“There are important problems where government is needed. But government is not the solution for all things. I’m absolutely a capitalist. I revere the market and how it is able to correct and redirect these kinds of resources — to me,” Fetterman said.
“What’s really changed is, is the party. And in 2024, I was campaigning for Kamala Harris there as a Democrat. It was very clear we were going to lose,” he said. “And a lot of the excesses that we’ve had in 2020 came back to revisit. And that really, I think, cost us that election in 2024.”
“In 2016, it was much more about the minimum wage and some other very basic kinds of thing. And now that’s, that’s just turned into much more standing with like Cuba, standing with Venezuela, standing with the Iranian regime and, and turn that into much more becoming more increasingly anti-American for me. So my views really haven’t changed that much,” Fetterman said.
He said the shift of working-class, union-member Democrats to supporting Trunmp has empowered a more radical, socialist wing of the Democratic Party.
“I lived directly across the street from a steel mill and the union hall. I was doing an event for Secretary Clinton at that time. And I was asking the union president, well, where are your people on that? He’s like at least half, if not more are in Trump.”
“And then there was just coincidentally a guy in a big truck who drove by, and he honked, Go Trump, Go Trump. And he had truck nuts and a Trump sticker on the trailer,” Fetterman said.
“I think we effectively can count that a lot of those traditional union members have already left the Democratic Party. And that’s where we are. And it’s been a serious realignment of parts of our base,” he said. “And I think that’s driving some of the more extreme things of our party now, too.”
