Fetterman pans Oz for drinking red wine at a Pennsylvania tailgate — and gets owned by the locals
With polls tightening and the U.S. Senate race coming down the wire in Pennsylvania, Democrat John Fetterman has resorted to ad hominem attacks to distract from his sorry record — and the stupider and pettier, the better.
He's down to calling his Republican rival, Mehmet "Dr. Oz" Oz, a puppy-killer, a bad doctor, a guy who looks like some character in The Simpsons...and, heaven forfend, a man who drinks red wine instead of beer at tailgates:
Nothing says ‘I’m a regular Pennsylvanian’ like sipping a glass of red wine at a tailgate pic.twitter.com/ZgHBkYPWhV
— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) October 4, 2022
That didn't go over well with regular Pennsylvanians, who drink wine and beer at tailgate parties, and didn't particularly like being stereotyped rather narrowly as beer-drinking hardhats.
On Twitter, Fetterman got responses like this:
Hey, I grew up a regular Pennsylvanian and I would do red wine, too, at a tailgate. Beer makes me have to pee
— Irene Baldwin (@IreneBa54495780) October 5, 2022
You realize that people from Pennsylvania drink wine, right?
— Shay Patrick Cormac (@ShayCormac_1) October 4, 2022
Pennsylvania has more than 400 wineries.
— Rabbit Å (@rabbitrun60) October 4, 2022
Not that Fetterman would know, but the PA Farm Show features PA winemakers every year. They're good, honest people who believe in their product. If you attend, you can sample their wines -- and buy a bottle if you like.
— Rabbit Å (@rabbitrun60) October 4, 2022
yes, they do.
— Shay Patrick Cormac (@ShayCormac_1) October 4, 2022
I've seen it done at Eagles tailgates
To everyone saying NOBODY drinks wine at tailgates, that’s not entirely true. I’ve actually seen quite a few women drink wine at tailgates.
— Your Mom Goes to College рџ‡єрџ‡ёвњќпёЏ (@Jayrowes93) October 5, 2022
Fetterman is playing the role of a "man of the people", and he imagines this is what would enrage "the people"
— Bourbon -Angry Intel- Goggles (@BourbonGoggles) October 4, 2022
Um hello? Penn State alumna here who has drunk red wine at tailgates. I guess fetterman prefers weed.
— teaandscones (@teaandscones2) October 4, 2022
Yes, Pennsylvanians, like everyone else, enjoy wine and beer at tailgate parties. Oz is hardly inappropriate here in this picture holding a plastic cup of red wine with some young people who are holding two red cups of what might be beer or soda or even water between themselves. The plastic cup suggests that red wine was being served, probably out of a box, to lots of tailgate party attendees. Wine is popular and available to people of all classes, as any aficionado of Two Buck Chuck can attest. It's even considered healthy, according to many studies, so Oz was going healthy, an appropriate thing for a medical doctor to do, and hardly a classist thing.
What I think is happening here is that Fetterman, or someone in his camp, was aware of a famous story, which I believe I read in the 1980 Official Preppy Handbook, about how patrician pol Sargent Shriver, out on the campaign trail several decades ago, walked into a West Virginia tavern full of coal miners, and loudly announced: "Bartender, a round of beers for the boys...and a Courvoisier for me!"
...which could very well mean that Fetterman is an avid reader of the Preppy Handbook, something that doesn't exactly make him a hardhat himself.
Many observers, Pennsylvanian and otherwise, pointed to Fetterman's obvious patrician background, which is so at odds with his suggestion that regular guys only drink beer at tailgates:
Fetterman went to Harvard, got paid a 50k annual allowance from his parents well into his forties, and lived for free in a loft he bought from his sister for $1.
— louis bucholter (@lepke2112) October 4, 2022
This is Democrats working class hero? Dr. OZ drinks Wine at a tailgate? рџ¤Ёhttps://t.co/AtejrgxO71
So maybe he would have been wise to sit that one out.
In any case, it's as good an explanation as any for why he's going down in the polls. Pennsylvanian voters don't like phonies.
Image: Twitter screen shot.