One of the few remaining voices of reason in the Democratic Party, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, is now admitting that, in hindsight, he “should’ve quit” his 2022 Senate campaign. The senator went on to reflect candidly about whether he still sees a future in a party increasingly consumed with appeasing its far-left fringe.
A personal battle like the one Fetterman faced rarely plays out in public. Most people have no idea what someone is truly enduring behind the scenes. In Fetterman’s case, his 2022 Senate campaign nearly cost him everything—after suffering a life-threatening stroke on the trail, battling a deep depression that followed, and fighting to claw his way back to his wife and three children.
In a new excerpt published by The Free Press from his forthcoming memoir Unfettered, Fetterman reflects on the past three turbulent years of his life — and wrestles with a hard question: whether there’s still a place for him in today’s Democratic Party, or if his time in it has run its course.
In the excerpt, Fetterman reflects on his experiences during the 2022 campaign trail. He recalls an incident when his wife, Gisele, noticed that his mouth was drooping and immediately ordered his team to take him to the hospital. After suffering a stroke, Fetterman was left with the ability to communicate with voters only through closed captioning. He candidly admits that, despite his favorable polling numbers at the time, “In hindsight, I should have quit.”
He also discussed how the political attacks from his opponent, Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, and others in the media affected him during the campaign. These attacks intensified the depression he has struggled with since his youth.
One moment that really jumps off the page for me is Fetterman’s account of what happened after his election win. Despite pulling off a major victory, he says the depression never let up — it kept gnawing at him until he finally checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for inpatient treatment:
This continued even after I was sworn in as a senator in January. I found a dark apartment in the basement of a building in Washington, and when I returned each night at around 5 p.m., I’d lock the door, lie on my thin mattress on the floor, and welcome the dark. In the morning, I’d wait until the last second to get dressed. Outside of going to work and coming home again, I didn’t have any routine. I had stopped listening to music long ago. I wasn’t even getting coffee in the morning.
By February, I wasn’t eating, and I wouldn’t talk to anybody.
Fetterman recalled that shortly after his struggles intensified, doctors diagnosed him with severe depression, leading to his admission to Walter Reed on February 12, 2023.
In one of the book’s most powerful passages, he describes a turning point — when a mental health professional told him the four words that pulled him out of the darkness: “Children need their daddy.” That simple but profound reminder, paired with regular visits from his family and consistent treatment, helped him recover enough to return home three weeks later.
He also reflects on today’s fractured political landscape, noting that while he remains a moderate voice — much to the irritation of his party’s far-left wing — he’s uncertain how much longer he’ll have a place in a Democratic Party that increasingly seems to reject pragmatism in favor of ideological purity:
I have never viewed my political party as an iron shackle adhering me to the party line. And I don’t take positions for my own self-interest. I take positions based on what I believe is right. I know this has cost me support from a significant part of my base, and I’m well aware that it may cost me my seat. I’m completely at peace with that.
I’ll be the first to admit — when John Fetterman was first sworn in, I wasn’t exactly impressed. Here was a sweatsuit-wearing Democrat who could barely string together a sentence after his stroke, yet Pennsylvania voters sent him to the Senate in a landslide.
But I’ve done a complete 180 on the guy. Fetterman has emerged as one of the very few Democrats willing to show real patriotism and call out his own party when it veers off the rails. He’s unapologetically pro-Israel, has backed several of President Donald Trump’s common-sense policies, and most recently blasted his fellow Democrats for dragging out the government shutdown just to placate their radical fringe.
In an era when most Democrats are terrified to defy the mob, Fetterman’s willingness to do so is nothing short of refreshing.
