Sen. Dave McCormick praised his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Democrat John Fetterman, for standing against the progressive wing of his own party, a rift that keeps widening as radical candidates topple mainstream Democrats in primaries across the country.

McCormick, a Republican, appeared Sunday on "The Cats Roundtable" on WABC 770 AM and spent part of the interview doing something unusual in today's Washington: complimenting a senator from the other side of the aisle. The target of his praise was Fetterman, who has drawn fire from his own party for breaking ranks on border security, Israel, and the rise of democratic socialist candidates in Democratic primaries. The Hill reported McCormick's remarks in detail.

McCormick did not pretend Fetterman had become a Republican. He acknowledged the obvious.

"He votes as a Democrat 93 or 95 percent of the time, so it's not like he's not a Democrat in most of his policy positions. But he's willing to stand up and call out the craziness that's happening in his party. It's made him unpopular with some of the people in his party."

That unpopularity is not theoretical. Fetterman's fundraising has collapsed since he began charting his own course. He raised $76 million in the two years before taking office but has brought in less than $2 million since 2025, with his PAC holding just $178,000 as of the end of May. Democratic strategist Mike Nellis, a former senior adviser to Kamala Harris, told the Washington Examiner that Fetterman "has already made his decision to switch parties, and they are going to wait for the most painful or embarrassing moment for Fetterman to do it." Former Rep. Conor Lamb called the senator's bipartisan moves "another betrayal."

Fetterman has said he has no plans to leave the Democratic Party. But he has drawn a clear line.

Fetterman's red line: an "anti-Israel" Democratic Party

At the Hill Nation Summit in Washington last month, Fetterman laid out the one scenario that would push him out the door.

"If our party ever becomes, and just makes it official, the anti-Israel party, that's when I would leave because that's been a moral clarity for me."

That statement landed in a party already fractured over Israel's military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Unnamed human rights organizations have accused Israel's government of war crimes and genocide, charges that have gained traction among progressive Democrats. Fetterman has clashed openly with fellow Democrats over what he frames as a moral litmus test on Israel.

McCormick used the interview to place Fetterman's stance in a broader pattern. He accused the Democratic Party of taking "this huge swing to the radical left where it's really embraced policies that are anti-military, anti-law enforcement, antisemitism, anti-Americanism." That is McCormick's characterization, but the primary results he pointed to are real.

Michigan and New York: progressive candidates keep winning primaries

McCormick singled out Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed won a Democratic Senate primary last week against Rep. Haley Stevens, a figure McCormick's camp would consider a mainstream Democrat. McCormick called Michigan "a purple state" now saddled with what he described as "a radical Democrat," a result he said is "creating all sorts of division in the Democratic Party."

Fetterman himself has been vocal about that race. He publicly challenged El-Sayed over the company the nominee keeps on the campaign trail, a move that put him squarely at odds with his own party's chosen Senate candidate.

New York City offered another example. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo twice, first in a Democratic primary, then in the general election after Cuomo ran as an independent. Fetterman has been outspoken in criticizing the progressive and democratic socialist candidates who have toppled establishment Democrats in races like these.

McCormick tied the threads together on the radio.

"And ironically... the thing that's scary is that you have a lot of mainstream Democrats that are embracing these radical lefty policies. That's not the case in Pennsylvania, particularly with John Fetterman."

The senator's warning echoes a concern that has gained traction on the right. Vice President J.D. Vance has made a similar argument, contending that Democrats are handing their party to socialists at the expense of working Americans.

Border security, bipartisan fundraising, and a Mar-a-Lago visit

Fetterman's breaks with his party go well beyond rhetoric. He has expressed support for roughly $150 billion in border security funding included in President Trump's legislative package, and he has publicly criticized the Biden administration's handling of the southern border. In a June interview, Fetterman said Democrats "did not handle the border appropriately" and called 267,000 to 300,000 monthly border encounters, roughly the population of Pittsburgh, "unacceptable" and a "national security issue."

He voted for the Laken Riley Act, a bipartisan bill requiring the detention of illegal immigrants arrested for theft. He appeared alongside McCormick at a Fox News forum moderated by Shannon Bream, where the two senators agreed on multiple issues including border security, ICE funding, and immigration detention. At that event, Fetterman acknowledged the political cost of his independence.

"That's part of the bipartisanship where, you know, it's getting more and more kind of, punitive to just agree with some of these things in the middle of the party right now."

He added: "I refuse to ever shut our government down. And when we have that opportunity in September to do that, I will still be there, and I'll take the beating, because that's, I think, what defines leadership." Those remarks came during the same bipartisan forum where Fetterman criticized his own party's stances on Israel and antisemitism.

Fetterman was the first sitting Democratic senator to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago after Trump's November election victory. The two discussed Greenland, tariffs on U.S. Steel, Israel, and the southern border. Trump called Fetterman "a commonsense person" who is "not liberal or conservative," National Review reported. Fetterman's response was characteristically blunt: "I think it's pretty reasonable that if the president would like to have a conversation, or invite someone to have a conversation, to have it. And no one is my gatekeeper."

The two Pennsylvania senators have since launched a joint fundraising committee called "Common Ground PA", a rare cross-party venture that has further inflamed Democratic operatives. A VoteHub analysis found Fetterman voted in line with Trump 28 percent of the time in 2024, the highest rate of any Senate Democrat.

Despite all of this, Fetterman has insisted he will remain a Democrat. Whether his party still wants him is a different question.

Fetterman has sounded the alarm before, his party keeps ignoring it

Fetterman's warnings about the Democratic Party's leftward lurch are not new. He has sounded the alarm on his party's socialist surge after primary upsets in New York and elsewhere. Each time, the party's progressive wing has responded not by reconsidering its direction but by punishing the messenger.

McCormick, for his part, framed the situation as one that should worry every voter who values common sense over ideology. His praise for Fetterman was not an endorsement of the Democrat's full record, he acknowledged Fetterman votes with his party the vast majority of the time. The praise was for something simpler and rarer: a willingness to say publicly what the party's own internal divisions make obvious.

When a Republican senator has to go on the radio to thank a Democrat for stating the obvious about his own party, the problem is not with the man doing the talking. It is with the party that made the talking necessary.