Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate candidate, Mehmet Oz, excels in the world of television make-believe, yet he’s struggling against an opponent who’s more media creation than man, with control of the United States Senate hanging in the balance.

When the Democratic candidate, John Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, suffered a stroke in May and was fitted with a pacemaker, it could have crippled his campaign. Instead, he’s run a version of President Biden’s basement strategy, leaning on Twitter and TikTok to campaign for him.

The Fetterman social media team has cobbled together the myth of a vigorous native son repelling a sinister foreigner. Supporters have taken their cue and hammered the Republican’s full name, complete with umlaut — Mehmet Cengiz Öz — but without his medical title.

In the 2008 Democratic primaries, Secretary Clinton’s fans also tried mocking her opponent’s name — emphasizing President Obama’s middle moniker, Hussein, and even releasing a photo of him wearing a turban as if to say, “Ah ha.”

The dog whistle is that someone with a Muslim name can’t possibly be a loyal American. Focusing on Dr. Oz’s birth in Turkey and service in that NATO ally’s army has furthered the effort to otherize him.

These snark attacks ought to be easy for a media personality to rebuff, starting with citing Mr. Fetterman’s made-for-TV racial profiling incident. In 2013, he mistook fireworks for gunshots, jumped into his truck armed with a shotgun, and pointed it at the first black man he saw, jogger Chris Miyares, holding him at gunpoint until police arrived to defuse the situation. 

The attacks on Dr. Oz for having lived in New Jersey are also more effective than they have any right to be. Haven’t many citizens fled the high-tax, high-regulation Garden State for neighboring Pennsylvania?

When Mrs. Clinton faced the charge that she moved to New York as a stepping stone to the White House, she made clear that she wanted to keep the Empire State a destination for those seeking to relocate and won.

Granted, as the wife of the first two-term Democratic president in half a century, most of the press adored her, but Dr. Oz has plenty of friends among that set, too, including Oprah Winfrey.

In a campaign featuring such a media-savvy candidate, the best counterattack aimed at exposing the real man behind the @JohnFetterman handle came from the Republican senator of Arkansas, Tom Cotton.

On Wednesday, Mr. Fetterman attacked Dr. Oz for being “out of touch,” again implying the Republican is not quite one of us. Mr. Cotton tweeted, “John Fetterman — a socialist who lived off his mom & dad’s allowance until he joined AARP — is talking about being ‘out of touch.’”

He jabbed that Mr. Fetterman will “collect Social Security and his parents’ allowance” and pointed out he “lived off mom & dad until he was *50*, and he’s lecturing Dr. Oz about being a ‘regular person’?”

This was more talked about than anything Dr. Oz has mustered, going to the heart of the fictional persona crafted for Mr. Fetterman one hashtag at a time. 

A sign of Mr. Cotton’s effectiveness is that Team Fetterman ignored him, knowing that responding to slights in the manner of President Trump only amplifies them, and they can’t survive a spotlight being shone on their candidate’s silver-spoon upbringing.

So, Team Fetterman maintains its momentum against a TV personality who seems to have forgotten all he learned about the optics of our modern media landscape.

Since the conventional wisdom holds that campaigns kick off in earnest after Labor Day, it may help if Dr. Oz views those final months as Sweeps Week. Because if he continues with his regular programing, the “Senator Oz Show” will get canceled before it airs, taking prospects for a Republican Senate with it.