Is Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) going to switch parties? That’s the scuttlebutt in Washington, D.C., according to Politico. He has been one of Trump’s loudest supporters among congressional Democrats, and with the GOP looking down the barrel of a catastrophic loss in the upcoming midterms, they are hoping to buy themselves a Senate seat—literally. It seems Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Katie Britt (R-AL) have been assiduously working on Fetterman. Donald Trump as usual cut to the chase and offered a huge sack of cash by way of a message delivered through Fox News contributor Sean Hannity: “Your job is to tell him,” as Hannity recalled the conversation, “‘He’s gonna run as a Republican, he’s gonna have our full support, more money than he ever dreamed of, and he’s gonna win big.’”

Money may or may not be forthcoming from Trump—he does have a long history of broken promises on that score. But whether Fetterman turns full Benedict Arnold or not, he is not going to be any kind of senator come 2029. The most he can give Republicans is two years of support before they forget he ever existed.

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I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I was a supporter of Fetterman against Conor Lamb in the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate primary. During the campaign, Fetterman was the apparent progressive and Lamb the moderate, but our current reality has conspired to deliver something completely different.

Some believe that Fetterman was always a secret conservative plotting this betrayal from the start, but I don’t buy it. I have lived in Pennsylvania since 2019, where Fetterman was the lieutenant governor up through 2022. He’s always been something of an odd duck, but there has been an unmistakable change in his behavior since he had a massive stroke that year, just before winning the Senate race. His family and staff—many of whom have since resigned—personally attest to this. And scientific research demonstrates that major personality changes can develop after strokes.

Before the stroke, Fetterman’s social media presence was a lot more silly and lighthearted, constantly cracking jokes with his wife and needling Republicans. In terms of policy, he mostly talked about LGBT rights, Medicare for All, legal marijuana, and unions, and in interviews he sounded like Bernie Sanders, who endorsed his 2022 campaign.

These days, Fetterman’s social media features a lot more loud endorsements of either Israel’s or Donald Trump’s war crimes. He’s regularly going on Fox News to smear his own party as supposedly conducting an “orgy of socialism” or “communist takeover.”

All this means Fetterman’s political career is doomed. Pennsylvania Democrats are absolutely furious at him, not least because he specifically and repeatedly promised that he would not be the exact kind of sellout senator he has turned out to be. Indeed, his entire campaign from 2021 to Election Day was premised on being the deciding vote for Joe Biden’s agenda, compared to moderates who kept voting against it. He “will NOT be a Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema-type senator,” he said in his campaign communications.

Polling shows that Fetterman’s popularity among Pennsylvania Democrats has swung by an eye-popping 108 percentage points since 2023, from 68 points net favorable to 40 points net unfavorable. If he runs for re-election in 2028, he is going to be primaried and he’s going to lose, by a lot, and he’s going to deserve it. Preparations for said contest are already being made.

But Fetterman still has a record that’s far too progressive for a Republican electorate, which prefers their senators to be slavering psychopaths—ideally wealthy ones from out of state—untainted by so much as a nanogram of moral decency. At least for the moment, Fetterman still has progressive views on many important topics, like LGBT rights and unions, and he voted against Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Polling shows Pennsylvania Republicans approve of him 73-18, but that is only because he is hurting the Democrats, which they prize above everything else. If it comes time to choose between Fetterman and a consistent conservative with the stolen orphans’ lunch money to prove it, GOP voters will almost certainly opt for the latter.

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Indeed, where Fetterman has focused on defending Trump the most might be a losing issue even among Republicans. Since October 7th and the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Fetterman’s previous Zionist streak has metastasized into a bizarre obsession with defending absolutely everything Israel does, along with Trump’s foreign policy writ large. Fetterman has backed the war on Iran and even was the deciding vote against an effort to prevent Trump from attacking Cuba (!) for no reason.

Trump’s war on Iran in particular is one of the most obviously stupid blunders in the history of warfare. It was unpopular from the start and is only getting less popular as the consequences of the worst oil shock in history mount ever higher, and it is ever more obvious that Trump has no idea whatsoever how to fix the situation. And in part because the Israeli government directly pushed Trump to attack Iran (as well as general disgust at years of Israeli atrocities in Gaza), American support for Israel is collapsing as well, from a 55-42 favorable-unfavorable ratio in 2022, to 37-60 in 2025. It’s also biased by age: 41 percent of Republicans in general have an unfavorable view of the country, while 57 percent of Republicans under 50 years old do.

Right-wingers like Tucker Carlson, who can grasp that this war is sinking Trump’s entire presidency, are starting to maneuver to escape responsibility for going all out to support Trump in 2024—and pinning the blame on Israel is an obvious strategy. Alas, I would bet quite a few Pennsylvania Republicans will prefer an open antisemite in 2028 to a fanatical Zionist.

Republicans might be buddying up to Fetterman right now, so they can get two years of Senate votes out of him. But that’s all they’re going to get. In 2028, they will throw him over the side without a backward glance.

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Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at The American Prospect, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, and Current Affairs.