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The price of dissenting from orthodoxy in Washington these days is high--if you're a Democrat. If you're a Republican who supports higher taxes or Big Labor, you're hailed as a free-thinker. But a Democrat who dissents on Israel becomes Public Enemy Number 2 after Donald Trump.
That's the treatment now descending on Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, as former aides and fellow Democrats feed stories intended to drive him from the Senate. Sources who decline to be identified say he neglects semiofficial duties such as constituent meetings, committee hearings and public funerals, but that he appears on cable-news shows with regularity (including, mortal sin, Fox News). Readers can decide if these are serious offenses among the cast of dedicated saints known as the U.S. Congress.
Mr. Fetterman's real offense is political. He's a consistent progressive on taxes, healthcare, climate, guns, social issues and much else. But he vocally supports Israel in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah, backs President Trump's war in Iran, and rejects such progressive-left follies as abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and defunding the police.
Such heterodoxy probably benefits Democrats by making their party seem less crazy. A lot of thanks he gets--his Democratic colleagues evidently want to ruin him.
Mr. Fetterman's defections from the party line have been few by comparison with previous eras. But progressives thought Pennsylvania had elected a dependable left-winger in 2022 and haven't overcome the shock that he has a mind of his own. Mr. Fetterman nearly died of a stroke days before his 2022 primary, and the close encounter with mortality altered his political outlook. He told the Journal in an interview last year that many Democrats "want more of the performative stuff, the yelling and the explosive things. But I've lost my taste for that."
The sight of protesters denouncing Israel hours after the savage Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, also gave him a jolt. Mr. Fetterman's emphatic support for the Jewish state has had the effect of highlighting Democratic leaders' reluctance to speak unequivocally about the left's flirtation with antisemitism. For that reason alone, they want him out of the way.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan's Senate race and an anti-Israel obsessive, gave the game away when he named as a top priority once in office the defeat of Mr. Fetterman in a 2028 primary. "You put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message," Mr. El-Sayed said with his usual charm.
The attack on Mr. Fetterman's alleged laxity in carrying out his duties is intended to provide progressive Democrats the talking points they need to promote a primary challenge, assuming they can't drive him to announce his retirement first. Expect more such accounts in the press, replete with quotes from unidentified party officials.
An anonymous group of former Fetterman staffers has started a social-media account promising to share their old boss's supposed misdeeds. The tattlers say they're "disgusted with what he's become," and they're leaking private emails and text messages in a clear violation of their staff obligations.
They'll feign indignation about poor office behavior, but what angers them is his occasional votes with Republicans, his refusal to indulge in hysteria about Mr. Trump and, especially, his unapologetic support for Israel. This is intolerable in today's Democratic Party.
-- Wall Street Journal