Graham Platner Could Be the Bellwether of a New US Populism
Graham Platner has traversed a long and unlikely road to become the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Maine. Can he beat longtime GOP incumbent Susan Collins and live up to the promise of his firebrand populist campaign?
Polls now show Maine’s Democratic antiestablishment Senate candidate Graham Platner ahead of Republican incumbent Susan Collins. Platner’s rise could augur a new left-populist moment in the United States. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
I am not from Maine. I am “from away,” as locals describe outsiders. But if you asked me to imagine this far-flung swing state, I would conjure a haunted scene from its most famous resident, Stephen King: gray skies, cold rain, damp air, a barn in the woods next to an ancient cemetery — which is where I happened to be on a Saturday in early May. Only here in Appleton, Maine, a demon wasn’t being exorcised — an entire political era was being put on trial.
“We cannot continue down this path,” oysterman Graham Platner told about two hundred onlookers:
Like many generations of Americans before us, we’re going to have to rise to the occasion. We’re going to have to get uncomfortable. . . . We’re going to have to learn how to fight. It’s the only way that we’re going to get through this, but get through it we have to, because the alternative is unacceptable.
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