Dem
47
GOP
53
In the last month, there have been a couple of eye-opening pieces suggesting that, in Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, we could be witnessing the early days of a sea change in American politics, possibly even the emergence of the Eighth Party System.
First is a very lengthy piece in The Maine Monitor, written by Josh Keefe. Keefe has an unusual, or possibly even unique, vantage point for this story, since he: (1) went to high school with Platner, and (2) has been a reporter for multiple decades. As is characteristic of pieces like this, Keefe notes that Platner has seemed destined for big things since he was in his formative years. He was, as you might guess, Big Man on Campus in high school, and was voted "Most Likely to Start a Revolution" by his classmates.
More substantively, however, Keefe compares Platner to Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME)—the piece was written before Mills dropped out of the Senate race—to illustrate two very different schools of thought on Donald Trump. In Keefe's telling, Mills is part of the "Donald Trump is the problem" faction. These folks, who tend to be establishment politicians, believe that if they can slay the beast at the center of MAGA, then MAGA will wither and die.
Platner, by contrast, is part of the "Donald Trump is just a symptom of the problem" faction. These folks tend to be upstarts/outsiders, and believe that the U.S. political system is broken and needs a massive overhaul. Here's the money passage:
Platner is up to something different. He isn't running a campaign so much as seeking to build a mass movement against the status quo. He's not trying to woo the working class to the Democratic Party; he's trying to mobilize the working class to take over the Democratic Party and use it to fundamentally change the relationship between government and citizens. To him, Trump is a symptom of a larger rot, a fundamentally broken system, and the old rules of American politics are already beside the point. The Democratic establishment is "still existing in this world where they think that if you know the rules the best, you're going to win," he told me. "When the other side is just beating you over the head with the rule book, it doesn't matter."
In keeping with these themes, he's running a far grander campaign than Mills in terms of ambition and drive. (It does help that he isn't limited by the need to simultaneously govern.) He seems to be everywhere, all the time, both on TV, thanks to his nearly three-to-one fundraising edge, and in person. His call for building working-class power aligns not only with his working-man presentation but with his workman-like approach to campaigning: He has held more than 50 town halls—so well attended that people are often turned away—and shows up in every corner of the state. Unlike Mills, he's not trying to convince voters he will stand up to Trump; he's trying to start a movement to build a world without the despair and resentment that he believes allows Trump's brand of politics to flourish.
And again, writing before Mills dropped out, Keefe predicted: "Democratic voters are about to deliver a bracing message about which of these visions they currently prefer."
This is certainly an interesting argument. On one hand, the road to Washington is full of the carcasses of disruptors ultimately who went nowhere (think Beto O'Rourke), or disruptors who went counterfeit (think Sen. John Fetterman, D-PA). On the other hand, the greatest and most important politicians in American history tended to be folks who were on the fringes of the political arena and then were suddenly in the eye of the storm, working to change... everything. Andrew Jackson was a general and judge and plantation owner who had dabbled a bit in Congressional service. Abraham Lincoln was a hick frontier lawyer with a couple years in Congress and a few terms in the state legislature under his belt. Theodore Roosevelt was a "damn cowboy" best known for his role in a battle that lasted only a bit more than an hour.
Certainly, Platner's results so far have been impressive. He's batted aside every scandal, demonstrating that he is armed with a Trump-like coating of teflon. Platner also so thoroughly outdueled Mills, despite her universal name recognition and institutional support, that she didn't even survive to the primary. None of it will matter if he doesn't win, but at least thus far, the aggregators have him with a lead of between 6 and 7.5 points. In the most recent poll of the race, from Echelon Insights, a Republican house, Platner leads Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) by 6 points, 51% to 45%. Remember that being above 50% is very important, since if that is correct, it means that it's not enough for Collins to win over all the undecideds—she also has to flip some would-be Platner voters.
If Platner does win, well, every senator looks in the mirror and sees a U.S. president. And that brings us to the second piece we wanted to pass along. Last week, Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark wrote a piece in which he opined that there is a 1-in-3 chance that Platner will be the Democrats' presidential candidate... in 2028.
Last lays out his argument in the linked piece, but it boils down to a lot of the same things that Keefe points out in HIS piece: (1) Platner is authentic, (2) Platner is an outsider (who, by virtue of not having been in office in the last 10 years, can't be blamed for failing to rein in Donald Trump) and (3) Platner is not building a campaign so much as he's building a movement. Last writes:
From where I sit, it does not look like Platner is running a Senate campaign. It looks like he's building a movement. The thing I like best about Platner is something he often says on the campaign trail:
"If you don't want to join us? Join a food pantry! Join Maine People's Alliance, any community group," Platner told the dozens of people attending the Greenville event. "It actually doesn't matter what you do."
That is catnip for me because it shows he's aiming beyond himself to get people involved in civic life. It's the opposite of that movie we've seen before.
JVL notes that he does not much care for the cultishness that seems to have developed around Platner, and the tendency of supporters to not only forgive missteps, but to rush to defend them. As Last writes: "I've seen that movie before." Still, he notes that you have to go with the game-changer you've got, not the one you wish you had.
We're not 100% sure how we feel about the arguments made by Keefe or by Last. But in case they're on to something, we thought it worthwhile to at least take note of them. (Z)