WASHINGTON, Pennsylvania — One thing Dr. Mehmet Oz will never be able to do is to out-cool John Fetterman.
Oz, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee, currently trails Democratic nominee Fetterman in the polls. But Oz’s relative lack of meme skills may not be a bad thing when voters start giving the race more scrutiny next month.
Fetterman’s campaign for the U.S. Senate has been an endless stream of snarky memes mocking Oz. He has rented planes to troll him along the New Jersey shore. He devotes endless messaging to vegetable trays and the amount of homes Oz owns. He’s even employed the antics of rocker Steven Van Zandt to taunt him on Twitter. He also likes to cuss a lot and use the poop emoji.
It is a sandbox Oz can never compete in, nor should he. It’s Fetterman’s playground, and there is no upside in getting down in the dirt with him, said David Urban, a D.C.-based Republican strategist and Beaver County native.
“You can’t out-meme Fetterman, because he is human meme,” said Urban, who has worked as an adviser on several statewide races in the state. “It’s all he does.”
“All Oz should be doing is talking about things that are important to people, like the real impact inflation is having on families and communities and small businesses, and how border security and the fentanyl trade has made it to their neighborhoods and the escalating crime in this state,” said Urban. “I mean, he is already talking about it. He needs to talk about it more, and more loudly.”
On Friday, Oz did just that when he spent the day at the Washington County Fair just outside of Pittsburgh. Oz slow-walked through the fair, whose attendance topped 70,000 that night. He was shaking hands, but more importantly, he was stopping and listening to voters and their concerns.
The southwestern Pennsylvania County includes wealthy suburbs, coal patch towns, and working-class neighborhoods once dominated by registered Democrats. It recently flipped red in registration, and the shift of voters to the GOP keeps growing, according to county Republican Chairman Dave Ball.
Oz spent the next few days pounding the pavement in the west, then spent several hours greeting attendees at the Westmoreland County Fair, another one of the most important counties for Oz to win by a healthy margin. He drives back across the state to the Philadelphia suburbs mid-week.
“If Oz can continue to articulate that he is the clear alternative to a man and the policies he supports and goes to places in Philadelphia where the crime and addiction rates are soaring and asks Fetterman to debate the issues, rather than hide behind Twitter, voters will respond to that contrast,” said Urban.
A study conducted by the Pew Research Center on Twitter use and users showed that 10% of its users create an astonishing 92% of all tweets. And the majority of the highly prolific users were Democrats — very liberal Democrats, which means anyone casually looking at Twitter would think all Democrats were very liberal Democrats.
This means that any reporter using Twitter as a measure of what is going on in politics — in this case, Pennsylvania’s politics — would view Fetterman’s large following and the affirmation of his snark as evidence that he is really reaching Pennsylvania voters.
Yet, Monday’s NBC News poll showed voters are deeply unhappy with the direction of the country, plagued with uncertainty about the impact of inflation and the recession. A whopping 74% of voters think the country is heading in the wrong direction, 58% said they feel “more worried that America’s best years may already be behind us,” and President Joe Biden’s disapproval rating ticked up from 54% to 55% since the last poll, conducted in May.
“Fetterman isn’t talking about any of those things,” said Urban. “He’s certainly not talking about the rising violent crime in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, nor the heroin epidemic. What he is doing is trying to meme his way into the U.S. Senate.”
Washington County’s Ball said that Oz is a sharp, articulate candidate who has demonstrated to him he understands the issues people care about. More importantly, he understands how to solve them. “And the more people meet him and hear him, the more he wins over voters,” he said. “You are never going to go toe to toe on Twitter with Fetterman. Oz is a professional, not a bully playing in mud. Stick to the issues, and voters will pay attention. That is how you win Pennsylvania — not on Twitter.”
