According to Vanity Fair, “At a towering six feet eight inches, sporting a goatee, a shaved head, and often a uniform of Carhartt and shorts, Fetterman is a physically striking candidate, particularly when he was juxtaposed against his main rival in the race, Lamb, the polished politician, typically seen with neatly combed hair and a crisp collared shirt. … The Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary was billed along ideological lines; Lamb in the moderate, centrist lane, often boasting the benefits of bipartisanship, and Fetterman, conversely, positioning himself as a progressive outsider in the race.”
When I think about a fighter in the Democratic Party, Fetterman is the “central casting” figure I imagine. Despite all the topics about which traitor trump was utterly clueless, he was a marketing “genius” — I use the term very loosely — to people he rightly regarded as mostly idiotic lemmings. This holds true on both sides of the aisle, but fortunately, Democrats benefit from being more informed than RepubliKKKlans, so they typically can make better-informed decisions. All things being equal, Democrats need a politician who looks like he can walk into a bar and kick a**. I’m sorry to boil it down to such simplistic terms, but that’s how most people make political decisions — visual cues and mental shortcuts. People do far less reasoning than we give them credit. I had RepubliKKKlan friends admit they vote “the way their dad” does or they “pick the first name,” which is why candidates fight over name position on the ballot. Indeed, I would even go so far as to say Senator Lamb had the misfortune of his sir name being so weak sounding against Fetterman because names also matter on a ballot. (Why do you think “Trump” as a name works so well?) Again, these are mental shortcuts people use to make decisions in the absence of information or even in possession of information but when knowledge cannot be processed. If Democrats want to beat RepubliKKlans, then they need to start playing their game, which includes candidates that look like they can take the opponent out — literally and metaphorically.