An interesting line with a lot of history to it from Sen. Jon Fetterman on dumping the “progressive” label he used to use.

“I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.”

President Reagan would often quip, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.” Similar lines have been used by everyone from Bill Maher, “It’s not me who’s changed, it is the left” to Elon Musk.

It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on with Fetterman after his medical issues, but a dividing line seems to have been the Left’s support for Hamas, but he’s also embraced a species of economic populism, fighting against land sales to China, and Japan’s takeover of U.S. Steel.

While Fetterman had never been a foreign policy guy, he did explicitly break with the far left on Israel during his campaign.

“I would also respectfully say that I’m not really a progressive in that sense,” he added. “Our campaign is based on core Democratic values and principles, and always has been, and there is no daylight between myself and these kinds of unwavering commitments to Israel’s security.”

Still, Fetterman said he was “eager to affirm” his positions on the record, lest there be any uncertainty among supporters of Israel who have similar questions. “I want to go out of my way to make sure that it’s absolutely clear,” he told JI, “that the views that I hold in no way go along the lines of some of the more fringe or extreme wings of our party.”

The Left did not take that seriously and assumed he was just pandering. Now they’re finding out that he really meant it.

So this did not come out of nowhere. And it’s not just about Israel.

He has also publicly encouraged Democrats in recent days to engage in border negotiations with Republicans, talks that have outraged progressives who object to efforts to clamp down on migration through the United States border with Mexico.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have a secured border,” Mr. Fetterman said in the interview, conducted over Zoom. “I would never put Dreamers in harm’s way, or support any kind of cruelty or mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people. But it’s a reasonable conversation to talk about the border.”

Now this may be a canny rebranding.

A moderate Democrat who emphasizes economic populism, border security and steers clear of crazier leftist stuff, has much better odds of holding on to a Pennsylvania Senate seat.

Fetterman would never have taken office if Republicans hadn’t run a Turkish Muslim leftist trainwreck like Mehmet Oz who appealed to no one except Oprah viewers (and they mostly vote Democrat anyway). Next time, Republicans may actually find a candidate that people might actually vote for. But next time around is a long time away and Fetterman doesn’t need to be picking fights with the Left.

The short version seems to be that he may be a leftist, but he’s an old-school leftist who actually doesn’t much like the Left.

The media castigates him for associating with Bernie Sanders, but Bernie was actually an old-school leftist who used to be against identity politics, culture wars and open borders. Under pressure, he jettisoned all of his views and became a generic woke. (At which point most people lost interest in him. Eventually so did the Left.)

Fetterman has pushed back against the pressure. Unlike Bernie, he refuses to be intimidated by people screaming at him.

Despite the headline, he hasn’t left the Left, but he’s not interested in the progressive label which tends to signify upper class wokeness.

The Pennsylvania senator said he still aligns with many progressive goals, including a $15 minimum wage, universal health care, legalizing marijuana and abolishing the Senate filibuster.

But he said he no longer relates to the overarching label of “progressive” — especially as the left has become more interested in demanding what he described as “purity tests.”

“It’s just a place where I’m not,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.

“I’m not critical if someone is a progressive,” he added. “I believe different things.”

Fetterman is currently for fracking, and also for lots of social welfare. That is old-school leftism. It’s also fairly popular.

There’s a whole lot more support for social welfare than there is for culture wars, drag queens and Islamic terrorism. Not to mention radical environmentalism.

The old progressives used to argue (not even all that long ago) that they should run on a straight class warfare platform while shedding all the other garbage. This used to be the main argument for a Bernie Sanders campaign. Except that garbage is hard to shed. Just ask Bernie.

Fetterman is shedding a lot of the garbage. This doesn’t make him an ex-leftist or a friend to conservatives, but it makes him something worse: a serious threat to the Left as it currently is.