I’m voting for Graham Platner. I am. Blue no matter who means blue no matter who.

Edit: ha ha no I’m fucking not, for reasons that will be obvious if you’re reading this after July 5, not least that he probably won’t be on the ballot at all. The whole “he didn’t assault anyone” needle-threading is well and truly out the window and we’re all just hoping he steps down before it’s too late. But the following is now even more true regarding the incredible volume of people who convinced a lot of us by spending a year willing to defend a million things, none of which any woman, person of color, LGBTQ+, or indeed, even anyone slightly less far-left than the DSA, would have survived. That vociferous defense, from last year through now, when people are still defending him and blaming the Democratic Party for a candidate they were super proud to tell everyone wasn’t like the other girls just last week, a party Platner himself said he hated and didn’t want him, is how we got here. How we got to uncertain people like me standing up and supporting him through misgivings, because Collins is monstrous. There was never any oxygen for anyone else, and never a lane to unpack the scandals because the ranks always closed faster than the news cycle.

If you don’t let your own people question a candidate, he pretty much becomes the candidate, and you’re stuck with whatever baggage he’s dragging.

It’s also MAGA behavior. And how we got there.

So this all remains true, and I’m even angrier about it, because we ALL know that unless Platner’s replacement is a white straight man, they’ll get torn apart for far less than his iceberg of bullshit (you know there’s more the GOP was holding till October) and there will somehow be a mysterious reason it’s morally indefensible to vote for them but voting for Platner would’ve been fine no matter what.

It’s the hypocrisy that kills the hope.

But my god, his supporters have been gnawing on my last goddamned political nerve for months now. And as much as I believe (Edit: WELP) in his growth as a person and potential as a candidate, I had to work pretty hard to get there because of the way this whole thing has gone down.

It’s this shit right here, my friends:

deep breath

It’s this shit right here because you and I both know good and goddamned well that if any candidate who committed the arch-crime of not getting endorsed by Saint, Demiurge, and Arbiter of Progressive Reality Bernie Fucking Sanders and therefore being anointed as the most lefty leftist this side of the special scissors, no matter what their actual policies, they could never get away with even a sliver of the shit that’s bounced off Graham Platner and straight into a 52-point victory over an incumbent governor basket.

Or, you know. A female candidate. Or a POC. Or even just a committed Democrat with years of experience in lower offices who worked their way up and forged working relationships without telling everyone to burn the party to the ground for great justice.

I mean, holy fucking shit. Can you even begin to imagine the land-speed velocity of pearls being clutched that would echo through the internet if Kamala Harris had been a Blackwater mercenary, possibly (yet somehow no one can say one way or the other) a guard at Abu Ghraib, let alone made all those brain-and-soul-dead Reddit comments, sexted a bunch of people while he and his wife were struggling to conceive, maybe-maybe-not shoved (Edit: definitely did) an ex, and had a totenkopf tattooed on her left tit?

We’d never get past the first one before Hasan Piker would be “just asking questions” about maybe-maybe-not burning her alive on the National Mall to appease the spirits of the gravely-offended earth. Not one explanation or excuse would be entertained for a nanosecond. But somehow now all those anti-imperialists can suddenly see past voluntarily becoming a mercenary for the most notorious private army ever and having that shit on your body. Not just see past it, but immediately body-check you into the nearest freeway divider for not being super thrilled with it.

But intern for McKinsey? You deserve nothing but pain, Pete. Such a smart guy, too bad our buddy Buttigieg didn’t realize the new rule is that if Bernie doesn’t anoint your forehead with chrism, you’re a bootlicking fascist just as bad as Trump. And you’re only allowed to disagree with the Most Perfect and Most Popular Politician Who Will Save Us All But Can’t Win a Primary Because Reasons if it’s to say “what about, instead of asking pertinent questions or having a slightly different healthcare plan, full and violently-enforced communism now?”

