Graham Platner Signals a Problem for Democrats, and the Rest of Us
Platner is too typical of a wave of radical and unprepared Democrats who seem poised to take power.
The "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party is on a roll, winning nominations and elections. Left-wing leaders are taking earned victory laps as they chalk up victories for candidates espousing socialism, hostility to Israel (and often Jews), identity politics, and other leftist positions that were until recently thankfully rare in American politics. But the radicals' support for Maine's deeply troubled Graham Platner, who won the party's nod to compete in the U.S. Senate race, shows the dangers posed by a movement that seemingly holds ideological lunacy as its highest value. It's not clear that anybody is in a position to stop them.
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The Surging Left
"Progressives are on the march," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) trumpeted June 3, even before Platner and other progressives won this week's party primaries. Although not technically a Democrat, the democratic socialist is a leader of his movement's rapid takeover of the party.
A week later, Politico's William Steakin, Lisa Kashinsky, and Andrew Howard reported that "the Vermont senator's endorsed candidates cleaned house on Tuesday, a coast-to-coast show of force headlined by a resounding win for his embattled Senate pick in Maine, Graham Platner, in spite of days of turmoil that had thrown his candidacy into question." Other progressive wins that day include California congressional hopeful Randy Villegas, New Jersey's Adam Hamawy and Analilia Mejia, Montana's Sam Forstag, Pennsylvania's Chris Rabb, and others.
A Trainwreck of a Candidate
"Embattled" is right. Platner's controversies began with the revelation that he sported a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo that he belatedly covered (he claims he didn't know the meaning, but for years referred to it as "my Totenkopf," prompting his then-political director to call bullshit and quit the campaign). Platner buffed his totalitarian-curious credentials by calling himself as a "communist." He also was allegedly abusive to his old girlfriends, regularly grabbing one "hard enough to leave marks."
Platner's womanizing, dismissal of rural dwellers as stupid, online bigotry, and pose as a blue-collar icon despite living off military disability payments and family money barely rise to the level of notice in politics. He's a human trainwreck who can barely manage his own life, seeking power over others.
But these revelations trickled out without impeding the candidate's political trajectory. In April, Maine Gov. Janet Mills suspended her Senate campaign after failing to gain traction against Platner, who currently polls ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins.
"Working class champions are taking down corporate political dynasties and forcing lobbies like AIPAC to hide out of unpopularity — our movement is delivering on the demands of Democratic voters and taking tonight's momentum forward to keep winning this month from New York to Colorado," Usamah Andrabi of Justice Democrats, a progressive group founded by former Sanders staffers, told Politico.
Minimal Accomplishments Meet Ideological Lunacy
The term working class champions does heavy lifting here. Platner isn't the only progressive favorite to come from money and have a spotty employment history. Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the son of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and a Columbia University professor, dabbled in rap music and activism before winning office. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, another socialist, was funded by her parents until her election. Like Platner, they tout government-funded services, restrictions on private property, high taxes, and hostility to "billionaires" and "corporations." For the mayors, that's led to clashes with business leaders that are pushing people and investment out of their cities. Seattle icon Starbucks is reducing its presence there and building a new corporate hub in Nashville, while Texas is drawing companies and high-income professionals from New York. It's easy to conclude that a lack of significant private sector experience leads politicians to serious missteps.
Statist economics is a given with progressives, but the movement carries other ideological baggage, too. In his statement for Justice Democrats, spokesman Andrabi denounced AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby group. Such statements are standard in progressive pronouncements, with hostility to the world's sole majority-Jewish state and its allegedly outsize influence (often blurring into open antisemitism) expected of movement candidates. Wilson denounced Israel for "genocide" and Mamdani attacks Israel. Tuesday's progressive winners—Forstag, Hamawy, Mejia, Rabb, and Villegas—all read from the same script on Israel. For his part, Platner said last week of his Republican opponent, "Senator Collins is bought and paid for by [Israel's Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly."
Democratic Voters Lead the Way
In fact, progressive candidates are following the lead of their supporters. Both major parties have shifted ideologically in recent years, but Democrats are sprinting to the fringe.
"Democratic voters moved sharply to the left in their ideological identification and policy preferences on a range of issues between 2012 and 2020," the University of Virginia's Center for Politics noted in 2023.
After the 2024 presidential election, John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times reported, "the data shows Democrats taking a sharp turn leftward on social issues over the past decade."
Last September, Gallup polling found that among Democrats, independents and Republicans, "Democrats are the only partisan group of the three that views socialism more positively than capitalism—66% to 42%."
And an April Pew Research survey found that "eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents currently have an unfavorable view of Israel."
Established Democratic officials with relatively moderate positions are being abandoned by voters who have become enamored of once outlier ideas like displacing private enterprise with government services, seizing private property, confiscating wealth, and demonizing a tiny minority of the population. In their search for candidates touting those positions, these seekers of "working class champions" seem willing to embrace people who are nothing of the sort—including some with histories of minimal accomplishments and extremely poor judgment.
The situation poses real dangers for Democrats and for the country. Democrats are becoming far more ideologically radical than most Americans, who remain generally pro-market on economics and mixed on social issues. That should hurt Democrats. But this is a time of political turmoil when the GOP is also in flux, ideologically amorphous, and has become something of a cult around the president.
Progressive Democrats like Platner and his comrades are unprepared for serious responsibility and unfit to govern. But it's not clear that anybody is in a strong position to keep them from power.