have given Mr. Fetterman a plausible out: He won’t share the stage with someone who has behaved so shamefully. But that won’t cut it. Voters have a right to know whether their prospective senator can do the job — including handling the give-and-take of a vigorous debate.
https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion...s/202209020009
- berryberry
- 09-06-2022, 12:51 PM
- berryberry
- 09-06-2022, 01:31 PM
Sloth Fetterman's Brain Damage is disqualifying
"If Mr. Fetterman is not well enough to debate his opponent, that raises serious concerns about his ability to serve as a United States senator."
"If Mr. Fetterman is not well enough to debate his opponent, that raises serious concerns about his ability to serve as a United States senator."
- Salty Again
- 09-06-2022, 05:03 PM
... The Post-Gazette's as opinion-piece is yet-again
a carefully crafted Democrat cheerleader post.
Which IS everything that this liberal rag has always favoured.
And yet one more reason WHY they CANNOT SELL a daily newspaper.
Whether Fetterman can debate or not.
#### Salty
a carefully crafted Democrat cheerleader post.
Which IS everything that this liberal rag has always favoured.
And yet one more reason WHY they CANNOT SELL a daily newspaper.
Whether Fetterman can debate or not.
#### Salty
- berryberry
- 09-07-2022, 12:24 AM
New York Post - John Fetterman must debate and let Pennsylvania voters decide if he’s up to the job
{B} He is not fully recovered, though. There is no doubt his health status is an entirely legitimate issue and should be wholly litigated before Pennsylvania voters[/B] choose between Fetterman and his Republican opponent, the TV doctor Mehmet Oz.
.
.
.
Fetterman still has trouble speaking and has used closed captioning to help understand what media interviewers are saying to him over Zoom.
This is such a concern because talking (and listening) constitutes much of the job of a US senator, whether in committee hearings, on the Senate floor, in media interviews or with constituents. If his condition is anything like it is today, Fetterman would have trouble operating effectively in the Senate.
His reluctance to agree to what are standard events in any high-profile campaign, and quite valuable ones for voters, is telling
Fetterman should have to show and not tell. It is a universal law of politics that elected officials and candidates who are ailing lie about their health or at the very least shade the truth. Fetterman didn’t tell anyone he had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in 2017, and he and his team initially minimized the severity of his stroke and have been overly optimistic about his recovery.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/06/john-f...up-to-the-job/
{B} He is not fully recovered, though. There is no doubt his health status is an entirely legitimate issue and should be wholly litigated before Pennsylvania voters[/B] choose between Fetterman and his Republican opponent, the TV doctor Mehmet Oz.
.
.
.
Fetterman still has trouble speaking and has used closed captioning to help understand what media interviewers are saying to him over Zoom.
This is such a concern because talking (and listening) constitutes much of the job of a US senator, whether in committee hearings, on the Senate floor, in media interviews or with constituents. If his condition is anything like it is today, Fetterman would have trouble operating effectively in the Senate.
His reluctance to agree to what are standard events in any high-profile campaign, and quite valuable ones for voters, is telling
Fetterman should have to show and not tell. It is a universal law of politics that elected officials and candidates who are ailing lie about their health or at the very least shade the truth. Fetterman didn’t tell anyone he had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in 2017, and he and his team initially minimized the severity of his stroke and have been overly optimistic about his recovery.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/06/john-f...up-to-the-job/
- berryberry
- 09-07-2022, 10:41 AM
Sloth Fetterman hiding his brain damage from the people of Pennsylvania
BRADDOCK, Pennsylvania — On May 13, just days before the May party primary here in the Keystone State, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman suffered a stroke while on the campaign trail in Lancaster in his run for his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate.
As reporters and supporters noticed his absence, his campaign released a statement saying he had been hospitalized over that weekend after suffering a stroke caused by a clot from his heart during an episode of atrial fibrillation.
In the statement, Fetterman said: “The good news is I’m feeling much better and the doctors tell me I didn’t suffer any cognitive damage. I’m well on my way to a full recovery.”
