Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., gives thumbs up in an elevator while departing a Senate vote at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 15, 2026. Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Sen. John Fetterman may switch parties, and the reason is simple: The Democrat from Pennsylvania loves nothing like he loves media coverage.

Adam Jentleson, Fetterman’s former chief of staff who now heads the centrist Searchlight Institute think tank, said as much this week.

“I think, if he is the majority-maker, he will flip, because it would give him a massive amount of attention,” Jentleson said.

It’s not hard to see why someone as addicted to attention as Fetterman would make a big deal out of leaving his party, nor why he has doubled and tripled down on it in the past week. After all, this is the same man who has made a spectacle of his appearance, walking around the Senate halls in a hoodie and shorts rather than conform to the business dress code of his peers.

Since October 2023, his relationship with the progressive wing of his party has been strained, primarily because of a divide over support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Fetterman is now willing to use his leverage as key player for control of the chamber to help Israel — the main reason he’s said he could change sides. If Democrats continue to oppose Israel, he said, specifically if they do so in their party platform, Fetterman says he’s likely to split.

“If our party ever becomes, and just makes it official, the anti-Israel party, that’s when I would leave because that’s been a moral clarity for me,” Fetterman said at a convention in Washington last week.

A majority of Pennsylvania Democrats want him to leave the party.

Swiping at his own party aren’t out of character, and are part of what has led to a rift with the Democratic base. Fetterman’s closeness to right-wing media and penchant for punching left, as well as his loyalty to Israel, make him both a target of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and one of the least popular incumbents in the country.

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Predictably, a bare majority of Pennsylvania Democrats want him to leave the party, almost assuring he won’t make it out of a primary. But switching to the GOP wouldn’t lead to a cakewalk reelection either.

By his own admission, Fetterman would be dogged by his own very socially liberal voting record in a Republican primary where he’s also certain to face defeat.

That leaves running as an independent who caucuses with Republicans, a move guaranteed to play spoiler for one party’s hopes to control the Senate in 2028, though it’s unclear who he’d hurt more.

Presidential Run?

Antipathy to the left now defines much of his politics.

Earlier this year, in June and July, Fetterman was receiving lots of attention for his criticisms of former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, repeatedly claiming that there were intimate images of the upstart Democrat online and referring to him as his Reddit moniker, “P-Hustle.”

On June 10, the day after Platner won his primary, NOTUS reporter Igor Bobic posted on X that Fetterman was haranguing him about the Maine Democrat — “You wanna talk about P-Hustle? You wanna talk about P-Hustle?” — as soon as Bobic entered the Senate building. Fetterman continued with a line that must have been rehearsed: “Have we become the pro-dick party?”

He ignored that due to pressure from the Democratic Party that Platner dropped out of the general election race earlier this month.

This level of embarrassing, childish behavior calls to mind Elon Musk, whose awkward hamming it up to fulfill his need for attention culminated in a number of humiliating appearances on the campaign trail alongside Donald Trump in 2024.

Fetterman doesn’t appear to be quite ready to go onstage and leap around with a MAGA hat on, but testing the waters for a party switch is certainly a step forward into whatever comes next.

There are signs the next move could be Fetterman’s own run for president.

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According to reporting from the Philadelphia Inquirer in May, Fetterman lost interest in the day-to-day of the Senate and has his sights set on the White House. One aide described the senator as “disengaged” and said “he doesn’t read memos, he’s taking very few meetings … the job is just a platform for him to run for president, that’s all he cares about.”

A run for president would be welcome news to friend Bill Maher, the acerbic right-wing comedian, who has been pushing for a Fetterman 2028 run since last year.

Maher isn’t the only conservative giving Fetterman a platform. Fox News hosted him more than 50 times in 2026 alone, according to the Washington Examiner, giving the senator the incentive to continue to make news by attacking fellow Democrats.

He’s taken to the role with gusto, recently attacking New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for protecting Haitian migrants from the federal courts and scolding Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for endorsing Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed.

Anything for attention — and Fox is smart enough to take advantage of that.

Don’t Negotiate

One might try to explain away this behavior by pointing to Fetterman’s well-publicized health struggles.

Last May, New York Magazine reported his behavior has become increasingly erratic since a stroke in 2022, shortly before he was elected to the Senate.

The article lists several serious claims, including that Fetterman reads news articles on his phone while driving at high speeds, got into a car accident that injured his wife, and bought a gun.

Putting this all on the stroke and subsequent health issues, however, is too easy. Fetterman’s affinity for Israel was enough of a selling point for Democratic Majority for Israel that the group celebrated his willingness to “lean into” the relationship in an April 2022 press release.

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And for all the progressive political rhetoric he relied on to make his pitch to voters, Fetterman has always prioritized the stingy approval of his hard-right Republican father, who now calls the senator to congratulate him whenever he appears on Fox News.

Whatever the case, the attention-seeking, left-punching Fetterman is who we have now.

The best way to handle a child who is acting out is to ignore them and not reward their behavior. As Jentleson put it, they “should not debase themselves by trying to negotiate with him.”

That’s the approach Democrats should take: Leave Fetterman to serve out the rest of his term as a marginal member of a bare majority, should it come to that.

The post Fetterman Might Leave Democratic Party Because the Only Thing He Loves More Than Israel Is Attention appeared first on The Intercept.

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