Source: Liberal Currents
by Alan Elrod
“Graham Platner is now through to the general election in Maine. He has survived another scandal, despite the fact that June is an unlikely time for the final story on him to drop. And his supporters, both in Maine and across the country, appear unwilling to abandon him for any reason. I want to argue here that Platner is a beneficiary of two kinds of populist thought, moving from both the bottom up and the top down. The first kind is the traditional sort, the kind that leads to Platner being excused as a hardscrabble everyman with rough edges. The second is an elite driven form of populism …. that underwrites the audacity of a Hotchkiss School dropout turned military adventurist turned oyster farmer to run for a Senate seat with no prior experience and no recognition that a single one of his subsequent scandals could be disqualifying.” (06/11/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/graham-platner-and-the-class-politics-of-impunity/