Fetterman won't rule out being the deciding vote for either party, months after starring in their convention ad.

…(cont) They sent me down two floors after that. Different clerk, same radio, still going. This one had the Rhode Island numbers written on a sticky note taped to her monitor, because people kept asking her about it too, all week, apparently. Democratic primary voters there had turned out their own sitting governor — 62.5 to 37.5, most of the count in — and a sitting mayor in Providence went the same week, same voters, same party. She didn't have a theory about it. She had the sticky note.

Now here's the part I actually walked in on, except I wasn't looking for it — I was looking for a residency form — and it was live, this past Saturday, from a stage at a festival in Austin, Texas. Senator Fetterman, asked to defend his standing as a Democrat after all that, said yes, he's still a Democrat. And asked, directly, how he'd vote if his own party landed a bare 51-seat majority this November — whether he'd caucus the way the card says or the way the tape says — he declined to answer. Not "I'll decide later." Not "depends on the bill." Declined.

I've got a ratchet out in the garage, cheap one, older than the car, which doesn't start half the time either. It's got a little lever on top. Flip it one way and it tightens. Flip it the other way and it loosens. Same tool, same socket, same hand on the handle the whole time — nothing about the ratchet changes except which way somebody's holding that lever.

I'm not writing that down as a comparison to the senator. Nobody at any window told me to say that, and I wouldn't put words in a man's mouth I've never met. I'm only telling you what four floors of wrong hallways told me this week, which is that everybody down there — the copier man, the sticky-note clerk, me, standing there with an unfinished form — could tell you which way their own lever goes, plainly, if you asked them.

So excuse me — I know I only came in for the residency form — but before I let this go: they got a straight answer out of him in Austin about still being a Democrat. Did anybody get a straight answer out of him about which side he'd be voting for, if it ever comes down to him?