The Establishment Girds for Battle Against… Graham Platner

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If you judge people by the enemies they have made, Graham Platner has made some good ones, starting with The New York Times. 

Notwithstanding the rare favorable op-ed, the Times hates Platner, the likely Democratic nominee for incumbent Republican Susan Collins’s Senate seat in Maine. So does Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, which editorialized last week that Platner has been “addressing legitimate frustrations with fantastical solutions,” chief of which is to “punish big business.” 

So does just about the entire establishment and Epstein class. Graham Platner is likely the most establishment-hated politician in the country.

It’s no wonder all the power brokers and oligarchs loathe — and fear — Platner and will do whatever they can to ruin him. He had seemingly come out of nowhere to contend for the seat after a group of locals near his town of Sullivan convinced him — and it took a lot of convincing, he says — to run for the Democratic nomination. He had no political experience, was an oysterman and a harbormaster by trade, was a complete unknown, even in Maine, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was twisting Gov. Janet Mills’s arm to run. 

It looked like a suicide mission — except that Platner almost immediately caught fire with Mainers, of which I am one. I first saw him at an appearance last August in Brunswick roughly two weeks after his announcement, when he was still basically a cipher who nevertheless attracted a crowd that must have numbered at least 500.

When Mills did finally enter the race two months later, she already seemed like the underdog. Polling soon after showed Platner trouncing her by nearly 30 points and beating Collins by double digits.

Then CNN released potentially damning social media posts of Platner from what he has called a “dark time” when he had returned to Maine, angry and depressed and suffering from PTSD, the result of four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Marines — posts in which he disparaged rural Mainers and lobstermen, warned women that if they didn’t want to get assaulted they shouldn’t get drunk, and declared himself a communist. 

And then it was revealed that he had gotten a large tattoo one drunken night in the service that was associated with the Nazi SS. 

Platner was able to weather it all. His popularity among Mainers — and nationally — continued to rise. Mills eventually withdrew. Platner had the Democratic field to himself.

The Establishment’s Worst Nightmare

The establishment isn’t afraid of Platner because he had bested the Democratic leadership, though they weren’t all that happy about it. He has said that the first time party poobah Schumer contacted him was when Mills dropped out and that it was a short conversation. (Not surprisingly, Platner has vowed to vote against Schumer as leader, calling him part of the problem.) 

Nor are they afraid of him because he is leading Susan Collins now, who is exactly the sort of politician that would never rock the boat and that the political and business establishment can trust — the sort of politician who is for sale. 

He isn’t compliant. He isn’t for sale. He isn’t what he called a “mannequin politician,” all smooth edges and politesse.

They are afraid, actually terrified, because Platner isn’t just a populist candidate in a small state. He is a portent of what could be a political tidal wave — a “movement,” as Platner himself called it — that might sweep an angry country the way it seemed to be sweeping a discontented Maine. 

Platner is the establishment’s worst nightmare. He isn’t compliant. He isn’t for sale. He isn’t what he called a “mannequin politician,” all smooth edges and politesse. He is full of fury, mainly at the people who sent him overseas and now send others like him overseas — who are the very same people, he says, who hurt working people again and again and again. 

He isn’t like any other politician. He doesn’t play by their rules.

Platner is straight from Central Casting for a man-against-the-system. With his stocky build and reddish gray-flecked beard, he looks exactly like what he says he is — a man who does heavy lifting for a living, a working man. He wears jeans and a work shirt or T-shirt. His voice is like sandpaper — the deep, gruff voice of a working man. 

And he campaigns like a working man. Not unlike Péter Magyar, the Hungarian opposition leader who deposed Viktor Orbán, he travels from one Maine town to another — to churches and schools and community centers and village commons where people have crowded to hear him speak. (One of his ads chides Collins for not having held a town hall meeting in two decades.) 

But that is the least of the establishment’s terror over Graham Platner. It is what he says that terrifies them and, even more, the fact that, like Magyar, he may actually be able to fulfill his promises. 

Platner doesn’t mince words. He says that “our democratic systems have been subsumed by corporate power” and that America needs a “political revolution” to “change the structures of how this thing works.” 

He says that the establishment has declared war on the working class. He says that they have denied what the people want and need. 

