Opinion - Michelle Goldberg
April 30, 2026
Platner spoke about the struggles of working people for whom a decent life seemed out of reach, about the disastrous wars he’d fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and about the need for a Democratic Party with New Deal-scale ambitions. And he spoke to people’s feelings of being abandoned to Trump’s depredations by a weak and fumbling Democratic Party. “Nobody is coming to save us,” he said, positioning himself as a leader who could help people save themselves.
Since then, Platner has used his campaign to organize for causes besides his own election. He rallied against a ballot initiative that would have required voter ID and restricted absentee voting. (It lost.) When ICE came to Lewiston, Maine, a town with a significant Somali population, he urged people to resist the agency the way that the citizens of Minneapolis had, celebrating those who, as he said in a fiery speech, “do real things to impede ICE’s operations and physically protect our communities.” He collects donations for food pantries at his events. His campaign feels, to many of his impassioned supporters, like a movement.
I underestimate and still get underwhelmed.
imagine thinking neolibs aren’t a large part of the fascism pie problem
Repeating once again to anybody who wants to participate in mainstream USA politics that there are two hurdles to any real change.
1: Most states have hidden electronic vote counts which are not double checked and flunk anti cheating tests; this applies to primaries of both parties and general elections. All offices
2: Even real democracy can only go so far to improve conditions here.
Voting and “fury” don’t seem to go together.
I hope he wins and helps keep the door open for other actual progressives.
plllllltttt… Dem voters vote for spineless Dem candidates… won’t matter anyway because this administration is not ever going to cede control
That’s why we have to take it from them.
Seeing Maine support a candidate that cares about the working class instead of another corporate stooge is a good sign.
Keep it up!
