The Platner Phenomenon

There's a hysterical piece by Joan Walsh at The Nation, picked up by Real Clear Politics, that concludes,

I think Platner’s rocket to political stardom reflects something ugly that’s developed, not only on the right but on the left too: . . . . Over and over we’ve been told: We gotta support candidates, like Platner, who have a lot of guns, and pickup trucks, and tattoos, and a military background, even if it includes Blackwater; a history of racist and sexist remarks and gay slurs on social media, and a history of shady behavior toward women, because it’s the only way to reach white working-class men. I’d say that’s pretty insulting to white working-class men.

What on earth does Platner have to do with white working-class men? According to the Washington Free Beacon,

Clad in a plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up, Platner has cultivated a working-class image on the campaign trail, but he appears to come from a wealthy family. His father, Bronson Platner, [a Dartmouth graduate,] served as an assistant district attorney in Maine, ran unsuccessfully for state senate, and operated his own law practice for more than 30 years. He also chaired the board of a local nonprofit that maintained ties to former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, former secretary of defense William Cohen, and former Maine governor Joseph Brennan, according to a 1984 Ellsworth American article.

Platner's grandfather, Warren Platner, [a Cornell graduate,] was a world-famous architect known for creating "a furniture collection that has proved to be an enduring icon of 1960's Modernism" and for designing "several prominent interiors in New York, including offices for the Ford Foundation building and the original Windows on the World restaurant," as the New York Times put it in when he died in 2006. Pieces from that collection are still available for purchase: The "Platner Easy Chair" sells for $19,395, while the 60-inch "Platner dining table," a "bestseller," costs $7,283. The "Platner Stool" starts at a more modest $2,395.

. . . Platner himself attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., in 1999, the Washington Free Beacon reported. It's considered America's number one boarding school and boasts extracurricular offerings like a 287-acre farm, a 220,000-square-foot "state-of-the-art" athletic facility featuring squash courts and two ice skating rinks, and study abroad opportunities in France, Italy, Spain, and the Bahamas. Its alumni include a Supreme Court justice and a CIA director. Tuition and fees for boarding students sit at $77,240 a year.

Mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and New Yorker have characterized Platner as a rugged, working-class oyster farmer without acknowledging his boarding school background and familial ties. In a profile of Platner, GQ did acknowledge Platner's "prominent local attorney" [father] and "leading modernist architect" grandfather—but presented them as a potential selling point for his campaign rather than a contradiction.

The Free Beacon also profiled Platner's business partner in his oyster farm venture:

Robert Cushman III is an elite New England boarding school graduate who has described his habit of drinking "foraged spring water with Redmond sea salt." He got into the oyster farming business, he has said, after having had a "liminal seafood experience" at the age of four.

. . . After attending the St. Paul's School in New Hampshire—an ultra-elite boarding school that costs upwards of $80,000 a year and is the subject of the 2012 book Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School—Cushman went to Dartmouth College, where he studied religion and "cultural anthropology," and then received a master's degree in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University. He moved to Maine around 2011, according to his LinkedIn, working as an "aquaculture research assistant" and as a "dorm parent" at a private academy on the coast. In 2018, he joined Platner as a partner in the Frenchman Bay Oyster Company.

Cushman provides more to the farm than his advanced degree. His family owns Ingalls Island, located about 10 minutes southwest of Platner's home in the town of Sullivan. Cushman's island is effectively home to Platner's oyster farm.

In fact, Platner was chosen and groomed for his role by a "champagne socialist duo", according to this New York Post story:

The truth is he was discovered and coached by a pair of Ivy League-educated radical Democratic socialists, replicating a playbook they’ve used in Nebraska and Iowa. That revelation could be more damaging than the tattoo, sexting women other than his wife, blasting fellow veterans and admitting to masturbating in a port-a-potty, as it strikes at the heart of Platner’s alleged authenticity.

. . . That under-the-radar team are a couple, [Brown alum and] Yale Law School grad Daniel Moraff and his fiancée, Leanne Fan, an academic with stints at Harvard and the proudly radical University of California-Berkeley.

The pair had originally met while working for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2020 and are hardcore members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They have previously been behind candidates Dan Osborn, running for Senate in Nebraska, and Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), a member of the Keystone State congressional delegation since 2023 and part of the DSA “Squad,” alongside Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

In summer 2025, Moraff and Fan were in Maine scouting for a new candidate. They had settled on union boss Chris Williams in Bath, but dropped him at the last minute due to “a skeleton in the closet that wasn’t true that we would’ve had to explain,” according to an interview they gave to Politico.

. . . “Daniel looks to work for candidates who are non-conventional, willing to go against the status quo. That’s what he aligns with, the type of folks that don’t live their life with the idea they’re going to run for office one day,” said the pair’s ex-candidate, who lost their election and asked not to be named.

So Platner, who went into the Marine Corps after high school and never attended college, is nevertheless surrounded by Ivy Leaguers and in a position to be represented to upper political circles as "one of us". On one hand, this strikes me as an entirely predictable manifestation of what I've been calling a Democrat alliance between the upper class and Marx's Lumpenproletariat against the working class, with Platner posing as a phony member of the working class who'll nevertheless vote for upper-class interests once he's elected.

On the other hand, Platner is causing a rift within the Democrat party, with the New York Times publishing allegations of sexting and Sen Fetterman taking things even farther:

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) challenged Maine Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner to prove that he didn’t send “dick pics” to minors, stating that he would “wear a suit every day in the Senate” if Platner did so.

While speaking to Fox News’s Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday in America, Fetterman was asked about “an interesting deal” he had made, the New York Post reported. Fetterman suggested that Platner could “set the record clear” regarding messages he sent to women early on his in marriage.

“You proposed an interesting deal. You said, ‘Let’s make a deal,’ these are your words, ‘I’ll tell P-Hustle I’ll wear a suit everyday if he releases all those texts and messages that he has had with a dozen women,'” McEnany said. “Have you heard from him on this deal?”

"No, of course I never heard from P-Hustle,” Fetterman responded. “But, what’s strange with P-Hustle is, back in April, he was doing an interview on that pro-Hamas Zeteo Network, or whatever that thing is, and he said I am the ‘bane of his existence,’ and really was angry at how I dress. And, now I said, P-Hustle, here’s a great chance, you can just prove that all these people that you were dropping those dick pics, and saying these things to were over 18. Now, I will wear a suit every day in the Senate.”

Although Fetterman himself refers to his own background as "privileged", he began his career with an actual job as an insurance underwriter before climbing the ladder in Pennsylvania state politics. Notably, he was mayor of blue-collar Braddock, PA and is said to understand Pennsylvania voters well. Clearly in Platner, he senses a phony cosplaying as working class.

It looks as if he was selected and groomed by members of the elitist wing of the Democrats who seem to have been carried away by Platner's "our sort of people" vibe but don't appear to have vetted him very carefully. We'll have to see how this plays out.