Now, one thing Platner and I have in common is that I, too, shitpost on Reddit. (Shut up, I’m not telling you my username.) So I’m pretty active on my local subs, and pretty much since the whole thing began, you have not been able to to squeak out “is this guy okay though, despite all this?” without getting your digital viscera loaded into a Super Soaker and turned into a Jackson Pollock knock-off on the nearest wall upon which the revolution keeps saying they’re gonna shoot people because they think that’s a cute and winning argument for normies.

For example: at one point, Janet Mills, which, god bless her but she didn’t even try, I don’t think she wanted to try, I don’t know why any of us were forced to sit through her trying to look like she was trying without actually trying, aired a couple of pretty fucking milquetoast ads with those Reddit comments in them.

OH MY GOD WHATEVER WILL WE DO, NEGATIVE ADS? IN A PRIMARY?!

But you’d have thought she called a live press conference to personally take a wet shit on an orphan’s face the way the Maine subreddits reacted to this. She should be ashamed, how dare she, this is how she supports Democrats, I’m leaving the party, she has to be destroyed, what a monster! My beautiful baby boy would never!

(Edit: and now they’re doing the same thing, absolutely LEAPING to the conclusion that the Party is going to install Mills or some other “corpo” and spitting acidic fire at the Democrats no matter what they say about the process, defending Platner’s right to refuse to step aside, and calling his accuser a liar and a plant. Blame the guy who knew he had all this in his Rucksack of Secrets? Never, not when there’s Democrats to burn to the ground!)

Nevermind that the same people hadn’t had a non-venomous word to say about a successful two-term Democratic governor who guided this state through COVID with the lowest numbers in the nation (tied with Vermont) and who stood up to Trump on the regular. Not a single kind word. But she aired an attack ad! DURING AN ELECTION! My god, drown the witch-crone at once!

I swear, however many of these people are people must never have paid attention to politics before. I know they think it shows loyalty to their candidate, but all it really ever looks like is that the left flank of the party is genuinely terrified that if there’s any competition at all, they won’t win. Which flies in the face of the conviction that America is full of secret leftists just waiting for a Bernie to vote for. It’s hardly arguing from a position of any kind of strength.

And yet. Every time.

It bothered me, seeing this Circle of Brotection form so quickly around Platner, a Circle somehow seething hate for every other Democrat. It still bothers me. After every new scandal, a flood of comments and attacks against anyone who even considers taking it seriously. I see this happen with candidates at least a few times every electoral cycle. Always the ones endorsed by Sanders. Very often men with no or very little experience in government. But always men. Except for Mamdani, almost always white and “working class,” or at least working-class-coded (rarely actually working class). And honestly I’m pretty convinced Mamdani would never have won if not for “your worst uncle” Cuomo being the only serious competition and even then, I’m not sure he’d have survived if he didn't have a squeaky-clean background to compare Cuomo’s slime to.

The Democrats, whenever they run for anything, have to run not only against conservatives all the way to the furthest-right brain-ants, but against their own left flank, who have made an industry out of convincing the country that the only viable opposition to fascism is just as bad as fascism. And no, this time I’m not going to cross myself in penance and ritualistically intone the required “the Democrats aren’t great and I don’t support them but…” because that’s the problem. Everywhere you turn there’s uncritical praise of Republicans and only occasional, heavily-asterisked, acknowledgement that Democrats and indeed liberal democracy itself aren’t entirely made up of boils upon the vast and scarlet ass of Satan.

And it doesn’t even help the left. At all. Because progressive candidates end up having to run against both their opponent and the brand annihilation of the Democratic Party that has paved their own path to Washington. What a shock they don’t win all that often! Turns out it’s really hard to score a goal when you spent the whole first half kicking yourself in the fucking face while screaming that it doesn’t matter who wins.

