Yesterday, Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman released a statement giving some lame excuse for why he would not debate his Republican challenger, Dr. Mehmet Oz, next week.
The Oz campaign was mean to him, the lumbering Fetterman whined.
On Twitter, where he does 99% of his campaigning, John Fetterman has been relentlessly mocking and attacking Dr. Oz for months.
He mocks Dr. Oz for coming from New Jersey, for how many homes he owns, and for daring to describe a vegetable platter as “crudités.”
Even during his rare campaign events, the Fetterman campaign can’t get enough of mocking his Republican challenger. Over the weekend, Fetterman campaign staffers even dressed up in broccoli costumes. Because when your entire campaign consists of mocking “crudités,” you put your dignity aside and get up like a vegetable.
Fetterman plays the tough guy on Twitter. But the moment the Oz campaign hits back, he simpers like a thin-skinned toddler and whines, “No FAIR!!!!!”
But John Fetterman’s stroke leaving him nearly incapable of basic human speech is a big deal, no matter how much his campaign and the compliant press might want to deny it. The Oz campaign would be stupid not to raise the issue often and loudly.
After a video clip showing Fetterman struggling to formulate a sentence during a recent campaign speech went viral on social media, the reporters covering his campaign stopped posting videos, opting for still photos instead.
Why?
Because watching this man struggle to make his way through a simple sentence is alarming and concerning. It raises the very valid question, is John Fetterman capable of serving a six-year term in the United States Senate?
Fetterman isn’t backing out of next week’s debate because Dr. Oz’s campaign “mocked” him for having a stroke.
He’s backing out because he had a stroke that rendered him incapable of coherent speech.
So while Dr. Oz has been crisscrossing the state, driving thousands of miles while making campaign stops by the hundreds, this guy retreats to the basement like Biden while his campaign staffers post snarky memes on Twitter.
But there are problems with running a statewide campaign entirely on Twitter.
Instead of connecting with actual voters, you resort to playing to the cheap seats, begging for retweets and gleeful press coverage that might appeal to far-left ResistanceLOL Democrats in deep blue urban areas but won’t do a thing to move the needle with voters in your state.
Nikki Fried made the same mistake during her quixotic primary campaign for governor of Florida.
Fried’s campaign operated almost entirely for the benefit of nationwide members of the Twitter ResistanceLOL.
While she might have gotten a lot of retweets and campaign donations from Pussy hat-wearing wine moms in northern Virginia who have 
and 
in their Twitter handles, Nikki Fried did diddly-squat to reach out to actual Democrat primary voters in Florida.
Fetterman’s campaign people who run his social media “engagement” are following the Fried model, but not for the same reasons. Unlike Nikki Fried who fancied herself a hot social media “influencer,” the Fetterman team has to resort to Twitter because they have to limit how much actual voters see and hear their candidate.
The Fetterman campaign is following the Nikki Fried Model on social media and the “Biden-hiding-in-the-basement” Model in real life.
The lumbering oaf won’t debate Dr. Oz because Pennsylvania voters will be able to watch a debate from the comfort of their homes, meaning far more of them are likely to see and hear firsthand just how much damage that stroke did to the guy.
And all the snarky “crudités” tweets in the world wouldn’t be able to hide it.