How big of a problem is John Fetterman’s health?

“We are working to figure out what a fair debate would look like with the lingering impacts of the auditory processing in mind,” Fetterman campaign strategist Rebecca Katz told The Washington Post. “To be absolutely clear, the occasional issues he is having with auditory processing have no bearing on his ability to do the job as senator. John is healthy and fully capable of showing up and doing the work.”

“It’s clear that he’s being dishonest,” Toomey said of Fetterman. “He’s either not as well as he claims to be, or he’s afraid to be called out for the radical policies he supports. It’s one or the other.

Added Toomey: “I’m here to issue a warning to Pennsylvania voters. You can’t do the job of US senator sitting at home firing off snarky tweets.”

“If Mr. Fetterman is not well enough to debate his opponent, that raises serious concerns about his ability to serve as a United States senator,” read the op-ed.

It added later:

“If Mr. Fetterman’s communication skills have not yet recovered sufficiently to effectively debate his opponent, many voters will have concerns about his ability to represent them effectively in Washington. While he has gamely undertaken more campaign events and media interviews in recent weeks, Mr. Fetterman still speaks haltingly and relies on closed captioning to fully understand his conversation partners.”

Questions about a politician’s health are a notoriously touchy subject. In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, Donald Trump sought to raise questions about the mental acuity and physical health of his Democratic opponents, suggesting they weren’t up to the job. During the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain had to regularly answer questions about his health given his age and his complicated medical history.

The Point: It’s not clear yet how much Pennsylvania voters care about Fetterman’s health as a voting issue. But it does seem that there’s more to the story than we’ve been getting from his campaign to this point.