As I said in the first essay, I get very suspicious when the media gets together to throw a big show in the old barn. I get even more suspicious when the internet commentariat suddenly won’t allow criticism of a candidate. That’s why it took so long, and meeting him in person, for me to come around to Platner. Because he never had to deal with attacks from the left the way other candidates did, the way Mills did, the way anyone who isn’t a working class white dude who SUPER looks like a MAGA die-hard but says lefty things (but not about guns!) gets battered with the millisecond they announce.

It’s such an unbelievable advantage, this grace extended to precisely one kind of candidate.

(Edit: And now we know they didn’t even vet him. We’re most likely going to lose this seat, and the Senate, and all this time, energy, and money was wasted, because a guy in a baseball hat said socialist things and fit a casting sheet that in actual practice is no different than the Republican casting sheet. God fucking dammit. You can hate the establishment all you want, but there is a reason for most of the methodologies nerds put in place over the years.)

Instead, he got the Bernie treatment. Where any criticism or even questions are treason to the cause. Where he can axiomatically never have done anything wrong even when he has definitely done several things wrong. Where another candidate trying to win an election is pure evil. Platner got defended at every turn, for things that would easily have sunk any woman, let alone a woman of color. Would’ve sunk anyone who even inched toward the monstrous, horrible, liberally democratic “what if we just make the system work for everyone instead of detonating the entire world and dancing in the ashes and blood of whatever’s left, especially since the vast majority of people do not actually seem to want that?”

Have I mentioned how much I despise the way the word “liberal” has been demonized to the point that the only thing the far left and right agree on is a liberal is the worst thing to be, and then neither of them ever question why they’re so sure of that when no two people define it the same way, but it definitely isn’t because we all grew up hearing the news our parents watched saying liberalism was a disease and internalized it even when most of us are, in fact, fucking liberals who want safety and equality and kindness and democracy, and that’s why the right worked for 50 years to make it a swear word, and they do not draw any distinction whatsoever between progressive, liberal, and leftist, no matter how much we pretend this is all settled theory everyone understands and agrees with?

I despise it. Anyway.

It must be real fucking nice to run the way Platner got to run. Oh, I’m sure the reporting on his flaws, mistakes, and dipshittery hasn’t been nice at all. (Edit: in hindsight, it was nice, and he was probably happy the real shit hadn’t come out every time. I feel terrible for his wife, and that’s it.) But at least he didn’t have to do that while the far left teamed up with the right to sink him in favor of yet another fascist. (I cannot comprehend why the lefty media ecosystem never seems to take a step back and reflect when they see the far right is pulling the same tug-o-war rope they are.)

It’s never been proven that Hillary personally did a goddamned thing outside the absolute norm of male politicians beyond her fucking emails and yet the left hates her so profoundly most would take a lifetime of Trump if it meant getting to strike the match that burns her alive next to Harris. And not just her. Nor does it matter your progressive bonafides. AOC regularly gets dragged by her own side despite being the right’s poster child for the Evil Radical Left. Elizabeth Warren was and is absolutely loathed by the progressive wing because she…ran for President and tried to win. The only protected precious darlings are Bernie and Bernie’s chosen ones. And why not? Nice work if you can get it. When Fetterman pulls a Fetterman, or a Gabbard pulls a Gabbard, (Edit: or a Platner pulls a Platner…) there’s never any blowback on the people who promoted and defended him, who sandbagged his opponent to clear the way for him exactly the way the conspiracists say was done for Hillary and Biden, but this time it’s okay because he said socialist things in a manly mustache. It’s never even mentioned.

And again, this grace is simply never extended to a woman candidate. She must be perfect at all times, but never come off as scripted or choosing her words carefully. She must be charismatic, but not in a way that makes the boys feel insecure. She can do, and must never have done, one single thing even slightly wrong, beyond running against Bernie or a Bernie-blessed man, and will still be viciously attacked and her career/entire self racked on the wheel before being discarded. But once a golden boy, you can do or have done anything you please, including acts that go expressly against progressive ideals, and you’re, well, golden. People will not only stand up for you online, but rip anyone who isn’t sold or supports another blue candidate apart for free on your behalf.

