Maine Kampf
Plus: Risky play, strikes on Iran, Steve Hilton advances, and more...
Apparently neither party has any standards: Graham Platner, a Democrat, won his primary for Senate up in Maine and will now face sitting Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, this November.
The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day's news every morning.
Platner has tried to paint himself as an everyman oyster farmer and Marine combat veteran (both technically true), but he is perhaps better described as a "low-conscientiousness loser," in the words of Very Serious writer Josh Barro.
It would be one thing if Platner's nascent political career had been plagued by just one scandal. Or just two scandals. You might take issue with his Nazi tattoo—a skull-and-crossbones design called a Totenkopf, that he got with other Marines in Croatia back in 2007, that he has repeatedly claimed he didn't know the significance of. (His former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, begs to differ, saying Platner used to frequently joke about his Nazi tattoo.) Or maybe the fact that he has a history of roughing up his girlfriends a bit. Or cheating on his wife by sexting other women. Or his weird Reddit comments, ("You don't have much experience with Latin American hookers, do you?") per The Wall Street Journal. Or the fact that he was a Redditor at all.
"Graham Platner doesn't work for a living," notes Barro. "As The New York Times reports, the bulk of his income comes from a military disability pension of approximately $60,000 a year. The pension doesn't mean he's too disabled to work—he is, after all, currently seeking the job of U.S. Senator—but his recent non-campaign endeavors seem more like hobbies than a career. He runs an oyster farm that principally sells oysters to his mother's restaurant. He earned a small stipend as his town's harbor master: $3,000 last year. He lives in a $205,000 house that he bought with a $200,000 loan from his father."
It's kind of wild that Democratic strategists think Platner is their guy. The one to beat Collins, the one to appeal to Maine's regular voters, the one who can—potentially as early as next year—effectively work in the Senate. (No wonder Congress can't get anything smart done.) But this formula appears to be working again and again: "Jay Jones, another similarly 'imperfect' candidate, managed to get elected attorney general of Virginia last year despite revelations that he was arrested for driving 46 miles an hour over the speed limit and wished death on the children of one of his Republican colleagues," adds Barro.
We're in a bit of an era of the young, underqualified candidates who haven't worked so many real jobs—Zohran Mamdani, Spencer Pratt, Graham Platner, Beto O'Rourke—doing better than expected. (Other scrappy young upstarts, like James Talarico and Jon Ossoff, seem wiser, intent on racking up experience in government before advancing.) It seems like the success of the Mamdanis and Platners of the world has more to do with the unpopularity of their opponents than anything they themselves did right. As well as, in Mamdani's case, the fact that his upper-middle-class champagne socialist energy is rather welcome among many New York City voters who see themselves in him. And in Platner's case, he's just an actual Democrat running in a pretty blue state against a squishy Republican. Any warm body would probably do.
Scenes from New York: Highly recommend riding the ferry to Governors Island if you have little kids and a thirst for E.R. visits (as I do).
What if we returned some risk—and some old-skool adventure!—to our playgrounds? The Yard, on Governor's Island, experiments w this concept. ("What is the cost to making things as safe as possible rather than as safe as needed?" "Children are fine without advice/suggestions.") pic.twitter.com/lAgfbcjWlu
— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) June 10, 2026
QUICK HITS
- Inflation ticks up higher:
BREAKING: May CPI inflation rises to 4.2%, the highest level since April 2023.
Core CPI inflation also rises to 2.9%, the highest since September 2025.
Inflation in the US is officially back above 4% and more than double the Fed's target.
Odds of Fed rate hikes are rising.
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) June 10, 2026
- That helicopter I mentioned yesterday that was downed near Oman? The U.S. is blaming it on Iran and striking in retribution. "Iran said it had launched attack drones against U.S. naval targets in Bahrain and fired missiles at American military facilities in Jordan," reports The New York Times.
- I went on The Reason Roundtable and talked crime, Spencer Pratt, AI use cases, and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973). Something for everyone:
- "The $31 trillion Treasury market has an unequivocal message for Kevin Warsh's Federal Reserve: Interest rates aren't high enough," reports Bloomberg. "Yields on policy-sensitive US two-year notes have surged to their highest level in more than a year after a trove of economic data led traders to price in at least one quarter-point rate hike as soon as October. At around 4.15%, the two-year yield trades well above the Fed's current policy band of 3.5% to 3.75%, a divergence that began in March."
- Anon writer Cremieux explores the premise that people who hold beliefs that are considered far-right today actually just hold the beliefs of a normal person from 30 years ago. "To figure out the answers to my questions, I opened up the General Social Survey and had a look around," he writes. "To get started, I defined a few sets of political views: Institutional Confidence, Criminal Justice & Guns, Political Tolerance, Economic/Pro-Government, Racial Liberalism/Civil Rights, Gender-Role Egalitarianism, and Sexual & Moral Liberalism, and then I outlined a set of important social views."
- "Former Fox News host Steve Hilton advanced to the general election to succeed California Gov. Gavin Newsom in November, according to the Associated Press," notes The Wall Street Journal. "He will face-off against former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat."
- Interesting. Those who complain about childcare are…primarily upper-middle-class:
Families making six figures are twice as likely to pay for child care as those who don't pic.twitter.com/EEWrrSqMjN
— Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) June 9, 2026
- Dark:
I wouldn't say this is "the most common question I get" because that is either "who are you" or "are you flirting with me or just like this" but the sentiment about "should I have kids even with climate" is unfortunately common in progressive circles. https://t.co/S8jT7iepNe
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) June 10, 2026