The family referred to the medical incident as a “bump in the road.”
It was later revealed that the stroke required surgery to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator because he had a serious heart condition, one that neither reporters nor voters nor his most ardent supporters knew he had.
The public was told he would be back at the beginning of July. That moved to mid-July, then to August. With each change, no updates on his condition were made available to the press or the public.
The political ads he ran most of the summer had been recorded before the stroke. And although a flurry of Tweets did come from his account at a brisk pace, none of them provided a doctor's update on his condition. Rather, they all centered on where his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, had lived prior to 2020.
It is not clear if Fetterman does all of his own tweets or if staff do them as well. His campaign staff did not provide an answer to that question by deadline.
When Fetterman returned to the public forum in Erie, the stroke went from “a bump in the road” to him saying, “I almost died,” leaving open the delicate question of what is the extent of his illness, with no one to date offering that answer.
The few speeches he has given have been short — he visibly struggled in giving them — no direct questions from the press have been taken outside of two closed-captioned interviews, and he is surrounded by a circle of staff who do not allow people or the press to interact with him, including during the Labor Day parade where he marched encircled by dozens of staff and volunteers.
Last week, he refused to debate his Republican rival Oz in the first debate in Pittsburgh that was scheduled to happen Sept. 6 on KDKA; it remains again very unclear if he will do any debates at all.
On Tuesday, I asked Fetterman press secretary Joe Calvello whether the candidate would be releasing an update on his medical condition. I received no answer.
For most of the summer, Oz stayed on the road campaigning, and he stayed away from the issue of his opponent’s health. When he finally questioned Fetterman over his apparent unwillingness to commit to a debate and raised the issue if he was going to campaign or just run from his basement, the very online became very irate.
Former state Sen. and state party Democratic Chairman T.J. Rooney says running against someone with medical issues is always a delicate balance for the opponent. “I know we had to run against then-Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who had had a series of health problems when he served the state in the Senate,” he said. “It's incredibly tricky because the one thing you don't want to do is come across as kind of cold, callous, uncaring. Anytime you raise a delicate issue, you walk a very, very fine line. As a candidate, you want to make your point, but you want to do so in a way that's not offensive because at the end of the day, the vast overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians have faced some sort of health maladies.”
Former Specter chief of staff David Urban said the difference between Specter and Fetterman is that Specter made all of his health problems public. “He never ran away from what he was going through with his diagnosis of an advanced form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his triple bypass surgery, or his brain tumor back in 1996,” said Urban. “I remember that it was very important to him that he was very transparent about each of them.”
“The fact that Fetterman hasn't made his doctors available, or anybody available, is pretty bad," he added. "It flies in the face of the transparency that he has said was important to him since he first ran,” said Urban.
Urban, a Pennsylvania native who is a CNN contributor and Republican strategist not working on the Oz campaign, said, “I think everybody understands that John Fetterman had a stroke, his campaign said that he's got some cognitive issues, and that he's going to recover, but if there's nothing wrong, then come out and say that. Have your doctor say that. Be transparent about it,” he said.
G. Terry Madonna, political science professor at Millersville University, said the average voter has not paid attention to this so far, now that Labor Day is gone and past and voters are starting to scrutinize each candidate, they are going to want to know what is going on with the lieutenant governor.
“Fetterman and his team have an obligation to be transparent," he said. "He's a candidate for a major office."
Madonna said the delicacy and balance of how you run against someone who has had medical issues is just as difficult for the press covering that candidate. “I think when somebody has a health problem, great care has to be covered in terms of how you handle it," he said. "That doesn't mean you don't have to report it, but you have to be sure you're reporting it accurately."
When the campaign does not answer those questions from reporters, Madonna said what you are left with are reporters unable to tell voters the full story.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...john-fetterman
BRADDOCK, Pennsylvania — On May 13, just days before the May party primary here in the Keystone State, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman suffered a stroke while on the campaign trail in Lancaster in his run for his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate.
