There are reasons for pessimism.
For example, the Republicans are trying to kick three Democratic justices off the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
In the low turnout off-year election this November, Democratic Justices Kevin Dougherty, Christine Donohue, and David Wecht are up for retention for another ten year term in the current 5-2 liberal majority Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They aren’t allowed to campaign for their retention by the state’s code of judicial ethics.
But meanwhile Republicans are trying to convince voters to vote NO on retaining them.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
If any of the justices do not win retention, the seats will likely remain vacant until the 2027 election. (Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro could appoint someone to fill a vacancy, but his nominee would need to be confirmed by the GOP-controlled state Senate, which could prove challenging.)
What‘s more: If all three justices lose retention, the court would need to rule with only a four-person court of two liberals and two conservatives, which would be unlikely to reach majority decisions and could weaken the voice of Pennsylvania’s top court going into the 2028 presidential election, when the swing state could decide the next president yet again, experts said.
The biggest fear among Democrats is how much Musk, the world’s richest man, and other outside influences will affect the retention election, as judicial races become more politicized for a branch of the government that is supposed to remain impartial. Musk and GOP groups most recently spent more than $20 million in trying to elect a Republican justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, an ultimately unsuccessful effort. It is unclear whether Musk will invest in Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court election, but that has not stopped rumors that he will get involved.
Meanwhile, the word on Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania John Fetterman just keeps getting worse.
His behavior has received renewed scrutiny after a recent New York magazine article detailing concerns about his mental health from one of his closest former aides, as well as some frustration from Democrats that Fetterman is not on the same page as many other members of the party when it comes to standing up to Trump and his agenda.
The crux of the article focused on a May 2024 letter from Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, addressed to Dr. David Williamson, the senator’s neuropsychiatrist at Walter Reed Medical Center, where Fetterman spent six weeks in 2023 to treat clinical depression. In that letter, which NBC News obtained, Jentleson expressed worry that if his boss “stays on his current trajectory he won’t be with us for much longer.”
“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not,” Jentleson wrote. “We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed: conspiratorial thinking; megalomania (for example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news — he declines most briefings and never reads memos); high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room, such as swearing up and down that he didn’t say something everyone heard him say a few minutes prior.”
A Fetterman spokesperson emphasized that the senator has no intention of resigning and has been transparent about his health, whether related to his stroke or hospitalization at Walter Reed.
In the past year Fetterman has missed 77 or 381 votes. More worrisome to me is that he seems to be doing a complete about face from what he promised when he campaigned. He’s looking more like a Republican every day.