Democrats must recalibrate after President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and Republicans’ control of Congress, said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who warned an ideological push further left could keep his party in the minority.
“They have forgotten one of the reasons why we lost in 2024,” Fetterman told CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday.”
“Some people think now we have to double down on those things or we must become more progressive or more extreme. That’s absolutely not true. The seven or eight states that are going to determine who’s going to be our next president, you know, we have to win in those states, and I understand what that takes.”
Democrats have weaponized the “threat to democracy” narrative against Trump and Republicans, but actual democracy has proved elusive, and “clearly, we’ve lost the argument,” according to Fetterman.
“We’ve really lost our connection with American voters in ways,” he said, adding, “We have to turn the temperature down.”
Trump’s election is democracy, not the threat to it, he continued.
“This is not an autocrat; this is a product of a democratic election,” he said. “It’s like I participated in that. It was safe and it was secure. We lost, and the American people put us in the minority. That’s democracy.
“I revere democracy. I may not like the outcome, but I have to respect that.”
Fetterman criticized Democrats considering a government shutdown in budget talks, warning it would “harm millions of Americans,” and broke from his party on Trump’s federal crime crackdown, saying local leaders need help fighting violence.
On foreign policy, Fetterman strongly defended Israel’s strikes on Hamas and Iran, rejecting Democrat accusations that Israel is using starvation as a weapon in Gaza.
“It is hell on earth, but I blame Hamas and Iran for that,” Fetterman concluded.
Despite tensions with party leadership and his absence from caucus lunches, Fetterman said he remains a Democrat, voting with the party on major legislation, though he left open the question of whether he will seek reelection in 2028.
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