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PA-Sen: Previous Guy Sure Is Pissed Off About Taking Sean Hannity's Advice On Backing Oz (R. NJ) [1]

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Date: 2022-08-01

Dumb & Dumber

LOL:

John Fetterman may still be recuperating from a stroke, but that doesn’t mean he can’t campaign. The current lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania is running for the state’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat, and while he’s on the mend, he’s been able to attack his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, online. Fetterman is very good at social media. Oz is not. Not only has the former TV star been repeatedly humiliated, sometimes by celebrity guests, but he’s also trailing in the polls. And that’s got the GOP is worried. Sources tell Puck that Donald Trump, who enraged some of his base by supporting Oz, is now complaining to his Fox News bud Sean Hannity about his poor performance. Hannity was the one who coaxed Trump to endorse him in the first place, and throw in the fact that Hannity hasn’t had Trump on his show since April, he must be hopping mad. Trump’s not the only one pissed. After Oz went abroad instead of campaigning, a number of people in the GOP were aghast. “No one can believe that he took a damn vacation at the end of June, after only coming back to the state on June 10,” a Republican strategist told Puck. “He screwed up with that video that was from his New Jersey house instead of Pennsylvania house. It’s really bad.”

And just now, the right-wing National Review has given up on Oz:

When you write off a candidate in midsummer, there’s always a chance that you’re rendering a verdict too early, and that either the candidate, his campaign, or fate has some late twist that will change the dynamic. But the GOP primary was May 17, and Dave McCormick conceded to Oz on June 6. Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman suffered his stroke on May 13, and still hasn’t returned to the campaign trail on a regular basis. Oz effectively had the state to himself for almost three months… and he’s gained no ground during that time. (Oddly, the Oz campaign ran no television ads from late May to late July.) And the latest Fox News survey finds Fetterman leading Oz, 47 percent to 36 percent, and only 35 percent of voters have a favorable opinion about Oz, while 55 percent feel unfavorably towards him. No poll has put Oz any closer than six percentage points behind. Oz just looks like a lemon of a candidate. (I would use the metaphor of a particular flightless bird, but people would think I’m mocking Oz’s country of origin, which isn’t really his problem.) Oz offers all of Trump’s weaknesses (inexperienced celebrity dilettante, limited roots in the state) without any of Trump’s strengths; the typical Trump voter isn’t impressed by Oz being Oprah’s favorite doctor or hosting a health-focused daytime talk show, nor his old support for abortion and gun control. Oz is too Trumpy to win the suburban soccer moms in Bucks County, but not Trumpy enough for blue-collar southwestern Pennsylvania.

Oz keeps getting dumped on royally by practically everyone. Especially from John Oliver:

John Oliver mocked Pennsylvania GOP Senate nominee Mehmet Oz with surgical precision on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight.” (Watch the video below.) In a segment on mental health, the host rolled a retro black-and-white clip of nurses being instructed to apply cosmetics on female patients to “swing the balance between despair and recovery.” Oliver was aghast. “I don’t know what is more alarming there, nurses being forced to take on the skills of a Sephora brand ambassador or the fact that “Can Makeup Cure Sad?” sounds like an episode that Dr. Oz definitely did.” x YouTube Video

But that aspect isn’t surprising because The Daily Beast highlights Oz’s record of being a snake oil salesman:

x We call him Dr. Oz, Doc Hollywood, or sometimes just "weirdo who hawks phony diet pills on TV"



Let's make sure that we *never* have to call him Senator. — John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 31, 2022 Viewers may have surmised that Oz’s video plugging TruBiotics was, essentially, an ad. What they were not aware of, however, is that Oz was a member of the board of directors of the brand’s parent company, PanTheryx. He holds a stake in the business worth as much as $1 million. The full extent of Oz’s financial relationship with PanTheryx—along with several other health supplement companies—has been revealed for the first time thanks to personal financial disclosure forms he was required to file as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. In several other instances, Oz’s platforms boosted PanTheryx products without disclosing Oz’s personal financial relationship to the company. In 2018, for example, videos ran on the Dr. Oz Show website that were sponsored by DiaResQ, another PanTheryx supplement. None of the PanTheryx products Oz plugged were approved by the Food and Drug Administration; one study found DiaResQ was “no better than a placebo.” In his forms, Oz disclosed that, from 2017 to December 2021—when he launched his campaign for Senate—he was a member of the board of PanTheryx. As of February, Oz is a consultant for the company, according to his disclosure form, and is set to be awarded with over 700,000 shares of restricted stock in the company in return for three years of work. In 2019, a press release from PanTheryx announced Oz was joining the board of the company. But viewers of Oz’s promotional content likely wouldn’t have known the doctor had a direct financial stake in whether they bought or sold the product whose benefits Oz was extolling. Oz has long used his platform—and the trust of his audience—to hawk specific products, though he has claimed in the past that he has never personally profited from that activity. Under oath at a U.S. Senate committee hearing in 2014, Oz testified that he “never” endorses “one specific brand” and that “doctors shouldn’t endorse.” But according to Arthur Caplan, a leading medical ethics expert at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Oz’s actions in this case represent a “mountain of a conflict of interest.”

Meanwhile, observers have been loving Lt. Governor John Fetterman’s (D. PA) social media strategy:

x Dude, you're literally from Jersey. I bet you don't even know how to pump your own gas. https://t.co/Vm1xKK1Gdy — John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 26, 2022 It is difficult to know how much this will help Mr. Fetterman in a year when Democrats face stiff political headwinds, including high inflation and a traditional midterm backlash against the party of the president. Political scientists have had a hard time isolating the forces that affect how voters make up their minds, said Christopher Borick, an assistant professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. In addition, voters tend to be older than the average social media user, Mr. Borick said. Still, Pew Research Center last year estimated that 7 in 10 Americans use social media, and it is unquestionable that the medium is becoming more important to reaching voters. “The proof in the pudding is that campaigns have increasingly turned to it, and so they’re going on the belief that it is a necessary and key component,” Mr. Borick said. Maggie McDonald, a post-doctoral fellow who studies social media in congressional campaigns at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, said Mr. Fetterman’s social media game is among the best, if not the best, she’s seen. “I imagine in future years, people will try to emulate this,” Ms. McDonald said. In addition to making people laugh, she said she thinks Mr. Fetterman’s stunts could motivate appreciative viewers to contribute money to his campaign and push apathetic Democrats to get off the sidelines to vote for him.

Health and Democracy are on the ballot this year and we need to get ready to keep Pennsylvania Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Fetterman, Shapiro and these Pennsylvania Democrats campaigns:

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