Pennsylvania's Republican senator praised his Democratic counterpart for standing against his party's leftward lurch, a lurch now visible in primary upsets from Michigan to New York City.
Sen. Dave McCormick went on WABC 770 AM's "The Cats Roundtable" on Sunday and did something unusual for a Republican: he spoke well of the Democrat who holds Pennsylvania's other Senate seat. McCormick told host John Catsimatidis that he respects Sen. John Fetterman for pushing back against what McCormick called the growing radicalism inside the Democratic Party, even as that stance has cost Fetterman standing with progressive activists and some of his own colleagues.
McCormick did not pretend Fetterman had become a Republican. He acknowledged the obvious, as The Hill reported:
"He votes as a Democrat 93 or 95 percent of the time, so it's not like he's not a Democrat in most of his policy positions. But he's willing to stand up and call out the craziness that's happening in his party. It's made him unpopular with some of the people in his party."
That framing, a Democrat who votes with his caucus on nearly everything but refuses to stay quiet about the party's direction, is what makes Fetterman's position so unusual. And McCormick's willingness to say so publicly signals that Republicans see an opening in the Democratic Party's internal fractures.
McCormick pointed to a concrete example. Last week, Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary over Rep. Haley Stevens, a result McCormick framed as evidence that the party's base is lurching away from its center.
McCormick called Michigan "a purple state" and El-Sayed "a radical Democrat," arguing the primary result was "creating all sorts of division in the Democratic Party." Whether or not voters in Michigan's general election agree with that characterization, the fact that a candidate to Stevens's left won a statewide primary in a competitive state is not nothing. Fetterman himself has questioned whether Democrats have room for members like him who hold pro-Israel views.
McCormick then broadened his critique beyond Michigan:
"And ironically... the thing that's scary is that you have a lot of mainstream Democrats that are embracing these radical lefty policies. That's not the case in Pennsylvania, particularly with John Fetterman."
He listed what he described as the party's drift toward positions that are "anti-military, anti-law enforcement, antisemitism, anti-Americanism." Those are McCormick's characterizations, but they track a pattern of primary results and policy fights that have left the Democratic coalition visibly strained.
The Michigan result was not the only evidence McCormick could cite. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo twice: first in the Democratic mayoral primary, then again in the general election after Cuomo mounted an independent bid. Fetterman has been outspoken in criticizing Mamdani, putting himself at odds with progressives who celebrated the result.
For McCormick, the pattern is clear. When a democratic socialist can defeat a former three-term governor in the nation's largest city, and when a candidate to the left of a sitting congresswoman can win a Senate primary in a swing state, the party's center of gravity has moved. Commentators have openly speculated that a Fetterman party switch before midterms is likely, given his public frustrations.
McCormick said he is "lucky to have a good partner in Pennsylvania", a line that would have been unthinkable from a Republican about Fetterman during the bruising 2022 cycle that sent Fetterman to the Senate.
Fetterman has not been passive in this debate. Last month, at The Hill's Nation Summit in Washington, he told interviewers he has "no plans" to leave the Democratic Party. But he added a condition that landed harder than the reassurance.
"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."
That statement is not a loyalty pledge. It is a conditional one, and the condition is not hypothetical. Israel's military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has generated sustained pressure inside the Democratic coalition. Unnamed human rights organizations have accused Israel's government of war crimes and genocide, allegations, not established legal findings, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders including Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, as well as a Hamas leader. The political pressure on Democratic officeholders to distance themselves from Israel has grown, and Fetterman has refused to bend.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has reportedly pleaded with Fetterman to remain in the caucus, while Republicans have made clear he would be welcome on the other side of the aisle. The fact that a party leader has to beg a senator to stay says more about the state of the coalition than any polling data could.
That dynamic, a party whose leadership must actively retain its own members while its primary voters elevate candidates further to the left, is precisely the fracture McCormick was describing on Sunday. Veteran Democratic strategist Donna Brazile has herself warned Democrats to define the party before its socialist wing does it for them.
McCormick's public praise of Fetterman is strategic, but it also reflects something real. Pennsylvania is not Michigan or New York City. Both of its senators know that the state's electorate punishes ideological overreach, and McCormick's willingness to name Fetterman as a reasonable counterpart is partly an acknowledgment that Pennsylvania voters reward independence over party orthodoxy.
For Fetterman, the praise comes with a price. Every kind word from a Republican makes him a bigger target among progressives who already view him as a traitor to the cause. McCormick acknowledged as much, noting that Fetterman's willingness to speak out "has made him unpopular with some of the people in his party."
But the alternative, silence in the face of primary results and policy positions that Fetterman clearly opposes, would require him to pretend the party is something it increasingly is not. McCormick's argument, stripped of partisan framing, is straightforward: when a party's own members feel they have to set public conditions for staying, the party has a problem it cannot solve with talking points.
When your opponents start praising your courage, it usually means your own side has stopped rewarding it.