Maine's working class hated Platner's working-class shtick

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Years from now, when people look back on Graham Platner's disastrous bid for the Senate, they will probably recall that it was the Maine Democrat's terrible treatment of women that brought him down. But what they will forget is arguably more important, and future progressive candidates should remember it. His working-class hero shtick didn't work.

Remember how it started. Bernie Sanders said Platner was "a working-class Mainer" who was tired of the fat cats taking advantage of hard-working people trying to live decent lives, and he was going to go to Washington to smash smash. On that image rested his credibility as well as his power to weather scandal. In reality, the Totenkopf should have spelled doom, but supporters said that, actually, a Nazi tattoo just means he's real, authentic and working class.

Thing is, the real, authentic working-class Mainers he was trying to appeal to weren't buying it. Before Platner dropped out of the race earlier this month, a Times poll found that, among self-identified working-class respondents, he trailed Republican incumbent Susan Collins by 37-58 percent. Other polls found similarly wide gaps between image and reality. As time went on, it was becoming clear that Platner was less a working-class hero than someone's idea of a working-class hero. Indeed, Planter himself comes for privilege, and this was apparently obvious to everyone – except for people, who, as Denny Carter put it, have "a little money."

His "working class cosplay was based on the loose idea of a working class white fella as seen in the mind of a liberal-leaning podcaster or a quant-brained campaign strategist who makes $800,000 a year," Denny said in Bad Faith Times. "Platner's whole shtick failed spectacularly."

This wasn't supposed to happen.

It's an article of faith among progressives that the working class – meaning the white working class – is being duped by oligarchs, and is waiting for strong leaders to bring policies that meet their needs. They believe that the Democratic Party can amass a majority coalition around the popularity of these policies. And yet here's "a working-class Mainer," who told actual working-class Mainers that he will smash smash. And the result was crickets.

While some liberals suggest throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks, Denny is more skeptical. In an interview, he told me that "white working-class voters would rather chop off their own hands than cast a vote for a Democratic candidate. I really don’t know if that’s an exaggeration." In the beginning of Platner's campaign, before scandals broke, Denny thought maybe – maybe – the working-class hero shtick would work. But it clearly didn't. Unfortunately, he said, that's not going to prevent progressives from trying.

"The lesson, I think, is that the white working class is never going to abandon the GOP."

Denny Carter publishes the Bad Faith Times, a newsletter he founded in 2022 to expose how Republicans use "bad-faith political arguments to advance fascism into the mainstream."

Why didn't the working-class hero shtick work?

I’ll be honest with you and admit to believing would. For all its other shortcomings – both moral and strategic – his campaign’s social media game was on point. They made the guy look like he docked his oyster boat and decided it was time to fuck things up in Washington.

The way Platner was portrayed in slick social media videos and the way he talked in interviews with progressive media types – carefully using the language of community and solidarity – he looked like the real deal for folks scrolling their timelines searching for sources of outrage and those who might satiate that outrage. That was Platner, steeped in the aesthetics of a Working Class Joe, telling normies and left wingers alike: I will deliver the vengeance you crave. I will be the stick of dynamite that destroys the entrenched interests you resent and despise. 

Now, I knew he was not the real deal, because I’m terminally online and I had read a lot about his upbringing and background. But I thought for sure that the persona he had adopted would reel in working-class voters, along with anyone furious about the nakedly criminal regime in power today. 

That the cosplay didn't work might get lost amid rape allegations.

Why Platner’s working class cosplay failed is up for debate. The guy exited the race down 20 points among working class voters to Susan Collins, the living embodiment of entrenched, corrupt Washington politics. The lesson, I think, is that the white working class is never going to abandon the GOP. And Maine being one of the whitest states in the country, Platner was never going to convince poor white folks to betray Donald Trump and vote for a Democrat. Every Senate race is going to be about Trump, and the Maine race was never going to be different. I said on Bluesky that white working class voters would rather chop off their own hands than cast a vote for a Democrat. I really don’t know if that’s an exaggeration. 

If you're going to try appealing to working-class men, maybe don't present a privileged man's idea of a working-class man whom actual working-class men can spot as a phony?

I think a message like Platner’s would be appealing to working class voters of color, who inexplicably gravitated toward Trump in 2024 and subsequently abandoned him in large numbers in special and off-year elections since then. You’re just not going to peel off poor white men whose entire identities are defined by bone-rattling resentment and fear. (This is not to say every low-incoming white man is this way; I know many who loathe Trump and want nothing more than for the Democrats to lean hard into socialist policies). 

But yes, you can’t pretend to be something you’re not. I should clarify and say a Democrat can’t take this approach because big media outlets won’t allow it. They will let a Republican – any Republican anywhere in the country – dress up as a farmer or a cowboy or whatever else and pretend they are working class. 

The HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN crowd seem to have forgotten he had a Totenkopf. Then again, we were told a Nazi tattoo made him authentic. Is this just gaslighting leftishly?

There was a good amount of gaslighting of well-meaning liberals and leftists, yes. It seemed to me that gaslighting was second nature for Platner. That makes sense considering his history with women. A guy gets pretty damn good at gaslighting when he acts abhorrently and has to find excuses for that behavior, or convince people they did not see what they saw. 

We're probably going to see more Platners, aren't we?

Unfortunately, a lot of excitable white guys mess around with fascist politics because they don’t have the patience for democracy, which is inherently boring and slow. I wrote about that a while back, before the disturbing sexual assault allegations against Platner. I think in the coming years, we’ll see a lot more (white dude) Democratic candidates who have dabbled with fascist thought and abandoned it for something more positive and productive. 

In a cultural and media environment centered on dopamine maximization, democracy is going to be a hard sell for the foreseeable future. Congress is functionally dead for many reasons, not least of which is Americans’ lack of patience for actual, legal lawmaking and all the debate and compromise that comes with it. With social media algorithms breaking our brains over the past decade or so, we’re much more open to a strongman making all the decisions (or six justices who now shape every part of American law). 

Trump, a product of social media, understands this well. I think a guy like Gavin Newsom does too. Pro-democracy forces are going to have to engage people’s dopamine receptors if they’re going to compete with algorithmically-generated 21st-century fascism. Some Democrats understand that. Most don’t. 

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