The precise things that candidates like Harris did wrong are suddenly virtues. She stood on a stage with Liz Cheney to appeal to Republican voters? Nazi who loves Nazis! Platner will appeal to Republican voters though because he’s a rough and tumble MAGA-looking guy who likes guns and that’s amazing! They’ll like his Nazi tattoos and his boozing! And there’s just…no dissonance at all. Of course everything she did is bad and it’s her fault she lost. Of course those things are good when a man does them and if he loses it’s because of the media or liberals or rigged elections. And it’s not even questioned, or imagined in those terms, or someone might notice that “the media, liberals, and rigged elections” are the exact same scapegoats the right loves to whip. (Edit: God help Bellows or any other woman if they end up with Schrodinger’s Nomination now, because the Circle Will Be Broken and no matter who it is or how clean her record, she’ll be Somehow the Wrong Woman. Mills was unconsiderable despite having been a successful two-term statewide-elected governor and Platner having never been elected to anything. But she’s old! And so is Bernie Sanders and no one cares.)

And all this, again, helps no one, not even the left, to accomplish anything. Because now all that nastiness has alienated a ton of voters. I loved a lot of what Platner said when I saw him speak. But I hated hearing him dump on the party he is trying to lead for not supporting him hard enough. Not hoisting the totally inexperienced guy with a toilet-paper trail of scandals stuck to his shoe onto their shoulders and showering him in confetti before the primary is even over. Unforgivable! They MUST give him everything immediately! What are you doing, my guy? You need these voters behind you! You need that party to be strong!

And again, I never supported Mills to begin with! I am voting for Platner and it’s extremely necessary for this state to do so. (Edit: aaaaand it’s gone.) I just can’t abide hypocrisy.

I really think the assumption is that only progressives believe in their ideals enough to be alienated. The dreaded liberal is just a stupid sheep bleating blue no matter who and will vote for any D. So as long as we put a golden boy up there and brutally attack anyone else, and all the podcasters, just this once, take a brief break from telling everyone not to vote, then we’ll automatically win, because the sheep HAVE to vote for Democrats and now progressives will vote, too. Done! America is saved!

But progressives don’t vote in large numbers. The biggest progressive voices tell us not to vote in large numbers. And the spine of the party, those horrible regular people who want things to be good and stable and equal for all, can absolutely be alienated. Americans, and Democrats especially, just fucking love not voting. It doesn’t work like that at all. You have to sell a policy platform and a candidate, not just attack people for not falling in line and assume they’ll do what you want anyway because they’re NPCs in the MMORPG American politics has become.

I watch Platner’s campaign and I know if it were Gemma Platner she’d already be buried and forgotten when she wasn’t being exhumed to stomp on her again. We’ve already seen this country would literally rather die in flames than support a woman for President. And yes, Platner is running against a woman, but conservative women never have this problem. Because conservative women don’t want anything in the hierarchies of identity and power to change, they want to enforce those hierarchies, so they’re not scary like the women who want to kick the legs out from under those hierarchies. And the right comes together to vote for whoever will preserve their little food pyramid where white men are on top and everyone else is consumable.

And that’s where I get kicked out of the progressive clubhouse, because no one wants to hear it pointed out that preserving hierarchies of power based on identity is literally fascist shit and should have no place among us. It’s just a coincidence the only candidates we like are white men who look like they’d punch you in the face for being gay, don’t you know. They’re not like that, but they look like they are, which is cool and awesome, and women are lame and boring and only like dumb stuff like experience, co-operation, and progress.

None of these reactions are particularly Platner’s fault. (Edit: eh, at this point who knows, he certainly felt he was entitled to run in a crucially important race and let his people run wild annihilating any other possibility and seething at the party for wanting one. And hasn’t said a word about it, or the current seething because they won’t install Platner’s handpicked replacement just because he says so even though his endorsement is pretty much a gravestone for anyone else at this point. He risked the future of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and this country knowing what he’d done and certainly being entirely aware of having never so much as volunteered to run a school bake sale.)

