Fetterman Campaign Criticized for Agreeing to Debate Oz After Performance

The campaign of Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman faced criticisms following Tuesday's debate when commentators argued that the lieutenant governor should have never agreed to take the stage against Republican Mehmet Oz.

"Sorry Democrats, but Fetterman lost the race tonight," Andrew Feinberg, a politics reporter for The Independent, tweeted Tuesday night. "He's in no way able to communicate clearly or effectively, and agreeing to this debate was political malpractice in the first degree. Whoever told him to do is should be finished in electoral politics."

Feinberg noted that while Fetterman suffered a stroke, and that doctors have cleared him to work as a senator should he be elected, the Democrat's team should have factored in political history, which has proved that "TV performance matters way more than it probably should."

Fetterman took the stage for the only debate that he and Oz would partake in before Election Day in an event that was the most closely watched debate in this year's midterm cycle. Although Fetterman had carried a commanding lead for much of the campaign, Oz has closed the gap to only 1 to 2 percentage points in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, the Democrat made notable verbal stumbles and pauses due to what his doctors say is an auditory processing disorder which makes it difficult for him to understand the words spoken by others.

After the debate, Time magazine's senior correspondent Charlotte Alter said that while Fetterman "was already a very bad debater pre-stroke," his appearance on Tuesday night was even worse than she had anticipated.

"I spoke to Fetterman recently, and I expected him to be very bad tonight. But he was much much worse than I expected (and much worse than in our one-on-one conversation.)," Alter wrote.

Just days before Pennsylvania's May primaries, Fetterman experienced a stroke, although it wasn't publicly disclosed by his team for another two days. Then, later in June, it was revealed the Democrat had a previous undisclosed heart condition. The campaign's failure to be more forthcoming about his health only further helped Oz, whose campaign made Fetterman's health a main talking point and used it to cast doubt that the Democrat is up for the job.

"Let's also talk about the elephant in the room," Fetterman said in his opening statement during the debate. "I had a stroke. [Oz] never let me forget that."

Fetterman's team applauded his performance following the debate and emphasized the fact that the candidate was still recovering from his stroke.

"We are thrilled with John's performance," Fetterman's communications director Joe Calvello said in a statement. "He did remarkably well tonight – especially when you consider that he's still recovering from a stroke and was working off of delayed captions filled with errors. John won countless exchanges, counter-punched aggressively, and pushed back on Oz's cruelty and attacks."

However, some argued that Fetterman should have never been onstage to begin with.

"That #PASenateDebate was painful to watch," TV presenter Piers Morgan tweeted on Tuesday. "I feel very sorry for John Fetterman that he suffered a stroke, but it is cruel of his team to expose him to such ridicule when he is clearly unfit to either take part in TV debates or be a fully-functional senator. He should withdraw."

Newsweek reached out to Fetterman's campaign for comment.