Fetterman for President?

That’s not possible? Oh, yes it is.

Many people now, including influential swamp-based Democrats, are worried about Joe Biden, who is technically the president.

Biden is an unusual president. He shakes hands with invisible people, speaks words unknown to linguists, recalls events of no provenance, was once hurried away from unscreened questions — this actually happened — by a staffer in an Easter Bunny costume, sometimes refers to the Vice President as “President Harris” and sometimes refers to himself as a senator.

Democrats can see Biden’s problem recognizing reality but prefer not to look at his policy problems, which include open borders globalizing U.S. entitlements, open jail cells with criminals returned to terrorize the streets of Democrat-run cities, and open inflation created by leftist-fantasy spending.

Such policies add up, even for policy makers who can’t count. And they impact everyone, especially the non-reading base that Democrats count on.

Biden should be easy to replace, but the Democrats’ supply of replacements is meager. The Vice President and Transportation Secretary are both believed to be eager to launch new presidential campaigns, this time ones that people don’t laugh at. But they’re like Joe in being unusual and averse to work. VP Harris is best known for giggling and baby talk. Pete Buttigieg is best known for taking a two-month paternity leave during a national transportation / supply chain crisis. 

Other Democrat options for presidential replacement also inspire nobody to hum Hail To The Chief. The party’s better-known figures are either Biden-esque in longevity and acuity or young and educated by television. Or currently ruining California. Or, while ruining Illinois, appear to have swallowed Chicago.

Maybe the Democrats need a less obvious option for 2024, assuming democracy survives that long. I’d say they have one, a “sleeper” of sorts, whose political profile would appear pleasantly familiar to approximately 80 million voting Americans. That’s John Fetterman, recently elected senator from Pennsylvania through big vote margins rung up in the state’s largest cities.

A skeptic might call that a non-option: “Fetterman? Isn’t he that huge guy who lived with his parents until he was 50, wears black hoodies to public events, has Biden’s rhetorical skills, and frightens little children? He couldn’t possibly be the next president.”

Oh, yes he could.

Another impossible-seeming presidential candidate recently (on his third try) got elected. In that election, as in the previous one, the true first presidential choice of the largest Democrat bloc — young products of government schools and people who get paychecks from those schools — was Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist dedicated to justice and anger. 

Sanders’ devotion to socialist dreamscapes goes back to the Carter / disco era. Progressing into the ‘80s, he and his bride chose as their romantic honeymoon destination the Soviet Union, where they had an up-close view of his ideology’s consequences, yet kept the faith. You wonder whether solidarity with 120 proof Russian vodka might have helped him there.

Democrat leaders are aware that, hip as socialism has become among students, retired students, and others who don’t work in the private sector, voters in most non-hip regions cling to old-school rejection of socialism. Unlike many voters in America’s hip enclaves, these clingers do not want an economy based on free everything, whether handed out in dollars, rubles, or bolívars.

So in 2016 Democrat string-pullers maneuvered to elbow Sanders aside and fix their presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton. That didn’t end well. Hillary’s campaign of snooty presidential entitlement put off enough swing voters to push a Reality TV performer across the finish line.

But again Bernie resisted going away, and in 2020 the party leadership again faced a Democrat-voters-for-socialism problem. This time they found a Bernie blocker with a bonus: good old Joe Biden, who was not likely to quibble about the policies gift-wrapped for him by far-left advisors.

With the Reality TV guy as the incumbent and the challenger safely hidden in a basement, Joe became the harvested-vote winner and president . . . technically.

Consider how strategically well-positioned for the Democrats’ next presidential nomination Sen. Fetterman would be. Like Biden, he has no clear allegiance to socialism. Like Biden, Fetterman also — 

• is not as painfully dislikable as Hillary
• can be kept largely out of view (in fact, must be)
• believes in the politics of freebies (or just never thinks about it)
• has a certain enigmatic quality

Fetterman would reassure undemanding voters. Those people have already voted for a candidate who has trouble thinking critically and speaking coherently but, once elected, would agree to mail checks to people who like staying on the couch, watching Netflix, and switching to stretch pants.

Fetterman offers four more years of that type of presidency. The string-pullers would only need to (1) retain the advisors who tell a president what his policies are, and (2) keep the basement comfy.

“Progress Through Couch Comfort” could be the Fetterman campaign slogan. John could take up Joe’s torch before Joe drops it and burns something down. 

And wouldn’t Fetterman bring continuity to the presidency?