I call it Fettermanism, which may well be (to me) the most important – and hopeful – single cultural and political event coming from Tuesday’s national elections.

For the first time in six years, Americans in a central, battleground, even seminal state have voted for decency, compassion, and humanism over self, anger, money,  and treason.

If Donald Trump is over, and I believe he is, we owe a great deal to John Fetterman, the bravest and most real candidate to emerge in our national politics in a very long time.

I’ve maybe seen the future, Fettermanism, the return of the natural person – and a compassionate one – to our national politics.

If ever there was an antidote to the malignant tumor that was and is Donald Trump, it is Fettermanism, the path to salvation for our democracy.

We expected the Democrats to turn our politics around after 2020, but they haven’t been able to do that. They are just not strong enough and united enough. And Biden is just too weak to be a leader. He needs to leave in grace; otherwise, he may well be pushed out.

We expected women to rise up together after the Supreme court took their reproductive rights away, but there is no evidence that their fury has been sustained or has really altered the sordid state of our national politics.

We hoped the Republican Party would stop fielding the Crazy Team and return to supporting our democracy.

That didn’t happen, either. For the American political system to work, both parties must work together. If that isn’t fixed, there can’t be much progress.

But a strange-looking, obscure, poorly dressed ex-mayor from a small town in Pennsylvania who nearly died a few days before his primary taught us some lessons in courage, decency, and the power of ethical and honest politics.

He may have shown us the way if only we would listen. John Fetterman is John Adam’s greatest dream and Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.

Ron DeSantis won a significant and impressive victory in Florida, but Republicans are kidding themselves if they think his God-chosen act will fly in the rest of America. Florida is sunstruck and gerrymandered right now, but the reality is that he is just another Trump with a brain, some sanity, and no sense of humor or charisma.

We’ve seen that movie; I don’t think we are going back, no matter how DeSantis struck the media and many Republicans are. I can’t handle four years of chasing the woke, whoever they are. Some basic ideas for improving lives might be welcome.

Republicans, like Democrats, never seem to learn. Americans clearly want something different, not one rehash after another.

DeSantis is a desirable target for the right opponent.

Fetterman is something different, something very different.

Could it be that this ungainly, stricken, fashion-plagued figure from a small steel town in Pennsylvania is the spirit and leader we have been yearning for to slay the dragon of Trumpism and return us to hope for and pride in our country?

He seems to have a more peaceful and kind country in mind. The people who know him say she is a good man, a wonderful friend, husband, and father. He has a lot of that missing quality in our politics: empathy. He does care about the needy and vulnerable.

“For every job that’s ever been lost, for every factory that ever closed, for every person that works hard but never got ahead,” said Fetterman at his election party, “I’m proud of what we ran on.”

I see the ghost of Franklin Roosevelt in this ungainly man.

And he should be proud.

Fetterman re-invigorated his campaign after a stroke that came close to killing him, appealing to anyone who “got knocked down and had to get back up,” Fetterman appealed to Pennsylvania and many Americans who responded to his suddenly powerful story of loss, renewal, and a miraculous comeback. He has the genius of seeming to speak to all of us, and all of us have suffered some loss,  illness, or setback.

The Democrats seem to have forgotten how to do that. You can’t take it. It takes a natural person to be loved by real people.

Fetterman is the only politician running for office in America that I was moved to donate to at least a half dozen times.

His was the most inspiring and uplifting political story throughout the mid-term political campaign.

He represents what the Democratic Party used to be before it became corrupted by big money, corporate lobbyists, and political extremists.

The irony of our time is that the two political parties claim to be so different, but in so many ways, they are the same. They are all for sale to corporate money.

This is why people keep shifting from one to the other; neither speaks to real people as Fetterman did.

The odds were very long against him.

His speech and hearing were visibly impaired, and Trump and the Republican Billionnaire donors poured millions of dollars into the campaign, suggesting he was too weakened to be elected.

He agreed to debate the carpetbagger millionaire Dr. Oz, perhaps the worst possible choice for a Senate candidate in Pennsylvania. He had no actual policies to offer, he hammered away at the idea that Fetterman was too damaged to be a U.S. Senator (is such a thing even possible?)

Fetterman was painful to watch at the only debate, after which his poll numbers began to plummet, and Dr. Oz looked like he might slither through playing dirty.

But people sympathized. The attacks backfired.

Good for Pennsylvania, the birthplace not only of liberty but of mills, mines, and factories, many of which have closed.

Pennsylvania workers know hardship; their jobs were sent overseas during the rise of the global economy pushed by both political parties. Among all the whiners in America now, Pennsylvania workers have some excellent reasons to be resentful.

