Fetterman’s health challenges were present at the Pennsylvania Senate debate, but they weren’t what was important about it.
If you watched the debate Tuesday night between Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, it was hard to ignore one major point of contrast between the two: how they communicated.
Oz is a seasoned television host who knows how to speak with polish in front of a camera. Fetterman has an I’m-just-a-normal-dude-in-a-bar conversational style of speech, which endears him to much of the public but also doesn’t always lend itself to snappy debate banter. On top of that, it was evident that Fetterman’s challenges with processing spoken language — a result of a stroke he suffered in May — made it hard for him at times to select and articulate words as he made his case for why he should be Pennsylvania’s next U.S. senator. While medical experts say there’s no reason to doubt Fetterman’s cognitive capacity, and while his overall points were intelligible, it was at times genuinely difficult to understand some of his sentences.
The glaring difference was perhaps most obvious on the issue of abortion.
In all likelihood this difference in oratorical styles is going to be at the center of pundit analyses of how the debate went, not just on the right, but likely across centrist media, as well. But it shouldn’t be.
The core distinction at the debate was that Fetterman is a progressive with sound ideas about what’s needed to make the country better, while Oz is an extremist and a political opportunist who has shape-shifted into a MAGA supporter to win Pennsylvania.
The glaring difference was perhaps most obvious on the issue of abortion.
