Fetterman’s Mental Health Memoir Exposes the Left’s Double Standards

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is making headlines again not for legislation, not for leadership, but for a brutally honest memoir detailing his battle with depression, suicidal thoughts, and the emotional fallout of his disastrous 2022 Senate campaign.

In a world where most politicians publish books to polish their legacy or pad their wallets, Fetterman’s raw account is different. There’s no spin, no softening the truth. He admits he considered ending his life. He says he moved back in with his parents. He describes being so mentally checked out that his own wife told him not to come home until he got better. And he recounts one of the lowest moments of his life sitting silently during a visit at Wendy’s with his children, unsure if they were better off without him.

“Once, as I lay in bed, I asked myself, What would you do if there were a pill on the nightstand you could take and not wake up? I would have taken it,” Fetterman wrote.

This kind of honesty about mental illness is rare especially from someone in office. It’s hard not to be moved by the human story. Depression is a real and deadly scourge. Millions of Americans struggle with it, and Fetterman’s experience will surely resonate with many.

But the problem isn’t what he said it’s the stunning double standard in how the media, political class, and cultural elites are treating it.

Let’s be honest: If a Republican senator admitted to being suicidal, unable to function, and booted from his own home by his wife while holding public office, the media wouldn’t be writing glowing op-eds. They’d be demanding his resignation, questioning his mental fitness, and painting him as a danger to democracy.

Fetterman’s debate performance against Dr. Mehmet Oz wasn’t just bad it was catastrophic. Even liberal pundits admitted he couldn’t complete sentences or form coherent thoughts. At the time, any suggestion that he was mentally unfit was smeared as "ableist" or "mean-spirited." Now we learn from Fetterman himself that he knew he was unwell and admits "in hindsight, I should have quit."

But he didn’t. He kept going, helped by a media machine that shielded him, a party apparatus that prioritized winning over honesty, and a narrative that anyone asking questions was attacking a stroke victim.

So now, after the fact, when he’s comfortably seated in the U.S. Senate, we’re told to applaud his “courage” for revealing that he was unfit all along?

That’s not courage that’s damage control.

Mental health struggles are real, and they deserve compassion, not stigma. But fitness for office is also real. And it doesn’t make someone a bad person to say they may not be up to the job especially when lives, laws, and the future of the country are on the line.

And the truth is, Fetterman wasn't up to the job during the campaign. He admits it. He was barely able to eat or speak, let alone debate legislation or represent millions of Pennsylvanians. And yet, the Democratic Party propped him up, critics were smeared, and the American people were misled.

It’s not that Fetterman’s story isn’t powerful it is. But it shouldn’t erase the deeply dishonest process that got him elected, or the partisan hypocrisy that would’ve crucified a Republican in the same position.

If Democrats truly care about destigmatizing mental illness, maybe they should start by applying the same standard to both sides. Because if John Fetterman wore an “R” next to his name, he wouldn’t be getting a book deal he’d be getting a resignation letter.

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