As reporters and supporters noticed his absence, his campaign released a statement saying he had been hospitalized over that weekend after suffering a stroke caused by a clot from his heart during an episode of atrial fibrillation.
In the statement, Fetterman said: “The good news is I’m feeling much better and the doctors tell me I didn’t suffer any cognitive damage. I’m well on my way to a full recovery.”
The family referred to the medical incident as a “bump in the road.”
It was later revealed that the stroke required surgery to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator because he had a serious heart condition, one that neither reporters nor voters nor his most ardent supporters knew he had.
The public was told he would be back at the beginning of July. That moved to mid-July, then to August. With each change, no updates on his condition were made available to the press or the public.
The political ads he ran most of the summer had been recorded before the stroke. And although a flurry of Tweets did come from his account at a brisk pace, none of them provided a doctor's update on his condition. Rather, they all centered on where his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, had lived prior to 2020.
It is not clear if Fetterman does all of his own tweets or if staff do them as well. His campaign staff did not provide an answer to that question by deadline.
When Fetterman returned to the public forum in Erie, the stroke went from “a bump in the road” to him saying, “I almost died,” leaving open the delicate question of what is the extent of his illness, with no one to date offering that answer.
The few speeches he has given have been short — he visibly struggled in giving them — no direct questions from the press have been taken outside of two closed-captioned interviews, and he is surrounded by a circle of staff who do not allow people or the press to interact with him, including during the Labor Day parade where he marched encircled by dozens of staff and volunteers.
Last week, he refused to debate his Republican rival Oz in the first debate in Pittsburgh that was scheduled to happen Sept. 6 on KDKA; it remains again very unclear if he will do any debates at all.
On Tuesday, I asked Fetterman press secretary Joe Calvello whether the candidate would be releasing an update on his medical condition. I received no answer.
For most of the summer, Oz stayed on the road campaigning, and he stayed away from the issue of his opponent’s health. When he finally questioned Fetterman over his apparent unwillingness to commit to a debate and raised the issue if he was going to campaign or just run from his basement, the very online became very irate.
Former state Sen. and state party Democratic Chairman T.J. Rooney says running against someone with medical issues is always a delicate balance for the opponent. “I know we had to run against then-Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, who had had a series of health problems when he served the state in the Senate,” he said. “It's incredibly tricky because the one thing you don't want to do is come across as kind of cold, callous, uncaring. Anytime you raise a delicate issue, you walk a very, very fine line. As a candidate, you want to make your point, but you want to do so in a way that's not offensive because at the end of the day, the vast overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians have faced some sort of health maladies.”
Former Specter chief of staff David Urban said the difference between Specter and Fetterman is that Specter made all of his health problems public. “He never ran away from what he was going through with his diagnosis of an advanced form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his triple bypass surgery, or his brain tumor back in 1996,” said Urban. “I remember that it was very important to him that he was very transparent about each of them.”
“The fact that Fetterman hasn't made his doctors available, or anybody available, is pretty bad," he added. "It flies in the face of the transparency that he has said was important to him since he first ran,” said Urban.
Urban, a Pennsylvania native who is a CNN contributor and Republican strategist not working on the Oz campaign, said, “I think everybody understands that John Fetterman had a stroke, his campaign said that he's got some cognitive issues, and that he's going to recover, but if there's nothing wrong, then come out and say that. Have your doctor say that. Be transparent about it,” he said.
G. Terry Madonna, political science professor at Millersville University, said the average voter has not paid attention to this so far, now that Labor Day is gone and past and voters are starting to scrutinize each candidate, they are going to want to know what is going on with the lieutenant governor.
“Fetterman and his team have an obligation to be transparent," he said. "He's a candidate for a major office."
Madonna said the delicacy and balance of how you run against someone who has had medical issues is just as difficult for the press covering that candidate. “I think when somebody has a health problem, great care has to be covered in terms of how you handle it," he said. "That doesn't mean you don't have to report it, but you have to be sure you're reporting it accurately."
When the campaign does not answer those questions from reporters, Madonna said what you are left with are reporters unable to tell voters the full story.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...john-fetterman