May 18, 2022

Good morning. John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, isn't like most politicians in his party.

John Fetterman in Pennsylvania this month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

'Unfussy and plain-spoken'

Only 38 percent of American adults have a bachelor's degree. Yet college graduates have come to dominate the Democratic Party's leadership and message in recent years.

The shift has helped the party to win over many suburban professionals — and also helps explain its struggles with working-class voters, including some voters of color. On many social issues, today's Democratic Party is more liberal than most Americans without a bachelor's degree. The party also tends to nominate candidates who seem more comfortable at, say, Whole Foods than Wal-Mart.

All of which makes John Fetterman such an intriguing politician.

Last night, Fetterman — Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor — comfortably won the state's Democratic Senate primary, with 59 percent of the vote. Conor Lamb, a more traditional Democratic moderate, finished second.

In the general election this fall, Fetterman will face either Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor endorsed by Donald Trump, or David McCormick, a former business executive. Their primary remains too close to call.

The basic theory of Fetterman's candidacy is that personality and authenticity matter at least as much as policy positions. On many issues, his stances are quite liberal. He has supported Bernie Sanders and taken progressive positions on Medicare, marijuana, criminal justice reform and L.G.B.T. rights. "If you get your jollies or you get your voters excited by bullying gay and trans kids, you know, it's time for a new line of work," Fetterman said at a recent campaign stop.

He is also 6-foot-8, bearded and tattooed, and he doesn't like to wear suits. "I think he is a visual representation of Pennsylvania," one voter recently said.

Fetterman is the former mayor of Braddock, a blue-collar town in western Pennsylvania where about 70 percent of residents are Black. He declined to move into the lieutenant governor's mansion near Harrisburg and spends many nights at his home in Braddock. He talks about having been around guns for most of his life. And he does take some positions that clash with progressive orthodoxy, like his opposition to a fracking ban.

Fetterman "does not sound like any other leading politician in recent memory," my colleague Katie Glueck wrote from the campaign trail. Holly Otterbein of Politico called him "unfussy and plain-spoken" in contrast to "a party often seen as too elite." One suburban voter in Pennsylvania — making the same point in a more skeptical way — told The Times, "I think sometimes he might come off as not a polished person."

To be clear, Fetterman may lose the general election. This year is shaping up as a difficult one for Democrats, and the Republican campaign will no doubt use his progressive positions to claim he is a leftist out of step with Pennsylvania's voters. Republicans may also point out that Fetterman has a graduate degree from Harvard and that he pulled a gun on a jogger in Braddock during a disputed 2013 encounter.

Still, I find Fetterman to be notable because Democrats have nominated so few candidates like him in recent years. The party is more likely to choose ideologically consistent candidates whose presentation resembles that of a law professor or think-tank employee. Fetterman, like many working-class voters, has a mix of political beliefs. On the campaign trail, he wears shorts and a hoodie.

Describing his appeal to voters, Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist, said: "It's not that he's progressive that they like or don't like. They like that he's authentic."

Although the specifics are different, he shares some traits with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, who comes off as "simultaneously progressive, moderate and conservative," as the political scientist Christina Greer wrote in The Times. Adams won his election despite losing Manhattan, New York's most highly educated, affluent borough.

Fetterman also has some similarities with Senator Sherrod Brown, a populist Democrat who has managed to win in Ohio and who revels in "his less than glamorous image," as Andrew J. Tobias of Cleveland.com has written.

For years, most Democrats trying to figure out how to win over swing voters have taken a more technocratic approach than either Adams or Fetterman. Centrist Democrats have often urged the party to move to the center on almost every issue — even though most voters support a progressive economic agenda, such as higher taxes on the rich.

Liberal Democrats have made the opposite mistake, confusing the progressive politics of college campuses and affluent suburbs with the actual politics of the country. Some liberals make the specific mistake of imagining that most Asian, Black and Latino voters are more liberal than they are. As a shorthand, the mistake is sometimes known as the Latinx problem (named for a term that most Latinos do not use).

It remains unclear whether Fetterman represents a solution to the Democrats' working-class problem. But the problem is real: It is a central reason that Democrats struggle so much outside the country's large metro areas. And if Democrats hope to solve it, they will probably have a better chance if more of their candidates feel familiar to working-class voters.

