The Pennsylvania Senate race is one of the most bizarre in recent history. Since John Fetterman, the Democrat candidate, had a stroke 5 months ago questions have been hanging over the race. John wrote a piece about the debate itself, and analysis and commentary floods the Internet, so I won’t spend much time on the issue. If you are looking for a hot take, this isn’t it.

And really, what is there to say? Assuming Fetterman was fit to be a Senator at the beginning of the year, he clearly isn’t any more. The stroke did just too much damage to his brain to expect him to be more than a reliable vote. If the Senate is the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” as it is so often advertised, Fetterman doesn’t  fit the mold of a great deliberator. Enough said on that subject.

To me what is interesting about this race is the Democrats’ insistence on keeping Fetterman on the ballot. It would have been possible to replace him as a candidate. The ballots for the election weren’t printed 5 months ago. There is nothing shameful or shocking about changing horses when the one you are riding is crippled. And elections of this importance are not about any individuals’ feelings. The Senate helps decide issues about, literally, the fate of the country and the world. All the compassion in the universe does not excuse putting a (now) mentally unfit person into a position of power.

So what are they thinking?

The answer, obviously, is that they believe that the actual figurehead is utterly irrelevant. Just as with Joe Biden who was installed as President of the United States, the front man no longer matters–at least when it comes to Democrats. Anybody who is short of being a corpse will do just fine because it is not the candidate people vote for that does anything important.

Leave that to the Deep State, who are increasingly the ones running the country. Empty vessel politicians are easier to control. 

Biden’s inability to remain coherent for long stretches is hardly a secret. His verbal and increasingly common physical meanderings are on display for the world to see. He shakes hands with ghosts, can’t find his way across a stage, and is not fully connected to reality. All of this was true, to a lesser extent, in 2019 and 2020, and the deterioration since is obvious.

Recognizing Biden’s and Fetterman’s disabilities is not cruel–as some now are arguing–it is vital to the future of our country.

Trotting them out as world leaders is cruel–they should be getting treatment for their disabilities and in a normal world Fetterman would be getting occupational therapy, not preparing to lose a Senate race. I got occupational therapy after a bypass surgery; I can’t imagine what the doctors would normally do after a debilitating stroke. None of that is happening because the Democrats need these figureheads.

That is cruel. Using people as if they were inanimate tools is very cruel indeed.

What Biden’s and Fetterman’s campaigns have shown is that the Establishment™ actually prefers empty vessel candidates–the emptier the better. Their problem with Fetterman’s brain right now is not that he can’t think–that’s a bonus–but that he can’t speak well enough to fool the rest of us. Even the Biden-style basement campaign strategy hasn’t worked because he can’t manage 10 minutes of coherence. If he could, he would have been perfect.

The Left keeps telling us that the Deep State is a myth, but that is clearly a lie. Six years of relentlessly attacking Donald Trump is the immune response of the Deep State body working to expel an invader, and they won’t stop until they kill the invader and expel its corpse. That explains both the expansion of the security state and the campaign it is waging against Trump supporters, and that explains why we are increasingly seeing mentally vacuous Democrats being put forth to “run” the country.

Notice that Bernie Sanders–the most popular Democrat in the country by net favorability–is the least popular with the Washington Establishment. That is not because he has the least chance of winning the White House. It is because he is the least controllable of the likely candidates. Too much money, too much power is at stake to allow an independent thinker into the position. Sanders would be as bad as Trump from the Deep State’s point of view.

This is why the Establishment went all in on Hillary Clinton in 2016 (and 2008 as well, but Obama was too charismatic to lose the nomination). She embodied the Establishment and would have been its best president ever for their purposes. Biden was an adequate substitute because he would just do what he was told to, and has.

Fetterman was in this mold. The vacuity of his mind was a bonus, not a detraction, but he is failing at his other task–being just acceptable enough to actually win the election. The Left sometimes even admits it:

Here’s a truth few will say aloud but I will:

Being a senator is America’s easiest job. You just have to sit there & say “yay” or “nay.”

This notion that @JohnFetterman can’t do that job because he’s recovering from a health event is moronic — and everyone in media knows it.

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) October 26, 2022

The Deep State is taking the role of the Praetorian Guard in late empire Rome. They are trying to choose figurehead emperors who will give them what they want while pretending to be servants of the throne. The model is “politician as front man.” It was a great deal for the Praetorian Guard, not so much for anybody else, often including the Emperor himself.

Remember this as you hear Democrats scream “democracy is at risk.” They aren’t talking about saving the democratic process through which decisions are supposed to be made. They are trying to preserve the opposite–a system in which the Deep State gets to decide everything and have those decisions ratified by the figureheads “in power.” “Democracy,” to them, is a brand, not a process. It is the marketing term they use to sell their own power.

That is why they have been pushing the mentally unwell upon us as “leaders,” and that is why they viciously attack independent thinkers.