Three months ago John Fetterman, “tattooed giant” with a shaved head and goatee, defeated TV’s famous Dr. Oz in the midterm elections for the Senate in Pennsylvania. Although he was a former mayor and lieutenant governor, he had been helped by the aura from «man of the people who does not speak like the usual democratic politicians». He had guaranteed the party a majority of 51 seats, making the left dream of having identified a way to regain the vote of white voters working class without betraying progressivism.
Fetterman he had been absent for two months from that election campaign after suffering a stroke, but despite the criticisms for the communication difficulties evident during a televised debate with his rival, the voters had rewarded him. When he met them, he asked if anyone had had similar experiences in the family: many raised their hands. The stroke had highlighted his humanity and made more powerful the promise to help those who fall to get up: “I will fight for every small town that has felt left behind,” he promised in his victory speech.
The 53-year-old Senator from Pennsylvania Thursday said he was hospitalized in Washington for clinical depression, on the advice of the congressional doctor: “John has suffered from depression all his life, but it has worsened in recent days,” explains his staff. He was visibly ill during Biden’s State of the Union speech on February 7: he said he felt “dazed”, had gone to the hospital to undergo checkups, but a second stroke had been ruled out.
It is again the fragility of this sinewy man – whose physical strength is a central part of his political identity – is once again the subject of conflict in America. While the entire Democratic party awaits his return and praises him for his courage in speaking about mental problems that politicians often hide, several right-wing commentators are calling for Fetterman’s resignation. Already during the election, Tucker Carlson on Fox Newscalled him “brain-damaged” and Republicans accused him of lying about his real state of health. Fetterman promised, “I’ll be much better in January, while Oz will still be a hustler.”
But in the Senate, where he has abandoned sweatshirts and bermuda shorts for a jacket and tie, he has had a hard time adjusting because of problems processing brain sounds. They put a screen in his office with a program that translates what is being said into subtitles in real time, and he always has an iPad with him that allows him to interact with individual colleagues as well, but in the corridors he no longer stops to talk to reporters who used to call him directly on his cell phone and his patienceexplains an assistant, she was tested by daily difficulties.
Last week he asked a question about organic farming and trade, and though he stumbled a bit, his advisers released the video (the rural white electorate was crucial to his victory). Loneliness doesn’t help: in Washington Fetterman lives alone and returns on the weekend to Braddock in Pennsylvania (four hours by car), to his wife Gisele and their three teenage children.
It is no longer 1972, when Senator Thomas Eagletonchosen by George McGovern as a deputy in the race for president, was forced to retire after it was discovered that he had been hospitalized ten years earlier for depression (but even then he was re-elected to the Senate).
Many war veterans live with PTSD, and some sit in Congress. Two deputies, Tina Smith of Minnesota and Richie Torres of New York, revealed yesterday that they were hospitalized for depression before being elected: “Millions of Americans are rooting for you, Senator.” But the debate on social media and on TV is brutal. Even Gisele Fetterman, already a target of the right for having arrived as a child as an irregular immigrant from Brazil, pays the price: on Fox Newsthey compare her to Lady Macbeth: «She used her sick husband as a vehicle to achieve her ambitions».
