President Joe Biden can count on at least one Senate Democrat to stand by him on Monday as lawmakers face a deluge of questions about his fitness for office.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has been unequivocal in his support since the president’s disastrous debate performance last month, which set off a Democratic panic over whether he remains viable as the party’s presidential nominee.
The senator has urged lawmakers calling on him to step down to “get a spine or grow a set” and on Sunday appeared alongside him at a campaign office in Philadelphia.
“There is only one person in this room who kicked Trump’s a** in an election. There is only one person in this state that has kicked Trump’s a** in an election,” Fetterman told a group of organizers. “And that is your president, that’s our president.”
Biden can expect a deeper reservoir of support from Senate Democrats given he served more than three decades in the chamber. Even as a growing number of House Democrats called on the president to step aside heading into Monday morning, no Senate Democrats had done so publicly.
Yet Fetterman, who entered Congress last year, was among the first and only Democrats to stand with Biden publicly in the days after his debate performance, in which he repeatedly lost his train of thought and at times let his mouth hang agape.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a close ally who occupies the Delaware seat Biden once held in the Senate, has also come out in support, while Democrats including Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) have said Biden needs to “do more.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) flirted with the idea of convening a meeting of Senate Democrats who want the president to exit the race but ultimately held off, allowing the discussion to be part of a larger Senate lunch the caucus will hold on Tuesday.
Fetterman had been making the case that Biden, and Biden alone, can beat Trump months before the Democratic panic. As a sizable share of primary voters registered their protest by voting “uncommitted” in swing states, Fetterman argued those Democrats were throwing away their votes if they oppose Biden or sit the race out in November.
He articulated much the same argument in a Friday appearance on MSNBC, suggesting the reservations about Biden were unhelpful before the debate and even more so now.
“Well, congratulations — if you’re panicking now after the debate, you were willing to d*** around with this before all that,” Fetterman said.
“We’re going to need all-in on this,” he added.
The coming days will be a major test of whether Democrats heed his advice. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) echoed Fetterman in a Monday statement that warned the party was weakening Biden with the public hand-wringing should he remain the nominee.
Meanwhile, Biden sent a defiant letter to congressional offices calling for Democrats to put the drama behind them.
Fetterman, who appeared on Fox News Monday to once again reiterate his defense of Biden, is a better messenger than most. He had a rocky debate performance himself in the final weeks of his Senate campaign following a stroke that left his speech impaired.
“I know what it’s like to have a rough debate, and I’m standing right here as your senator,” he said at the Philadelphia campaign office on Sunday.
But his loyalty is not altogether surprising. He regularly calls Biden “my guy” and defended the president for maintaining a generally pro-Israel stance as the Left scrutinized his handling of the war in Gaza.
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The outspokenness is part of a larger centrist rebrand for Fetterman, who has made his mark in the Senate with his attempts to moderate the perceived excesses of his left flank.
Fetterman has embraced more conservative views on Israel but also immigration and fracking despite the progressive label he wore during his 2022 campaign for Senate.
