John Fetterman has been mayor of the borough of Braddock, PA (just outside of Pittsburgh) for about 10 years, and is pretty popular there. SnappleBC had a great post up a couple weeks ago, making note of Fetterman in one of his writeups on down-ticket races, but I thought it would be good to share this interview too, since it recently got noticed by Bill Moyers' team (it originally appeared at "In These Times").

Fetterman is seriously worthy of "Sanders Democrat" status, and has already endorsed Bernie. This is a big deal in this part of Allegheny County--I was born and raised about 30 miles from Braddock, and have seen firsthand (and get a good dose every time I go home to visit) that while the city of Pittsburgh itself is pretty damned blue, you get a couple miles outside of town in just about any direction, and you start falling over a lot of disenfranchised indies who lean red and a lot of GOP in general. There's a lot of distrust of Big Government and a shit-ton of hatred of limousine liberals. Fetterman has wooed those voters and it sounds like he's making quite a few inroads with them:

Republicans contact me all the time saying, “Look, I may not agree with everything you’re saying, but I’m changing my registration to vote for you because I respect what you do.”

But what has he done for the borough? A lot--this is simply amazing:

We’ve gone five-and-a-half years with- out a murder. We eliminated the extreme violence that was endemic to the community, through a community policing model that doesn’t generate civilian complaints or allegations of abuse. After the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center closed its hospital in town, we opened an urgent care center and restored affordable healthcare to our citizens. We’ve also been able to attract small businesses back.

I am so heartened to see this happening in my old stomping grounds. This is a critical race, and it's a great interview, to boot. Flipping Pat Toomey out of his cushy-ass bought-off Senate seat would be a major coup. The whole interview is an excellent read, but this is one of my favorite points:

Donald Trump’s slogan is “Make America Great Again.” Is there an alternative narrative that you’d like to advance?

My campaign has released a one-sentence press release calling Donald Trump a “jagoff ,” which is Western Pennsylvania for jerk. Populism has a dark side and Donald Trump is mining that for all it’s worth by saying reprehensible things about Muslims, about immigrants, about you name it. If you get to live vicariously through that and cheer him on, I don’t expect to get your vote, and frankly, I don’t want it.

A JAGOFF! LOL! That's perfect. It's funny, though, I think Fetterman's just watching his tongue when he says it means "jerk", it's one of those all-purpose Pittsburghese slang words that can mean more than that, depending on how you say it

ANYway, Fetterman is definitely for real, full-stop. He GETS it:

In Pennsylvania, you either live in a legacy city, used to live in one or still have family there. We want to see these cities succeed. Why have we squandered trillions of dollars on unsuccessful interventions in the Middle East yet let our communities fall into despair?

Do you describe yourself as populist?

I would describe myself as a realist. It’s real that you can’t live off $9 an hour. Climate change is real. I think we can all agree that you shouldn’t hear gunshots at night. I don’t call that populist. It’s just the commonsense characteristics of a compassionate democracy.

Pennsylvania could get it together and start getting back to a decent standard of living for all its residents, starting in November, if they could vote out that lickspittle Pat Toomey and elect John Fetterman. This is so great to see--I wish him much luck and will probably pony up a ten spot or two to his campaign (you can do that here). Thanks for reading!