It looks like the damage has been done to Fetterman’s campaign. There have now been two post-debate polls showing Dr. Oz in the lead.
A new poll from Insider Advantage has Dr. Oz ahead by 2.7 points. The same had Fetterman up three points in September. The other poll showing Oz in the lead comes from Wick Insights and has Oz up 1.7 points. The previous poll from Wick had Fetterman up four points.
It’s understandable how there is such a dramatic shift in the polling. In the wake of the debate, many on the left were shocked at just how badly Fetterman performed. His campaign did its best to lower expectations — even going so far as to suggest they expected Fetterman to lose the debate — but that wasn’t enough to prepare the masses for the debate that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough described as “painful to watch.” According to one report, one Democrat strategist said that whoever was responsible for agreeing to let Fetterman debate “should be fired, or never work again.”
Whoever it was who said that was probably right. Should Oz win on Election Day, pundits from both sides will likely agree that the debate sealed Fetterman’s fate. Pundits on the left, however, will spin it by saying that Fetterman failed to prove that his auditory processing issues were independent of his cognitive health, which is supposedly intact. For sure, we’ve heard plenty of liberal pundits push that line since the debate.
I’m sure he’s experienced some improvement since his stroke in May. But he’s clearly got a long way to go, and, frankly, he should be focusing on his recovery, not running for the U.S. Senate.
Related: We Now Have the First Poll Since the Fetterman-Oz Debate
But the real issue with Fetterman, and why he may have tanked his campaign, is that for months, Fetterman has insisted that he is healthy and capable of performing the duties of a U.S. senator. Rather than release his health records, he opted instead to release a note from his doctor that cleared him for the duties of the Senate. Even at face value, that felt shady, like he was hiding something.
But a doctor wouldn’t deceive the public to win an election, would he? Well, just ask the left.
When Trump was in the White House, the left often questioned the veracity of the president’s physicians’ assessments of his health. They were so convinced Trump was mentally ill, mentally impaired, and in terrible health that they refused to accept any diagnosis that said otherwise. The media often accused the White House of covering up details about Trump’s health. They even questioned the credentials of his physician, Dr. Sean Conley, for being a D.O. and not an M.D., and even accused Conley of not being candid about Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis.
Yet there is arguably greater justification for questioning the veracity of Fetterman’s doctor’s note because the doctor who wrote the note is a big-time Democrat donor who supports Fetterman’s campaign.
This was further exacerbated by the media’s efforts to cover up the true extent of his health problems. When NBC News journalist Dasha Burns honestly covered Fetterman’s cognitive impairments from his stroke that she observed while interviewing him, Burns was vilified by other left-wing journalists for doing so. Truthfully, Burns likely had done Fetterman a favor by softening the shock factor of his terrible debate performance. Had the media not tried to cover up Fetterman’s health problems, it’s possible that the impact of his debate performance on the polls would have been less severe.
In the end, the Fetterman campaign (with the help of the liberal media) tried desperately to keep the full extent of his impairments on the down low as much as possible. And the debate put the truth on full display, exposing Fetterman’s shameful cover-up. And, as the saying goes, it’s the cover-up that gets you in trouble.