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A few days ago, I watched something fun, and I think fairly hopeful, play out on (of all places) X.
First, a bit of backstory.
In 2022, then-Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) ran for Senate with the backing of basically the entire Democratic Party establishment. Unfortunately for Lamb, his rival in the primary was larger-than-life: John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s 6’8” lieutenant governor who looked and dressed like a dive-bar bouncer and freewheeled his campaign. Fetterman claimed the mantle of progressivism (one he’d later disavow) and had a pretty good claim on it: He’d endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016 and was unafraid to take sides in the culture war.
Lamb, by contrast, was a bit of a stiff. He’s a marine and a former prosecutor, the kind of moderate candidate Democratic Party leaders, campaign committees, and fundraisers love to recruit, so that they can throw more résumés at their image problems. He won his House seat in a 2018 special election, during peak Trump resistance, when (as now) Democrats were winning off-cycle elections all over the country. In that fevered climate, Lamb sneaked to victory in an R+10 district, but he presumed to have discovered a secret formula for success: ignore the resistance, downplay Trump, and talk about health care a lot.
“When Mr. Lamb won in March 2018, he served notice for Democrats aiming to wrest control of the House and give the party control of at least one lever of the federal government,” the [ [link removed] ]New York Times [ [link removed] ]reported in August 2020 [ [link removed] ], amid Trump’s myriad pandemic failures. “The answer to defeating Trump-aligned Republican candidates was not to emphasize the president’s erratic, divisive tenure in the Oval Office. Instead Democratic candidates focused narrowly on policies affecting voters’ lives, like protecting provisions in the Affordable Care Act.”
“The other side’s offering chaos. They’re offering civil war in America,” Lamb once said [ [link removed] ]. Let’s make this real clear: We’re offering you more of your own money. Plus dentures and glasses and hearing aids. That sounds like a pretty good idea to me.”
You can see why Lamb crushed Fetterman in the Democratic endorsements race. But that’s also how he lost the Senate primary to Fetterman.
Defeating Lamb was a pyrrhic victory for the left. Between a severe stroke on the eve of the 2022 midterms, war in Gaza, and Trump’s return to power, Fetterman has come to cut a very different figure in office than he did on the campaign trail. Some of his progressive critics—the ones who invested the most hope in him—are too harsh. He isn’t the second coming of Kyrsten Sinema, he never hid his bias for Israel. But he did try to disclaim the label “progressive” after wearing it proudly, and he lost his appetite to fight Republicans.
His evolution culminated earlier this month in his decision to vote with Republicans to give Elon Musk and Donald Trump free rein to impound tax dollars and sabotage the government.
Now back to X—which, for the most part, has become the online equivalent of a syphilis epidemic.
Fetterman, still happy to fight with fellow Democrats, lashed out at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her plea for Senate Democrats to “fight harder.”
“‘Fight ‘harder’,” Fetterman sniffed [ [link removed] ], “a stunt that would have harmed millions and plunged us into chaos. We kept our government open. Deal with it.”
Re-enter Conor Lamb. Moderate or not, he sided with AOC [ [link removed] ].
You are collaborating with - rather than fighting - people who:
-destroyed union rights at Philly airport;
-singled out a huge employer in our state (Penn) for a $175m cut;
-announced closure of mine safety offices and even one for the Flight 93 memorial.
Just this week.
A grateful but contrite AOC responded to Lamb [ [link removed] ], “I was wrong about you and I’m sorry 😭 Where do I submit my Conor Lamb apology form.”
“No need,” Lamb replied [ [link removed] ], “clearly we have been on the same side of the oligarchy question (against) and protecting social security and Medicare (for)….lets make that team as big as possible. Good luck on the road.”
Before extrapolating from this exchange, a couple of to-be-sures:
To be sure, Lamb is out of office, where tough talk comes easy. And, to be sure, he seems to genuinely resent Fetterman. It isn’t a foregone conclusion that, if he’d become senator, he’d be fighting Trump in a way Fetterman is not.
But I think it’s pretty likely.
Which means I, too, was wrong about Conor Lamb. Yes, it’s uncanny when Democrats embrace a strategy of ignoring the elephant in the room. But he ultimately voted for Trump’s first impeachment, and I suspect this version of Fetterman wouldn’t have. I still fear that future Democratic majorities will be too Lamb-like—too conflict averse, too intent on looking forward—but I think his exchange with AOC articulates a basis for Democrats to become a bigger tent of a party. AOC is Sanders’ heir apparent, Lamb is an institutionalist. But if Democrats are home to all Americans and public servants whose only two litmus tests for membership are protecting the safety net, and refusal to collaborate with aspiring dictators, they will grow and be able to win again in parts of the country they assumed were lost forever.
Sign up here for a more fighting opposition.
SHEEP OF FAITH
As Democrats regroup, they’re torn between those who want to strip away litmus tests for good standing in Democratic politics, and those who fear that would open the door to various undesirables: conspiracy theorists, racists, scammers.
There are reasonable concerns on both sides of this debate. ...

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