Except it is his fault, in that he did all this heinous shit we were asked to look past. (but everyone else is fair game) And because I suspect Gemma Platner would’ve long ago dropped out due to absolutely no quarter given even for the tattoo, let alone anything since. But then, Gemma probably wouldn’t have gotten that tattoo or thought she could run before covering it up if she did. The Circle of Brotection provides insulation against that kind of pressure, which is, of course, its purpose. Much like Fox News, loathe as anyone is to make the comparison. I am, and will, vote for him, because Collins is so much worse, and I do believe he wants what I want in government and will work toward it. (Edit: Obviously not now. And I’ll never not be angry about having stood up for him, however reluctantly, and for the look of hope in my kid’s eyes when we went to his rally. You asshole. How could you do this to your fellow Mainers, knowing what hangs in the balance?)

I just can’t quite let it go. (Edit: and I won’t!) Because I am a progressive. And that means I deeply believe that benefits extended to one group belong equally to all of us, and when it is withheld from all but a chosen few, I really struggle to find much blue in the clubhouse wallpaper pattern.

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I really don’t get us sometimes.

We here on the vast “not Nazi” side of the political divide seem to be happy to scream passionately about fascism 24/7 online, but faced with actually doing anything about it, down to and including the barest meager minimum of maybe voting for our own party, we seem to genuinely love losing more than we love our own rights.

So yeah, this is about Graham Platner.

Oh, the internet certainly does have a lot of Big Feelings about Mr. Platner. All the more so over the last couple of weeks, headed into a primary it’s been nearly impossible for him to lose since like March. And everyone from the collective hive-shriek of Facebook randos to the established media still pretending to be liberal and trustworthy, will be more than happy to tell you all about every single thing they’ve heard thirdhand from their cousin’s favorite influencer’s contact in an opposing candidate’s and/or party’s campaign if you so much as say the guy’s name three times into an empty oyster plate. Or make a pretty goddamned innocuous post about going to hear him speak with your kid because he literally came to speak on the street where I live last month.

See, there’s a huge difference between me and the vast and teeming majority of people flapping their face-holes about Platner online at the moment, the moment being less than a week before the primary.

I fucking live and vote in goddamned Maine.

Funny how there’s suddenly so much national interest in this little state most people can’t be bothered to remember exists beyond “lobster” “Stephen King” and “wait, there’s another Portland?” Sure seems odd to me that, like beautiful maritime magic, everybody seems so loudly confident about knowing our business and what’s best for us. And no, it’s not just because of Susan “Concerned” Collins. I’ve lived here a couple of decades now, and at no point, no matter who was running against her, could the politically-aware nation at large tell you the name of her opponent, let alone pick their faces out of a line-up. Most of them still couldn’t.

I had to take that post down, at least from thrice-cursed Facebook, because all manner of strangers just couldn’t wait to barf up whatever they think they know about a candidate for an election they have no stake in like the corpse of Jon Voight in Anaconda, and also what a terrible parent I am for taking my child to a talk where virtually every child on the island was present, and also demand I personally answer for every single rumor, despite, once again, none of these people knowing anything whatsoever about Maine.

And now he’s won the primary, which, if you live here, was never seriously in question. Sure, Governor Mills was on the ballot, but she suspended her campaign months ago, and even if she hadn’t, Platner was 38 points ahead of her when she bounced, because no one was into her as a candidate, least of all Mills herself, who never actually seemed to want to run. She just wasn’t that into us, and it showed. I saw all of one Governor Mills campaign sign and my first thought was: wow, where did they even get one of those? And sure, there were another candidates, but you don’t know who they were and neither did pretty much anyone. Platner has had so much energy behind him for so long now there was no serious advertising for the others (but plenty of negative ads against Platner paid for by that scamp, “no specific candidate”). Much like Mills’ baffling campaign, they didn’t even really seem like they wanted to be here except to spend the campaign funds—and occasionally, try to torpedo the only opposition to Collins that has gotten anyone in this state genuinely excited and hopeful.

