Same Script, Different Coast
Mainstream Democrats around the country were shocked to see John Fetterman’s face on the jumbotron at the Republican National Convention. In his video speech, he described socialism as “anti-American,” and talked about his wonderful friend Dave McCormick, who is a dependable MAGA vote in the Senate.
Fetterman may call himself a Democrat, but he puts the insurrectionist, blood-and-soil MAGA party agenda above the progressive side of his own party.
Democrats around the country recognize that this makes him the most conservative Democrat in the Senate - the new Joe Manchin, and puts him far to the right of the Democratic Party mainstream. Dan Pfeiffer (Senior Advisor to President Obama for Strategy and Communications, Pod Save America Host) put it well:
Image and quote from Crooked Media
Unfortunately, most of Seattle’s press would never point something like this out when a MAGA-coddling local politician says they are just a “moderate,” “mainstream” Democrat, or a “pragmatic progressive.”
So I’ll do it.
Bob Kettle is easily just as far from the Democratic mainstream as John Fetterman.
(Photo Credits - Facebook, Seattle Times)
He does exactly the same thing Fetterman did.
The same day Fetterman appeared at the Republican National Convention, recent candidate and local MAGA gadfly Andrea Suarez went on Fox News with Laura Ingraham to talk about how now-Mayor Katie Wilson using the phrase “anti-social-behavior” somehow causes homelessness and murder.
Suarez has forever been an obvious, odious, MAGA fraud, something the dullards on the Seattle Times editorial board didn’t bother to mention when they claimed she was mainstream and picked her over Socialist Shaun Scott.
Guess who thought the Socialism of Suarez’s opponent was a bigger threat than her obvious MAGA-leanings?
Bob Kettle. Bob Kettle gave repeatedly to the Suarez campaign, endorsed her, and can be seen below at a Suarez fundraiser alongside some other “moderate” Democrats from Seattle politics.
He endorsed and repeatedly donated to MAGA Ann Davison, who became a Republican under Trump. She filmed a promo-video to bring people into the party in June 2020 (during the first Trump campaign against Biden). The filmmaker she worked with would go on to be prosecuted for his actions in the January 6th insurrection.
Image credit KUOW
Davison wasn’t even running against a socialist! She was running against a prosecutor with fairly mainstream Democratic party positions on public safety. The same record shows him donating to Ken Wilson, a Republican who ran against Teresa Mosqueda, a progressive Democrat whose actual positions can pretty much all be found in the Democratic Party platform.
Kettle’s self identification as a “moderate” is a hoax, and it’s sad that so few journalists have been willing to call a spade a spade. (Thank you Hannah Krieg and Guy Oron for being the exception to the rule!)
The truth is, Fetterman is sitting at the rightmost edge of the party, and behaving like a traitor in a time when MAGA’s fascist agenda is a threat to the very existence of our republic and freedoms, our civil and human rights. He thinks the rise of socialists in our party (keep in mind, most of them are just the social democrats of European-ilk, like Bernie Sanders) is a much bigger threat than this blood and soil nationalist shit.
But Bob Kettle takes it a step farther than Fetterman. He embraces MAGA over Socialists like Shaun Scott. But he also embraces MAGA candidates over mainstream progressive Democrats.
Too Credulous to Notice
Fetterman only had to say the quiet part once, and the national press picked up that he was way to the right of the party. Bob Kettle has been showing it for years, with his actions, and with his checkbook, but Seattle's press has been too credulous to do anything but mainstream-wash him.
Nobody in that group photo is a Democrat, regardless of what they claim. Ridiculous right wingers.