Over the past few weeks, the United States Senate race in Maine was upended by two major developments: the first, the entry of incumbent governor Janet Mills after months of prodding by Chuck Schumer. As an independent voter, it is difficult for me to envision voting for Janet Mills, either in a primary or the general election. Anyone who has worked in public service or organizing will know that she has abandoned Maine’s most vulnerable time and again, but if you haven’t, here’s a primer: she has fought the Wabanaki tribes on issues of sovereignty for decades, refused to stand up for Maine ratepayers, vetoed a bill which would have strengthened labor protections for farmworkers and just this year refused to sign bills that would raise an additional tax on millionaires and prevent Maine municipalities from entering into contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. As for a prospective Senator Mills, she has said that she is “100% certain” would continue to support the filibuster, the archaic Senate practice that continues to allow Republicans free reign to impose their will over the body.
Moreover, she has remarked that she “appreciates everything Collins is doing” and, as evidenced by the months-long courting period that was required to get her to run, generally seems unenthused by the entire ordeal. It makes me wonder as to why a 77 year-old with a long and fruitful career in public service, whose administration has undoubtedly improved Maine even if many of her decisions are baffling and frustrating, is going to embark on such a grueling ordeal if only to raise the average age of the Senate even further. I don’t want to vote for Susan Collins, who I feel has betrayed Mainers through her votes for lie-peddling conmen like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Trump’s destructive “One Big Beautiful” reconciliation bill that passed earlier this year. But if Mills has a long record of falling short for Maine’s working people, and won’t vote to end the filibuster, what’s the point of sending someone even older to Washington, D.C., only years removed from the shameful Biden, Feinstein and Granger debacles?
Enter Graham Platner. Platner, a political neophyte and oyster farmer from Downeast fishing community Sullivan. Platner, hoping to harnessing the widespread anger and dissatisfaction against the Democratic establishment’s perceived lack of opposition to the administration of President Donald Trump—a topic especially prominent in Maine and in Orono, where we have come under intense federal scrutiny for uncontroversial programs like the Sea Grant as part of Trump’s retaliation against our state. Platner achieved a shocking level of virality within hours of his campaign announcement, and has maintained this competitive advantage through extensive use of coarse language and public displays of his inclusive, populist approach to coalition building.
In the campaign’s second major happening, it was proven that Platner’s freewheeling and vulgar rhetorical style was not just for the cameras, as numerous mainstream media organizations ran old comments Platner made on his Reddit page over a decade ago. My initial reaction to these comments was something obliviously snide like “the worst thing about his Reddit page is that he called himself “P-Hustle.’” But honestly, certain posts of his are genuinely discomforting, particularly those regarding sexual assault, and I understand why many are disgusted. Others are misinformed, prejudiced, or generally regrettable for someone now seeking high office. The social media firestorm has already begun as anticipated. In an utterly feckless move, Platner’s political director opted to resign, the latest in a long and storied heritage of Democrats who forget who the president is and still think words matter.
Worst of all, Platner was exposed as having a tattoo (now hastily covered) that closely resembled the Totenkopf, a symbol used by Nazi death squads in Europe during the Second World War. While Platner’s story of acquiring the tattoo was credible enough, given its resemblance to a normal skull-and-crossbones symbol, and while nobody who had parsed through his Reddit comments could accuse him of coming even close to far-right sentiment, the presence of the tattoo was unsettling and deeply disappointing.
Yet if anything, Platner’s shortcomings make me even more hopeful for his success. First off, his internet comments were made between four and twelve years ago. Unless the posts are inciting hateful violence or indicative of concerningly deep-rooted psychological unwellness, like the now-infamous Mark Robinson minisoldr controversy or the texts of current Virginia candidate Jay Jones, there really ought to be a statute of limitations on what you can dig up.
But a far more important point is this: I don’t need my candidates to be perfect. I don’t want my candidates to be perfect! Too often are we subjected to more of the same: a young man, relatively telegenic, ideologically moderate, hailing from The Real American Heartland and carrying some other meaningless modestly conservative-coded signifier (take your pick: veteran, small business owner, sportsman) that slightly broadens their appeal to the exact median voter of their chosen constituency. These soulless husks have stuffed every single Democratic primary that the corpses in D.C. identify as being even remotely competitive: Pete Buttigieg, Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan and Conor Lamb, among others, with the type most perfectly embodied by Cal Cunningham, the chump who doomed the Senate to GOP dominance for maybe a decade because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.