Do I think he’s a beautiful leftist cinnamon roll of a messiah who must be protected and elevated at all costs? Absolutely not. Are there things that bother me about both him and his supporters? Definitely. Do I think any of that fucking matters right now? Not even a little bit.

Am I going to vote for him? Of fucking course I am what are we even doing here?

Well, I’ll tell you what we’re doing here. The same thing we do every single time a Democratic candidate gets any traction or momentum at all. Passively watch the media tuck a napkin into its bib and eat that D alive with a massive bowl of hot buttery hypocrisy to dunk them in before shrugging helplessly and losing again. What else could we possibly do? Not demand youth and experience and a perfect personal life from the cradle on and massively overclocked charisma and perfectly pure policy stances that satisfy the whole tent from blue dog to radical leftist from every single candidate for every single office or else fascism can just take us all? Don’t be stupid, if we did that, we might win!

Every article about him winning the primary I’ve seen has made references to Platner’s “scandals.”

Platner’s scandals. The President of the United States and his entire party are exposed pedophiles, rapists, corrupt corporate puppets when they aren’t puppetmasters, bought and paid for by foreign interests, abusers, war profiteers, screaming idiots, and cheerfully co-operating with big tech to destroy the planet on a quest to fully replace every human being they possibly can with a chatbot, and they aren’t shy about showing how gleeful the idea makes them to any camera they can find.

But sure, Platner’s got scandals. That must be included in every headline so no one makes the mistake of not realizing Democrats Bad. While Republicans can just cruise on by with some of their baby-devouring lunch still dripping off their chin—no comments, sir, and no follow-up questions!

You should always be suspicious when the media agrees on something. When they all use the same words. When they all get oh-so-Collinsingly concerned about this one Democrat people like and how much we shouldn’t like them. Especially because this trick is only ever rolled out against Democrats and the left, while the right gets the benefit of a thousand angles all competing to see which one gets them into the least trouble.

So let’s go through it.

Yep, he made a bunch of shitty Reddit comments. You know I don’t like a single one of those moronic statements.

Yep, he has a deeply questionable and fucking stupid tattoo he absolutely should’ve been smart enough to get covered long before he ran for Senate. Right about the time he was deleting his social media comments.

And yep, it appears he was maybe a shitty boyfriend in his 20s and sexted people he wasn’t married to while a private citizen. Now, I held back this essay once I heard something new was going to come out, in case it was assault or minors or something indefensible. But this isn’t Swalwell. They weren’t minors, no one is even suggesting it went beyond texting, the information came directly from his wife (leaked by an aide working for another candidate in the party) who has obviously forgiven him and also this isn’t Love Island, that’s between them, we’re not electing a Husband for the State of Maine, so I don’t fucking care.

Protect our goddamned rights. Stand up for us. Pull us back from the brink. That is what I care about. Democrats have jettisoned their own (sometimes correctly, sometimes Howard Dean yelled too enthusiastically) over and over while Republicans happily vote for a parade of fucking Backrooms monsters and this is where it’s gotten us.

Is it fascism or isn’t it? Because if it’s fascism, well, people are mostly trash most of the time and none of this is more important than NOT DOING FASCISM WITH THE WORLD’S LARGEST NUCLEAR ARSENAL. I don’t know what kind of tattoos Susan Collins has (though I do know what Pete Hegseth has on his chest and the media never refers to it in headlines) but her actions show she’s a fascist. She has enabled them joyously every step of the way. She played an enormous role in taking away my bodily autonomy.

Oh and fun fact: she’s married to a guy she started adulterously fucking while his previous wife was dying of cancer. Shall we write even a single article about it? No? Because that’s a bit worse than sexting. Still no? Ah yes, I see the media is very genuine and serious about this whole situation.