Inflation has hit the people in that state very hard, but they put aside their interests and decided to support a candidate they saw as one of them. Was there any political message Tuesday night bigger than that?

As crippled as his campaign suddenly was after his stroke, Fetterman’s political response was brilliant.

His staff skillfully used social media to portray Dr. Oz as the stiff millionaire pretender he is, trying to pretend to voters that he was a Pennsylvania, just one of the guys because he bought a mansion there two years ago and was just an ordinary steel mill folk.

Even Oprah Winfrey, who effectively created the TV Dr. Oz, couldn’t stomach him and endorsed Fetterman.

Fetterman tagged Oz perfectly as a clueless and elitist outsider and  Trump flunky; this was too much even for the struggling blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania to bear.

Partly because of his humbling stroke, he never became the false, scripted, constipated candidates the Democrats choose or the lunatics Trump was pushing onto ballots all over the country.

Most of them lost.

The Crazy Team took a beating. A good guy won.

For 13 years, Fetterman was the mayor of the struggling steel town of Braddock (I visited that town several times as a reporter).

He didn’t need to transform himself to run; he didn’t embrace market research and polls. He was just himself.

In American politics, authenticity is rare enough to be stunning.

Former and current steelworkers came out of the woodwork to support his campaign. “He would come down there and talk to the steelworkers,” said one woman whose sister worked in the steel mills. “John is for the people,” she said, “and it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, white black.”

How many politicians in America would people say that about?

The doctors say Fetterman’s mind is sharp and that he is healthy and will get better as the month’s pass.

If there were any justice or courage in politics, the Democratic Party would nominate Fetterman to run for President. It will never happen, but I can almost promise he would beat Trump’s brains. This ordinary man of courage and integrity is against The Billionnaire King Of Sleaze.

Does any rational person think Donald Trump would win the 2024 campaign for the presidency? Will the Republicans try suicide yet again?

Fetterman did not run on a radical platform or pander to the left or the right. He just was Fetterman, a rare thing in American politics. His campaign had conviction and focus because he didn’t have to fake it, as Dr. Oz did.

When I want to be hopeful about our democracy, I will think of John Fetterman and his brave and very touching campaign, not only for his life but for ours. I believe we can be a kind and gentle nation again. It’s in the DNA. Empathy won this time.

I am not foolish enough to think that Fetterman as President could ever happen, but I feel the solid ground in saying this was the prominent and most inspiring news of election night.

John Adams may have been right, and H.L. Mencken is just too cynical after all. Compassion is alive in politics, and so is honesty in courage. May it last and grow and prosper.

Fetterman’s true legacy would be to encourage real people to enter politics, regardless of their appearance or dress, and pressure the weak and dysfunctional Democrats to support other people like him and begin the party of the working people again rather than their elitist enemies.

I’d be the first to join if we could start a Fettermanism political party. So, apparently, would be a lot of other people.

So the mid-term elections had two messages for me that were worth paying attention to, worth noting, and perhaps even celebrating.

I don’t believe the vote was an affirmation for Joe Biden or the Democratic Party. Nor do I think it will change the tortured split of the country into two increasingly different and angry halves. It won’t dampen the rise of fascist white Christian Nationalism. It won’t bring Liz Cheney back to congress. It won’t quell racism or antisemitism. It won’t get around a fair and unbiased Supreme Court. It won’t overnight produce an influential leader to fight for our democracy.

Nor will Trumpism quickly die once his leader vanishes into the gilded dining rooms of Mar-A-Largo, where he belongs. Trump has tried to fashion himself as a hero of the working person, but Fetterman did us the favor of busting that bubble as well.

My most crucial political insight is that the country is finally sick of Donald Trump; he is like the food you wanted to try but which left you with food poisoning and vomiting all night.

It was evident Tuesday night that in much of the country, people have had it with Trump’s lies, cruelty, political stupidity, narcissism, unending corruption, treason, and encouragement of bigotry and contempt for the law.

Trump is a rolling pandemic, and the only vaccines that can stop him are the votes of honest people who love their freedom and would like to keep it. I have a great deal of hope. Americans are learning that democracy is both frail and vulnerable. Americans also want to be free and not have to bend their knees to dictators and wannabe Kings. That’s where it all started.

Sometimes, things are so bad they begin to look good.

The second most important thing for me – perhaps the most important in the long one – was the rise of what I call Fettermanism, which signaled, for the very first time in nearly a decade, the return of humanism, empathy and compassion to our politics and to the rough and tumble and very American state of Pennsylvania (the state I once covered as a political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

The real people have broken through the billionaire and media screens and made a loud noise.

They finally elected one of their own. The fight goes on.