Jonathan Chait on the partisan mind virus
Today’s must-read: Dismissing evidence that a politician might be unfit for office is as much a mistake for the right as it was for the left.
 

One Story to Read Today highlights a single newly published—or newly relevant—Atlantic story that’s worth your time.

“In the Trump era especially, one person’s raving lunatic is another person’s bold populist truth-teller,” Jonathan Chait writes. But some details of Senator John Fetterman’s erratic behavior are a matter of objective fact.

(Matt Rourke / AP)

 

Remember the days after President Joe Biden’s barely coherent debate performance, when Democratic dead-enders insisted that nothing was the matter? That was embarrassing. But apparently it wasn’t so embarrassing that everybody took away the correct lesson, because something similar is now happening between Senator John Fetterman and a coterie of admirers on the right. Conservatives are now doing the exact same thing that the Biden defenders did: denying the obvious unfitness of a politician because he’s politically useful.

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