Fetterman says he won't campaign against McCormick

John Fetterman just told the Washington Examiner he wouldn't lift a finger against Dave McCormick if he runs again in 2030. Not "I'll stay neutral." Not "may the best candidate win." He said he'd never move against him. That's not a small thing coming from a sitting Democratic senator talking about his own state's Republican colleague, four years out, unprompted by any real electoral pressure.

Give Fetterman credit for saying the quiet thing out loud. He and McCormick have apparently built the kind of working relationship that used to be normal in the Senate and is now treated like a scandal. Fetterman has already taken heat from his own party for voting with Republicans on energy, for backing Israel without hedging, for refusing to pretend Trump is a fascist just because that's the going rate in Democratic politics. This is more of the same instinct: he actually likes the guy he serves with, and he's not going to lie about it to satisfy activists in Philadelphia.

It also tells you something about where McCormick has landed in Pennsylvania. A freshman Republican senator getting a preemptive truce from the Democrat he beat isn't nothing. It suggests McCormick has governed like someone trying to keep the state, not just his base, and that Fetterman sees the writing on the wall about who Pennsylvania voters actually want representing them.

None of this means Fetterman is becoming a Republican, and nobody should pretend otherwise. But it's a useful reminder that voters punish manufactured hatred eventually, and reward the rare politician willing to say a colleague from the other party is doing fine by his state. That kind of honesty used to be called normal. Now it counts as news.