The left's answer to Trump is 6'8" and wears shorts in February

I asked Fetterman which politician he models himself after. He doesn’t have a model, he told me. And although American politics has a history of funky facial hair that dates back to at least Martin Van Buren, there hasn’t ever been a statewide politician like Fetterman. It’s more than Fetterman’s appearance that makes him stand out in these days of sanded-down political personalities—his policy choices and his laid-back, full-of-curses way of speaking stand out too. He’s been simultaneously tagged as a radical left-winger by state Republicans and a worrisome sellout by some progressives. In his 2018 lieutenant-governor race, Fetterman was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, but not by the influential Sanders-aligned group Our Revolution, because he is open to fracking…

Fetterman has already raised lots of money—$500,000 in just the first 72 hours he was in the race—in part as a power move to scare the opposition. “He’s doing everything right: raising money in small donations; he’s getting around the state; he’s employing his wife, who’s charming and bright and a great speaker,” says former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who wasn’t happy to see Fetterman run in the 2016 Senate primary against his own preferred candidate, in what was that year’s most complicated, divisive Democratic primary. “He’s the candidate to beat, no question.” A poll that circulated around Washington in February, in the weeks after the shotgun story resurfaced, showed that Fetterman didn’t take nearly the hit with voters that he did with the Twitterati. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who plays an active role in Democrats’ Senate-candidate recruitment, hasn’t weighed in yet. But for those who believe he’s still mad that Fetterman complicated the 2016 race, or who have noticed how unlike the usual Schumer candidate Fetterman is, I was assured that the Senate leader is interested only in expanding his party’s margins in the Senate. “A lot of activists think the party would hold grudges,” one person familiar with Schumer’s thinking told me, asking for anonymity to avoid seeming to favor Fetterman. “The only thing that counts is who’s the best candidate to win in November.”