Politics isn't only about policy positions. People also vote based on instinct and comfort.

For more: In Times Opinion, Michael Sokolove asks whether Fetterman is the future of the Democratic Party.

The latest results

In the primaries for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano — a far-right state senator endorsed by Trump — won the Republican nomination, while Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, won the Democratic race. Mastriano's victory caused The Cook Political Report to say that the general election was no longer a toss-up and Shapiro was favored to win.
In North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn lost the Republican primary for his House seat. Cawthorn was endorsed by Trump, but had feuded with others in his party after a series of scandals.
Representative Ted Budd, also backed by Trump, won North Carolina's Republican Senate primary. He will face the Democrat Cheri Beasley.
Brad Little, Idaho's Republican governor, beat back a primary challenge by Janice McGeachin, the Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor.

THE LATEST NEWS

War in Ukraine

Buses with surrendered Ukrainian troops under Russian escort yesterday.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who defended the Azovstal steel mill in Mariupol are in Russian custody.
Negotiators on both sides say peace talks have collapsed.
On a Russian talk show, a retired colonel stunned his colleagues by saying that the invasion wasn't going well.

The Virus

Public schools in the U.S. have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, with some switching to home-schooling and others dropping out.
The F.D.A. authorized Pfizer's booster for children 5 to 11.

Hospitalizations are rising in New York City, nearing the threshold to reinstate an indoor mask mandate.
The White House will send Americans eight more at-home tests, through covidtests.gov.

Politics

A memorial outside the Tops supermarket in Buffalo.Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden visited the site in Buffalo where a gunman killed 10 people. "White supremacy is a poison," he said.
A Pentagon investigation found no wrongdoing in a 2019 airstrike in Syria that killed dozens of people, including women and children.
The Justice Department requested transcripts from the Jan. 6 committee, potentially as evidence in future cases.
In a hearing on U.F.O.s, Pentagon officials revealed video of an unidentified craft flying past a fighter jet.
The Justice Department sued the casino mogul Steve Wynn, saying he lobbied Trump on China's behalf.

MORNING READS

Life hacks: How to become an early bird.

Hype man: A trash-talking crypto bro caused a $40 billion crash.

Stanley tumbler: The sisterhood of social media's favorite water bottle.

A Times classic: How to talk to someone who's sick.

Advice from Wirecutter: Freeze your food — without freezer burn.

Lives Lived: Urvashi Vaid, a lawyer and activist, was a leading figure in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. equality for more than four decades. She died at 63.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The music supervisor Randall Poster.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times

A boxed set for birds

Randall Poster had never appreciated the songbirds of the Bronx, where he has lived for most of his life, until the quiet the pandemic brought in 2020. After speaking with an environmentalist friend, Poster — a music supervisor for filmmakers — was inspired. What if he harnessed his industry connections into a fund-raiser for bird conservation?

This week, Poster will release the first volume of "For the Birds," a star-studded, 242-track collection of original songs and readings based on birdsong. It benefits the National Audubon Society.

"For the Birds" features electronic trance, fiddle tunes and field recordings. Alice Coltrane and Yoko Ono make appearances, and a song from Elvis Costello shares space with a Jonathan Franzen reading.

"Of all the things we need to work harder to protect, birds, like music, speak to everyone," said Anthony Albrecht, an Australian cellist who has led similar conservation efforts. "They're such a visible — and audible — indicator of what we stand to lose."

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Use up seasonal produce by adding tangy rhubarb to sheet-pan chicken.

What to Watch

Manuel Garcia-Rulfo plays the lead in Netflix's "The Lincoln Lawyer." It's a tricky job when your first language isn't English.

What to Read

Nell Zink's "Avalon" is about a girl who has a menacing stepfamily and a great ambition.

Late Night

The hosts celebrated Sweden and Finland's NATO applications.

Now Time to Play

The pangram from yesterday's Spelling Bee was backfill. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Here's today's Wordle. Here's today's Mini Crossword, and a clue: Blue hue (four letters).

If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The Times covered the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts on the front page 18 years ago today.

Here's today's front page.

"The Daily" is about a Ukrainian soldier. On "The Argument," a debate about inflation.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.