Graham Platner
Get with the program, comrades . . .
Platner is contesting for the Democratic nomination in the Maine primary for Senate. The Republican opponent in the general election will be the deplorable Susan ‘I’m concerned’ Collins. The fellow on the left is Troy Jackson, angling for the gubernatorial nomination.
I’ve gone back and forth on his campaign. He looked good coming out of the blocks, a progressive working class dude, what we sorely need. Then all the guff about his so-called Nazi tattoo and objectionable online language came out. Around the same time, the Democratic Party establishment rallied around 77-year-old ex-governor Janet Mills.
Isn’t it clear that the Democratic Party bigs have completely lost the plot? They would rather retain power in the party than win elections. That is reason enough to take a chance on Platner.
I would concede that we have already run this experiment with John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and it has ended in disaster. There is still reason to keep trying, to drive the party into class politics, as a couple of socialist candidates are doing in New York City and Minneapolis. That is the mission. There can be no other. Otherwise MAGA fascism is winning. Imagine losing in New Jersey of all places to these turds. It could happen.
Here is some background from Michelle Goldberg in the NY Times. And here is a reader comment to her article that I find eloquent, and more important, correct:
To the larger point of Platner’s enduring campaign, the answers are numerous. But it mostly boils down to trust in the democratic party is beyond gone. We don’t trust you to pick strong candidates. We don’t trust you to not shrink from a fight. We don’t trust you to be strong articulate messengers of a positive grassroots movement. We don’t trust you to truly go to the mat for the working/middle class instead of corporate approved incremental progress around the edges. Platner came right out the gate and said he would approve removing the filibuster and opposing Chuck Schumer as majority leader. He seems to grasp the moment we are in far more than Mills who is on the opposite side of both topics. I personally would rather take the rehabilitated vet who pulled himself out of a dark place and seems to sincerely want to desperately fight to restore our republic than another well credentialed septuagenarian establishment pick who clings to bygone norms while MAGA burns the constitution around us. Ultimately, this is what primaries are for. Let the voters see the candidates for all their flaws and talents and make an informed decision. I have little patience for progressives decrying this oppo research as anything below the belt. These are legitimate concerns that I’m glad are being raised now and not 2 months before the general election.
As a sideline, random data point, on the train I met a fellow from Maine, business owner, not particularly liberal, who claimed he knew Platner well, and that he was very smart. That can’t be bad.
Why the hell don’t we have our own Platner here in Va?
I wrote somewhere else about this and wanted to repost it here, but I'll be damned if I can find it.
Basically, I've seen, and lived this movie before. In 2018, fresh out of retirement from a career that concluded with 29 years in IT, preceded by 12 or so years as a labor activist/factory worker, I was thrilled to see the emergence of one Randy Bryce, the "IronStasche", an Ironworker, who decided to challenge the odious Paul Ryan in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District.
Just the ticket, I thought, I can combine my two careers and do something I really believe in. It was catnip to me. About two weeks after retirement, I made the short drive from the Chicago area to a Kenosha, Wisconsin, UAW hall, where I offered my services as someone with IT skills if they could use such help. They could, indeed and soon I was involved in merging two incompatible lists they had and such work.
Pretty soon, I realized, that though the Bernie-loving kids who were running the campaign continually told me they loved what I was providing them, they didn't have the slightest idea how to use it and they weren't actually using it. I began making frequent drives to the district to canvass and such, and left the IT work behind.
No matter, Randy won the Democratic primary easily and the campaign began. Either before or after the primary, I can't remember which, Paul Ryan dropped out of the race. I doubt he was scared of Randy Bryce, I think he just didn't want to be in Congress anymore. He was replaced by an anodyne Republican no one had ever heard of. This deprived Randy of his #1 attack target.
And then Randy's negative shit hit the fan. A 20 year old DUI. Maybe some dispute about child support. Etc. Etc. These are the echoes I hear with Platner. Randy lost by about 55-45.
However, these echoes have only limited value, IMHO.
I don't think Randy lost because of the negative stuff. For sure, it didn't help him. But the campaign had not really analyzed the district or understood it. The district was two small industrial cities along Lake Michigan, Racine and Kenosha, and a third industrial city, Janesville, where Ryan was from, about 80 miles to the West. In between, miles and miles of farmland.
I attended a meeting shortly before the election at which Randy laid out the campaign strategy: work like hell to get out the working class vote in the three cities. I knew then we were doomed. The campaign had NOTHING going on in the agricultural areas of the district. Did they count the numbers of voters? It was flawed from the start. Hope and hype.
I don't know anything about the Platner campaign's strategy for this, but I doubt it's based on nostalgia for the working class community that used to be there. In WI-1 all those union halls were serving retirees. The plants had mostly closed. And I don't know enough about Maine.
And so, let the primary voters decide between Platner and Mills. They either will or won't be deterred by Platner's youthful snafus. It is actually good that this shit comes out now, rather than after the primary. And we should never forget all the crap that the R's allow THEIR bad boys. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander I say. This will require fiercer messaging, not centrist ducking, not "when they go low, we go high" bs. I'd like to see Platner make a big issue out of Mills' opposition to abolishing the filibuster. Getting rid of it is essential to rebuilding the mess that Trump and the Republicans have made, and there's nothing to be gained by hiding from that issue.
But we'll see. As Michelle Goldberg points out, things on the ground look different from what some of our professional pundits imagine.
The voters will decide.