The suspense of television’s 2020 election coverage has now reached unbearable heights, but thankfully a handful of moments of levity have cut through the tension. Already we’ve been treated to the very smart and cute Steve Kornacki over at MSNBC (who talked about accidentally drawing a penis on his magic board in 2016), Anderson Cooper comparing Donald Trump to a turtle, CNN’s Bill Weir being forced to do mental math on live TV, and Twitter going all-in on memes dunking on Nevada’s dramatically slow vote-counting. Another figure who has risen to the occasion is someone we “hereby claim†as the official Pennsylvania mascot of the 2020 election: progressive politician, real-life Hulk, and Pennsylvania lieutenant governor John Fetterman.
Fetterman, who has essentially served as the voice of Pennsylvania Democrats on Twitter and cable-news networks over the course of the election, has been the star of several big moments so far. On November 5, Fetterman appeared on MSNBC, and when asked by Rachel Maddow how the state was doing so far, he had this to say: “Our state’s doing fantastic. We just had the largest election in our state’s history, and we did that in the middle of a pandemic, and we rolled out vote by mail for the first time in our state’s history, and we didn’t have a single major issue. The only irregularity we had was the president’s campaign rolling up in a clown car in downtown Philadelphia, having an impromptu press conference, and saying ridiculous things and making up lies.â€
The following day, on November 6, Fetterman managed to one-up his “clown car†comment while on NBC. “The president can sue a ham sandwich,†he said. “He can send a thousand lawyers to Pennsylvania, but it’s not going to change … The basic fact of the matter is that every one of these ballots that’s in play right now that’s going to be counted today, throughout the rest of the day, has been lawfully received, and going to be counted, and they’re all going to skew in Joe Biden’s favor.â€
Fetterman, who lives in western Pennsylvania just outside Pittsburgh, also expressed solidarity with Philadelphia after the state flipped blue on Friday morning by changing his display name on Twitter to some good old-fashioned Philly slang:
As if that weren’t enough, he extended the ultimate olive branch toward his fellow Pennsylvania voters in the east. If you are a Pennsylvanian, you will know how hard this statement was for Fetterman to make.
If you’re still not convinced of Fetterman’s greatness, behold this behind-the-scenes photo posted to Twitter by his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman:
A big thanks to Fetterman for being a delightful, hilarious, and informative presence during the chaos of all this election coverage. We will all eat scrapple tonight in your honor.