Graham Platner’s supporters can’t claim that they don’t know what they’re backing.
Graham Platner is having a moment. The manly man Democrat running for the Senate in Maine certainly breaks from the mold of Sara Gideon and Shenna Bellows, the hapless opponents dispatched by Susan Collins in 2020 and 2014. Democratic organs such as The Bulwark are raving about him:
A brash, blunt oyster farmer, harbormaster, and military veteran who says he doesn’t need lessons in talking to Donald Trump voters because they’re his neighbors and coworkers. “I know how to connect with them.”. . . The no-holds-barred outsider who recently told Redditors in an ask-me-anything session that “I stand right in the f[***]ing way of anyone who’s going to try to come after the freedoms of the LGBTQIA+ community,” and “Susan Collins is a tool of the billionaire class.” The Marine and Army veteran, who emerged from four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with herniated discs, traumatic brain injury, and PTSD, says he enlisted in the Marines because “I read too much Ernest Hemingway in high school. I wanted to be Robert Jordan.”
Platner and Mamdani are both viral sensations. Platner reported raising $1 million in his first nine days as a candidate, while Mamdani had over 50,000 campaign volunteers even before he won the Democratic primary, some traveling from Ireland or Hawaii to help. They both have beards, they share an admaker, and both appeared with Sen. Bernie Sanders — like Mamdani, a democratic socialist — at high-energy Labor Day rallies. Sample applause lines at the Platner event included “Symbolic opposition does not reopen hospitals,” “Weak condemnations do not bring back Roe v. Wade,” and “Maine deserves better than Susan Collins.”
The similarities to Zohran Mamdani don’t seem to end there. His latest Facebook ad claims that “there is a genocide happening in Palestine”:
Maybe Democrats intend to run nationally on echoing Hamas propaganda accusing Israel of genocide. Platner’s supporters can’t claim that they don’t know what they’re backing.