Code Red In Maine
Senate candidate Graham Platner's rabidity shapes the next valence shell of our fragile national comity
The calendar soon flips to an election year and our great disagreement will be back in full view, but we should all agree that Graham Platner has to lose.
Have you not heard of Graham Platner? Study up, because his candidacy is the next test for national comity.
Whether it is his Democratic primary against Gov. Janet Mills or the general election against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Platner has to lose in order for democracy to win.
It has become fashionable in American politics to say “democracy is on the ballot,” and typically it is not quite so. But Platner, an insurgent lefty oysterman running in defiance of Washington’s party leadership, has made it clear he will settle for nothing less than the undoing of the civil underpinnings of democracy.
Platner said Mainers should take their grievances against elected officials beyond the ballot box or the mailbox. “Frankly, I want people to follow them around and don’t let them have a public dinner without getting yelled at. Because that’s power. That’s real power.”
Democracies wobble under internal siege. The great schism that provoked half our voters to elect Donald Trump twice, reject him once, and the other half to not accept one or more of those outcomes has stress-tested the system that got America through a civil war, two world wars, a depression, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The current fracture undoubtedly pre-dated 2015, as seismic activity always starts long before the quake.
Popular media would have you believe our constitutional checks and balances are what keep our democracy upright. Elegant and essential as these elements of federalism are, they are expressions of our tensile strength and not the cause of it. The spinal column of any free society is more fundamental than any charter or structure; it is the consensus that disagreements can and must be settled through formal channels without shattering coexistence.
Platner is suggesting the opposite. In his worldview, voters who do not get their way – on socialized medicine in his example above – should not keep trying to win elections and lobbying those who do. Instead, they should shatter the social compact and terrorize those on the other side, along with anyone who happens to be sitting at their table in a restaurant.
We saw this same ugly ethos flash in the first Trump administration when press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was shouted out of a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia while on holiday. Cabinet officials, congressmen, and leaders of conservative organizations were taunted in their neighborhoods. Senators were regularly accosted and shouted at by strangers in airports. In the Biden Administration, pro-Hamas kooks camped out in Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s driveway for months.
In my own neighborhood during the last election, Sen. J.D. Vance was regularly treated in an uncivil manner by people he and I shared sidewalks with. The envelope-pushing of rejection of temporary conservative residents in Washington’s liberal suburbs gets worse all the time – a betrayal of the mission any national capital has, to politely host the business of governance without prejudice or avarice.
Some of these stalkings have become grounds for legal restraining orders, but weeds cannot be effectively thwarted one at a time.
A few loons went further than taunting, one by wandering onto the property of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh with homicidal intent. That instance proves the line that separates the restaurant hecklers Platner encourages and the assassins of Charlie Kirk and Democratic Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman and seditionists Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes is perforated, not solid. And that is why Platner has to lose.
The appeal of Platner’s candidacy is his rejection of norms, and it should alarm modulated Democrats who have spent ten years arguing nonstop for them. Mainers recently learned Platner has a Nazi tattoo on his chest and it did not undo his lead in the polls. Platner’s call for destruction is not limited to the dinner dates of congressmen. He also envisions holding society hostage to get his political way. He calls it – creepily – “secondary power.”
Platner said: “We also have to build secondary power. Real power of organization, the power to turn people out, the power to shut things down, frankly, the power to impose costs.” Shutting things down. Imposing costs. Does he mean shutting down the power grid? The Portland airport? Interstate 95? Platner does not specify, but he seems serious.
The boundary between schism and rebellion is a mosaic of filled-in opti-scan bubbles on 150 million ballot forms, and earnest signatures on millions of letters to congress authored by everyday Americans. The societal covenant of a democracy is mutual agreement to accept electoral losses and to seek redress within the formal channels prescribed for such.
Graham Platner is not the only candidate who would make America a non-stop cacophony of rebellion. They exist on both sides. But as the principal challenger in what will be America’s most prominent U.S. Senate race, his electoral validation or rejection will resonate beyond the borders of the Pine Tree State. Working through democratic mechanisms, we should all do our part to make sure he fails.
Turkey Time: This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Before you rush head-long into commercial Christmas, savor the turkey and the fellowship. My homage to Thanksgiving is GIVE THE TURKEY ITS TIME.
The Kids Are Back: If you have a college student like I do, you’re elated to have them back home. I predict I get an eye-roll about my column last week now that it can be delivered in person. It’s GEN-Z NEEDS ADVICE.
The Archive: Many of my favorite columns have been like this one, digestions of our national predicament - like FLAGS WE FLY. You can find them all on The What For website.