And they’re nice guys. They’re articulate, but not so articulate to make it seem like they’re selling you something. They dress well, though not well enough that they’d be accused of being gay. In 2025, they’re growing beards and going on podcasts to talk about the NFL and prove that they have not, in fact, been castrated. They are perfectly well-rounded individuals, and I’m sure they’d bring an even-handed sensibility and decorum to whichever office they’re running for. But they don’t win.
Why do they lose? Because they don’t act like real people. It’s hard to look at Pete Buttigieg and figure that he has emotions. If you snuck up behind him and poured boiling water on his head, he would turn around and shake your hand, gracing you with the warm-yet-firm disposition befitting a homunculus the DNC conjured into existence six months ago in order to create the candidate best suited to beat whichever GOP huckster they’ve contributed the GDP of a small island country towards defeating. He’d hit you with a look of veiled hubris, one that says “I’m better than you, but I realize that it’s not your fault you’re this stupid.”
That’s not what I want. Give me the fighter. I want the guy who threatened to beat up Tom Cotton, as “P-Hustle” had in a recovered Reddit post. I want the guy who’s not going to bow to Chuck Schumer and won’t sell his Senate seat out to Israel, someone who won’t be browbeaten by the schoolmarms obsessed with calibrating these perfect candidates, those who dare not even exhale lest their breath be labeled a general election liability. You want to win back young men? Just be normal and speak to their concerns. You don’t need to weigh in on the Kendrick-Drake beef or play Fortnite with a Twitch streamer. You just need to act like you weren’t made in a lab. And you don’t need to throw anyone under the bus to do it.
We know this style works, at least better than the other way. Just last year, the grizzled labor union head Dan Osborn launched an insurgent campaign as an Independent to topple Nebraska’s Deb Fischer. While Osborn didn’t win, he came closer than any Democrat had to an incumbent Republican since 1970, and likely would have won in a bluer year like 2018. Right now, Zohran Mamdani is tearing up the playbook in America’s largest city, all but guaranteed to win in a race that has seen the self-described socialist buck the Democratic establishment as many times as possible. And while his rampant genocide apologia, myriad personal struggles and general churlishness have made him a truly horrible figure, John Fetterman rode his imperfections to a sizable victory in the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate elections, improving on basically every single one of native son Joe Biden’s performances in rural Pennsylvania counties despite the inflation crisis and his open-armed embrace of left-populism.
But we also know the DNC establishment doesn’t want to win if it’s not on their terms. They’re scared of someone they can’t force to bend the knee. The effort to sink Platner is far from the first. Look no further than the 2016 presidential primary, when widespread internal collusion handed the nomination to the condescending and bitterly unpopular Hillary Clinton instead of daring to allow the genuine outsider Bernie Sanders a crack at defeating Trump. Or indeed, the last election in which Democrats tried to take down Susan Collins. In 2020, Schumer intervened to coronate Sara Gideon, a nebulous blank slate of a carpetbagger who, of course, handily lost the election despite ample funding. And just like in these races, it’s clear the fix is in. Schumer and his ilk will stop at nothing to install the inevitable loser of their choosing, in Maine and across the country. How many more times will we let it happen?
Because frankly, more than anything, it’s not about electability or a particular Mills veto or my discomfort with weaponizing Reddit sh*tposts from a decade ago. It’s not even really about Graham Platner, as much as I like the guy. It’s about giving Chuck Schumer the middle finger; putting a big bowl of shit in front of him and watching him eat it over and over again. If it disquiets the effete twigs whose pale faces now populate the ranks of Democrat stafferdom and the woefully under-bullied data geeks with their tirelessly-calibrated models that still manage to be wrong half the damn time, it makes my heart sing.
One of my primary motivations in politics is to see them be wrong. I want them to lose, and if for just once, I want someone who speaks for me to win. I want my senator to be a person who understands the pain of working Mainers. I want a senator who can call a spade a spade. I want a senator with debt. I want a senator who makes mistakes and says dumb things they regret. I want someone like me. Graham Platner is that candidate, and if he ends up being sunk by these revelations or others to follow, so be it. In that case, Janet Mills will be the nominee, and it’s perfectly plausible that she’ll win and help Chuck Schumer accomplish another two years of anything.
My vote won’t be helping them get there.