Honestly, if we’re going to say a stupid edgelord tattoo, shitty Reddit comments, not being a good boyfriend thirty seconds out of the military, and sexting adults other than his wife are disqualifying, we might as well just pass a law now barring Millennial men from holding any kind of office. And no, some salacious story about jerking off in a port-a-potty you only know about from his own comments on Reddit where everyone exaggerates, doesn’t turn the dial on that. Oh no, he jerked off privately in a closed space where no one knew or saw? No man has ever done such a thing in the history of the world, better surrender to fascism!

You can’t demand younger outsider candidates and also insist none of them have been a recent dipshit—being an occasional dipshit is largely part and parcel of being younger and an outsider. The only result will be that only rich personality-free kids groomed for government from birth by helicopter parents with their eyes on the prize will ever get elected as Democrats, while the Republicans will continue electing their Garbage Pail Kids Rogues’ Gallery because everyone normal fucks up plenty on their way to not being young anymore.

And I would be very careful about sending the message that people cannot change or grow or come to the left from outside it, because we do actually need to get kind of a lot of folks out of these horrifying pipelines, and that will involve convincing them that not only can they change and grow, but that there is a viable life waiting on the other side of their mistakes. Platner might be a pretty superb beacon for leading that exodus, precisely because of all this.

Not to mention riding the “dipshit to decency” pipeline has been Platner’s brand from jump and it’s why he’s been successful. Mainers knew, it’s been on label the whole time. Everyone loves a conversion story. Nobody here heard “working class ex-military white guy fisherman” and didn’t assume he was rough around the edges at a minimum. For the most part, it’s why a lot of people around here like him. This is not a state that falls along easy party lines. Our political motto might as well be “why don’t you go fuck yourself, bub, and leave us alone?” It’s also why a lot of red-leaning independents like him, and that’s why the media is in a panic that Collins might go, and Trump, of all fucking tentacled creatures of the underdark, is out there calling him a thug. Which won’t help at all, it just fixes the whole “Democrats aren’t tough” thing, but what Trump understands about human nature would barely make a splash in his golden toilet.

Graham Platner is the only opponent Collins has faced with genuine grassroots enthusiasm behind him, whose name the voting population here in Maine now knows very well, and let’s be honest, he’s a straight white dude and we’ve seen how much that matters over and over. Shouldn’t, but does. We do not get to play politics in a magical gummy bear dreamland full of philosophers. We have to play the field as it lies.

I’m not defending these things. Of course I don’t love any of it. (Still baffled as to why Collins’ past is a no-go zone, though!) But are we facing the existential threat of fascism or aren’t we? There really is no taking the Senate back without this seat and, call me quirky and unreasonable, but I would like to keep some rights. And not die in a nuclear fireball just yet. We do not have the luxury of waiting for perfect candidates. We never did. I have been furious at voters for not being able to look past whatever flaws Kamala, Biden, and Hilary had and pull the lever for the smallest hope of things getting better instead of the certainty that they wouldn’t. I can’t not do the same in my own home state.

And when I went to hear him speak a few weeks before the primary, he did actually address these things. I went with quite a bit of suspicion, because I did not like him at first. But a major Senate candidate came to the tiny island in the ocean where I live. A thing Susan Collins has certainly never done, nor Mills.

You know who organized that? The island school nurse and her husband, who is also an oyster farmer and knows Platner personally. In fact, I know a lot of people who know Platner personally. Maine is that kind of place. There are more alligators in the state of Florida than people in the state of Maine. Platner opened his speech asking if anyone knew his mom and about a dozen people cheered because they did. We know each other here. I can talk to more than one person who’s known this guy for years without leaving a mile radius of my house. And the people who know him are the ones I listen to.