He says that it was only with the assistance of the Department of Veterans Affairs — he is on permanent disability for injuries he suffered in battle — that he was able to begin his business and live a good life, and he wants every working person to enjoy the same benefits. 

He says that the oligarchs don’t pay their fair share and must be made to do so. 

And he says that we the people have to gain power and then use it.

The Times Takes Aim

The task for the establishment is how to destroy that and elect a Collins who will do their bidding while famously expressing “concerns” about the struggles of the working class that she does nothing to assuage. (The Center for American Progress found that she voted with Trump 96 percent of the time.) 

The Times set about doing it this past weekend with two articles about Platner and a two-pronged attack — one prong of which seems to nullify the other but then, when you are at war, you will do anything.

On the one hand, the Times seems to think that Platner’s posts and tattoo are authentic — who Platner really is, which is the same message in an oft-broadcast commercial on Maine television funded by a pro-Collins PAC. The Times was especially curious about when he deleted his posts on social media — though Platner has disavowed them, attributing them to his distressed state of mind at the time — and about his tattoo, which he says he didn’t know was a Nazi insignia and which he promptly had covered. (His first campaign manager quit, saying Platner must have known, though that is hardly confirmation.) 

Platner has admitted he was a broken man, a hateful man. He served four tours of duty in a hopeless war. 

But the Times fails to compare his unfortunate words with Collins’s unfortunate Senate votes: to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr. and Brett Kavanagh and Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, and Russell Vought; to support Trump’s war in Iran; to cast the deciding vote that sent Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” to the Senate floor, before voting against it on the floor because Trump didn’t need her vote — the kind of meaningless, self-serving, symbolic gesture that has been a Collins trademark.

And the Times wasn’t done. It also devoted an entire piece to Platner’s seeming inauthenticity as a working man, because his father is a lawyer, his mother owns a small restaurant (to which Platner sells his oysters), his grandfather is an architect, and Platner attended a private high school. Moreover, his father lent him the money for the down payment on his house. And, even more damning, Platner defines “working class” as anyone who works for a wage, drawing a line between those who live by their labor and those who live on their investments, which the Times seemed to think was somehow duplicitous. 

As Platner told the Times, “I’ve never been close to money and power. … I work with my hands on the ocean and I don’t make much money,” the latter confirmed by Platner’s tax returns. He makes $60,000 a year.

Neither Polished Pol nor Reality TV Mogul

That didn’t convince the Times. But here is their problem — and the establishment’s in trying to brand Platner a phony and make sure that there is no movement to empower ordinary Americans: So far, Mainers aren’t buying the campaign to destroy him. 

That may change: This is likely to be one of the most expensive campaigns in Senate history, with conservative PACs pouring in money, though Maine ranks only 42nd in population. But so far, Platner is authentic to those who matter most. 

He doesn’t just “message” like other politicians. He speaks from his own lived experience. And that is Platner’s real affinity with the voters. In a club of millionaires, he would be the oysterman.

Platner is honest. Platner is smart. Platner may change our politics with a new and compassionate form of populism. And that should frighten the establishment — really, really frighten them. 

And there is yet another thing that I am sure frightens the plutocrats. Platner is one of the very best speakers I have ever heard. He is just plain great on the stump. He digs deep. He isn’t afraid to rattle the establishment. He seems to relish it. And he isn’t afraid to expose his scars and weaknesses and pain. Yes, pain. There is that and the fact that he is clearly intelligent as well as articulate, which is a very potent combination — perhaps making something of a comeback in the wake of growing impatience with the Trumpian word salad.

Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark was so impressed by Platner that he placed him among the three Democrats most likely to win the presidential nomination, and he added that a big part of Platner’s appeal is that he doesn’t make it about himself — which also separates him from just about every other politician in the nation. He makes it about the people he hopes to represent. Them, not him.

Mainers know dishonesty when they see it, even if the Times doesn’t. Platner is honest. Platner is smart. Platner may change our politics with a new and compassionate form of populism. And that should frighten the establishment — really, really frighten them. 

At least, Graham Platner hopes so.

Neal Gabler is the recipient of two LA Times Book Prizes, USA Today’s biography of the year, Time Magazine’s book of the year, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Shorenstein Fellowship from Harvard. His substack is Farewell, America.