Why Is John Fetterman’s Campaign Telling Us about His High-School Football Days?

I don’t know if the latest ad from John Fetterman’s Senate campaign is a sign of panic, but put yourselves in his team members’ shoes. After looking like a sure winner during the summer, Fetterman is facing a furious comeback from Mehmet Oz, with three of the last four polls indicating the Democrat is ahead by just two percentage points, within the margin of error. Ads hitting Fetterman’s stances and record on crime are doing some damage, as are lingering concerns about Fetterman’s recovery from his mid-May stroke. President Biden is arriving for a campaign event tonight, but Biden’s approval rating in Pennsylvania is just 37 percent. If you’re Fetterman, the trend is not your friend. No one knows how that October 25 debate is going to go; Oz is at home in front of the camera and quick on his feet. Some Democrats are even wondering if the “crudities” mockery came across as being tone-deaf to the issue of rising grocery prices. Fetterman’s campaign needs to close strong.

So his campaign unveils an ad focused on . . . Fetterman’s high-school football career, and calling him Pennsylvania’s lineman.

The guy has been lieutenant governor for four years. We’re 18 days away from Election Day, this is arguably the most-covered Senate race in the country, and they’re still running ads introducing him to voters and emphasizing his biography?

Yes, yes, this ad isn’t about Fetterman’s high-school football career so much as his values — “work over glory,” which feels a bit rich coming from the most profiled small-town mayor in America, who didn’t do anything on about a third of the workdays he was lieutenant governor, and whose impact on Braddock was largely marginal.