Did I like everything he said? Nope. I will never like it when a candidate bashes the party they’re running to lead to the voters aligned with that party. I am allergic to insincere promises, I despise canned meme statements like “get money out of politics” as though that’s remotely possible while resources remain finite and people remain human, and these days idealism just depresses the hell out of me. But I liked his policies (because they’re pretty much just Democratic policies, I don’t know why we have to do this “not like other girls” dance all the time to avoid siding with ourselves) and he’s a good and relatable speaker that gets people excited which I promise you Sara Gideon did not.

Who’s Sara Gideon? That’s the fucking point. She was the last challenger, and while she was ahead in the polls briefly, no one was ride or die for her the way many are for Platner, and she was never enough of a threat for the Republican-thralled media to wallpaper the country with scare-quotes about her.

And he talked about all this stuff very openly. The first questions were about the Reddit comments etc. And he talked about getting sucked into the pipelines that so many young people are drowning in these days, and finding his way out again. About having to answer for yourself. He seemed, to me, to take accountability rather than blaming someone else or shrugging it off. One of my major issues with him is that I don’t think he’s handled these oppo leaks very deftly, and he’d better figure it out quickly, because Susan Collins won’t be as out to lunch as Janet Mills. Most of this should’ve been and could’ve been dealt with before he ever filed to run, and I’m nervous about someone who doesn’t know that. But in person, he is actually very good at facing it down and at least seeming to take real lessons from it.

And pretty inspiring, if my dead soul were capable of being politically inspired anymore. He’s the only Congressional candidate I’ve ever heard acknowledge that the junior senator from Maine can’t actually do any of these things alone, and won’t make a huge difference except in Senate majority numbers unless there’s a movement, people, and other candidates standing with him. What can I say, pragmatism gets me going.

But no, I don’t think the guy campaigning on the idea that our time is being stolen from us by the conservative agenda and everyone deserves more time, more ease, healthcare, safety, opportunities, peace, equality, and the possibility of even hoping for reform is some kind of secret Nazi sex-fiend. That’s not how they talk. I’m pretty sure the proud and outspoken Nazi sex-fiends are Nazi sex-fiends, though. Because they tell us they are. And then steal our money to build a ballroom to have their Nazi sex-fiend parties in while telling us that’s exactly what they’re doing. Scandals are meaningless now. The President is one of the worst people ever to walk the Bad People Planet. The media agrees Graham Platner is somehow equivalent, which I and all of us should’ve learned long ago probably means he’s a pretty good person because the only thing the media ever cooperates to do is lie.

And I don’t think he’s another Fetterman, though that would still get Collins out and help secure the Senate my god do we even want to win? Fetterman never talked as empathically and warmly about equality even before the catastrophic head injury.

Look, I didn’t like Graham Platner at first, either. I’m not sure if I “like” him now. But liking someone is not actually my primary criteria as a voter. Honestly, I very rarely like candidates at all, and even less candidates I see receiving the Bernie Sanders treatment from the online commentariat—by which I mean, a candidate who receives the benefit of only being attacked from the right, while the online left suddenly declines to give them the usual ugly nicknames or distribute disingenuous readings of their histories and policies, but instead leaps into any comment section to dogpile and drown out even the mildest of criticisms. That kind of double standard, on top of the double standard Democrats already face, pisses me off and it’s hard not to notice that the candidates who get those soft gloves are always men and usually white. So I have come around the long way. (And yes, the follow-up essay for paid subscribers starts right here, you know me so well.)

But in the end, if this is it and there isn’t something absolutely massive still to come out, I think he might be the only person who even has a prayer of prying this state out of the cold, unfeeling claws of Susan Collins, at least for the moment. And that’s probably why we’re being primed to hate him and draw a straight line between the monstrous crimes of blood and gold Trump and his regime commit every second of every day and a bunch of rumors that amount to just kind of what you’d assume an ex-Marine oyster fisherman in Maine did before getting his life together.

Or shall we just lose to fascism because it’s the only thing we know how to succeed at anymore?

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