{"id":261,"date":"2026-07-08T04:17:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T04:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=261"},"modified":"2026-07-08T04:17:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T04:17:18","slug":"graham-platner-and-the-working-class-fetish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usabusinesschronicle.com\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"Graham Platner and the Working-Class Fetish"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As of (checks watch<\/em>) 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Graham Platner, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault by a former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, a Democrat, (not to be mistaken with the Republican ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, who accused him of manhandling her and locking her in a room and saying he\u2019d rape any intruder in his home, but not in a gay way), is still the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from the great state of Maine. [6:22 p.m. update<\/em>: Fifield has now added that he had a habit of surreptitiously removing condoms during sex.]<\/p>\n

Read more What Makes Sam Alito So Angry?<\/a><\/p>\n

After sticking with the political novice and oyster farmer following accusations of physical assault, a documented sexting account, and a much-discussed Nazi tattoo, Platner supporters are fleeing him, including Representative Ro Khanna, the Pod Save America<\/em> hosts, and Senator Bernie Sanders. The 41-year-old Marine combat veteran has yet to bow out, although that seems inevitable. Reportedly, Platner intends to hold the Democratic Party, Maine voters, and the fate of the U.S. Senate in his hands until he\u2019s assured that he will be replaced on the Democratic ticket by someone who shares his values. What Graham Platner\u2019s values are, of course, might be open to debate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Look, this magazine has, in the writings of our Political Editor Bill Scher and Contributing Writer David Masciotra, raised all the right questions about Citizen Platner from the get-go. I\u2019ve been posting about it for months. That\u2019ll all be history soon when Platner bows out as he must, with the Democratic Party arrayed against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The question now: What should Democrats take from this nauseating episode?<\/p>\n

One lesson: Do not fetishize working-class voters. Court them, of course. Obviously, this bloc has befuddled Democrats in recent years. But the idea that nominating a working-class Democrat would sway working-class voters was always reductionist and absurd. Democratic Brahmins like Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did just fine with working-class voters. Sherrod Brown grew up in a comfortable home and went to Yale. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio three times in part because of his connection with working-class voters, and today he faces good odds of returning to the Senate from a Buckeye State that\u2019s gotten tougher for Democrats. Working-class voters have supported Republican billionaires like the president and candidates such as Jim Justice, the U.S. senator and former governor from West Virginia who ran an inherited coal empire, for gosh sakes. The notion that they need to see someone like themselves in higher office is condescending.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with and much to commend recruiting working-class candidates. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an adroit politician who went from being a waitress in Manhattan to knocking off the House Democratic Caucus Chair, Joe Crowley, in Queens in 2018. She notably never endorsed Platner, and I suspect her tenure at bro-heavy watering holes gave her spidey-senses about this guy. Dan Osborn, the veteran and union leader running as an independent in Nebraska, seems like a serious person.<\/p>\n

Read more If Graham Platner Won\u2019t Quit, Democrats Need to Quit Him<\/a><\/p>\n

But Democratic consultants were so smitten by the populist Platner that they skipped even nominal vetting, and college-educated voters ignored proliferating red flags because he fit their ideal of a working-class hero who could win the working class. That he hailed from an affluent family, attended the Hotchkiss School, and engaged in antisocial behavior didn\u2019t seem to matter until his candidacy became untenable. <\/p>\n

At this point, it\u2019s worth noting that Republicans never seem to go through painful self-examination\u2014not over nominating Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate from Texas or President \u201cGrab \u2018em.\u201d Denny Hastert was the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House in the nation\u2019s history. Yes, his payments to men he coached when he was their high-school wrestling instructor only emerged after he left office and was arrested and convicted, but still there\u2019s been no why-didn\u2019t-we-know reckoning on the GOP side and, typically, Democrats have let everyone forget.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know the best way for Democrats to win enough working-class voters to take back the U.S. Senate and the presidency, but Platneresque pandering surely isn\u2019t it. This magazine has presented a series of ideas as both good policy and good politics to woo these voters\u2014vigorous antitrust enforcement, widespread broadband access, Medicare prices for all, outreach to rural voters, and avoiding cultural pitfalls such as the ungainly phrase \u201cLatinX,\u201d among many others. But there\u2019s no panacea. This huge and heterogeneous bloc will need to be wooed because there is no such thing as a white knight with a gravelly voice perfect for truck ad voiceovers. \u201cIdentity politics\u201d is often a cheap and meaningless charge aimed at minorities or liberals. But in Platner\u2019s case, identity really was everything. Biography was destiny. The personal was political.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elia Kazan\u2019s 1957 film,A Face in the Crowd<\/em>, is a cultural analog. A radio producer finds a drunk but charismatic drifter, promotes him as a truth-telling populist named Lonesome Rhodes (played by Andy Griffith), who becomes a nationwide phenomenon first as the spokesman for a vitamin\/Viagra-like supplement and later as the booster for a presidential candidate. With its echoes of unsavory figures like Huey Long and the then-near-death Senator Joseph McCarthy, as well as more wholesome figures like Will Rogers, the film captures demagoguery but, more importantly, downfall, as Rhodes\u2019s rise ends as rapidly as it began. It\u2019s worth a watch this week as Graham Platner, presumably and hopefully, begins to fade from public memory.<\/p>\n

Read more America at 250: An Idealist Without Illusions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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