Pennsylvania has become the ultimate swing state, a must-win for both parties in presidential races and a state willing to elect candidates of either party to statewide office. Republicans hold most of those jobs right now, but there are also two prominent centrist Democrats who have won statewide office more than once: Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).

Ali Khamenei, 1939-2026

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But while the two share that nebulous label of “moderate,” the two men’s politics are quite different. They also can’t stand each other and reportedly have not spoken in years. So how can they occupy the same segment of the political spectrum? 

It’s because that “moderate” label is essentially defined by what it is not, rather than what it is. 

Shapiro is moderate in the way a politician is moderate. His tone is calm and even-tempered; his positions are far from extreme while remaining firmly within his party’s mainstream. He talks about working with Republicans on issues they both care about, but rarely does so except when there is no other choice.

Fetterman is moderate in the way some voters are moderate. That does not mean occupying a middle ground on all issues, but rather that he has a collection of views from across the political spectrum without regard for what his party wants. His views do not align with any party’s platform or ideology, though he is clearly more left than right. And while he has said repeatedly that he would never become a Republican, he has voted with them at times when their proposals are closer to his own ideas than the Democrats’ are. His tone is not necessarily measured or calm — he just says things, take it or leave it.

Both men have recently penned political memoirs. And while such books are never perfect windows into the authors’ souls, they do contain some insights that explain the differences and similarities between Pennsylvania’s top Democratic officeholders.

There are many reasons to write a political memoir, but none of them include a desire to tell the unvarnished truth about oneself. That said, Fetterman’s book, Unfettered, feels like it comes nearer to the mark on this point than most, if only because the book does not seem designed to make the reader think its author ought to be president. 

While the book, written with the help of writer Buzz Bissinger, is intended as a full autobiography, the focus is clearly on the events of the past few years, beginning in 2022 when Fetterman became the Democratic nominee for an open Senate seat just days after suffering a debilitating stroke. It is also about the Pennsylvania that molded him — not his York County upbringing, but the early adulthood spent in Braddock, an Allegheny County town on the Monongahela River. Fetterman writes of a Pennsylvania that was used up, wrung out, and left for dead in the waves of deindustrialization of the 1970s and 1980s. As the mills closed, Braddock’s population declined from over 20,000 in 1920 to less than 10% of that number today.

Fetterman and the town of Braddock were both looking for a way to reinvent........

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