Julia Conley
Aug 19, 2025
Launching a US Senate run to unseat five-term Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, oyster farmer Graham Platner on Tuesday made clear in his inaugural ad that beating the “fake” moderate also means taking on the power-hungry billionaire class that has helped keep her in power all these years.
The enemy that the vast majority of Americans and Mainers have in common, said Platner, “is the oligarchy.”
This man is HORRIBLE and we should just CONTINUE electing Susan Collins because EVENTUALLY Trump MIGHT Learn his Lesson and that’s BETTER then someone who MIGHT actually Care about his Constituents!
Oh, you’re here.
Catchy message; but upper class conservative.
If platforming universal healthcare and economic change is conservative then sign me the duck up as a staunch conservative. People are attacking him for having a business but that doesn’t make him the enemy. Plenty of good solid people have a business and pump the money back into their employees and community. It’s the billionaires, the ultra wealthy who think they can play god that are the problem.
I swear, “progressives” can be the most backwards people and their own worst enemy all in the name of ideological purity.
Socialists aren’t “progressive” liberals. They’re socialists. We don’t think the problem is the billionaires: we think the problem is capitalism itself. It’s private ownership of the means of production, which is foundational to liberalism.
Plenty of good solid people have a business and pump the money back into their employees and community.
This is petit bourgeois “job creator” talk. Those good solid people exploit their employees’ labor. This isn’t a moral judgement, it’s simply how capitalism works.
It’s the billionaires, the ultra wealthy who think they can play god that are the problem.
Petit bourgeois small business types are usually he first to embrace fascist policies when their material class interests are threatened. We are not “progressives” we are communists and this guy is a literal veteran of the fascist military and proud of it. You are the reason we say “scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds”.
Plenty of good solid people have a business and pump the money back into their employees and community.
Small businesses have a higher rate of wage theft than large ones. For the vast majority, the employees they aren’t stealing from in a legal sense are still trapped in wage slavery. They pump money back into the chamber of commerce, local republican party, police department, and anti-human development efforts because those things protect their business. The only thing separating them from Jeff Bezos is the degree to which they succeed at the same thing.
If this guy is enough to trick you, cool. Peek-a-boo is going to blow your fucking mind when you see that one.
It’s the billionaires, the ultra wealthy who think they can play god that are the problem.
They are a problem. But the deeper problem is the system that creates them. What they are critiquing is the adoption of anti-capitalist messaging without any anti-capitalist substance to back it up. This has been used by others in campaign posturing but led to no action, or worse - directly opposite action like Fetterman.
It’s good that people are responding to vaugely anti-capitalist messaging, but without post-capitalist solutions to back it up, it’s just co-option of the working classes dissatisfaction getting redirected into maintaining the status quo
You’re arguing with someone from .ml, it’s not worth the effort
I learned a while back that arguing with someone is less about convincing that specific person, and more about convincing the bystanders who read/hear the argument.
It’s actually made it less frustrating for me to engage with people online. The person I’m taking to I know will never change their mind, but someone else might that I don’t know about.
Definitely applaud that effort and patience!
I’ve lost some enthusiasm for it as they generally seem argue with the same tactics as from the right-wing playbook. Really designed to muddy the water and confuse the whole conversation in their favor.
I am not progressive, or democrat.
I do believe in better health care, of course. But, let us count how many candidates who promised this before and have failed to keep their campaign promises to even do the minimal effort?
How is this person different from the normal grifter type? Are there mitigating stories about his character or background that shows one should give him a doubt?
Fuck it, dont vote for anyone ever again, I guess
Or find ways to make a difference.
You seem like you’re shitting on others trying to make a difference.
Over 500 people people have campaigned on this, and won.
You assume this person is making a difference. I ask, how do you know?
He has big 2018 John Fetterman energy for me, but like if Fetterman had a job prior to holding office. I don’t trust anyone who proudly boasts about being a combat veteran in a war other than WW2.
big 2018 John Fetterman
That’s the vibe I’m getting too. I feel like the word “oligarchy” is just being used for marketing here. None of this “oligarchy is the enemy” messaging says anything beyond that. Its just endlessly finding phrases so they don’t have to say capitalism or talk about it in any meaningful way.
The bandwagon use of oligarchy stood out to me before anything else too. That’s nothing more than a judas goat term being used by social fascists to make baby leftists vote blue no matter who. It belongs on those “In this house we believe…” signs that liberals immediately removed from their lawns after Trump won.
this sort of thing always reminds me of how the Warren campaign sloganized the phrase “big structural change.” But it was so hollow even to her supporters that they started chanting “big structural bailey” around a massive inflatable dog using the name of Warren’s campaign show dog 
That somehow manages to be sadder than at least 5% of the things her base does. Maybe even 6% but that would displace getting the hexcode of her campaign colour tattooed on their wrists like holocaust victims.
I’d forgotten about the tattoos!!!
- Gets elected.
- Proceeds to inside trade.
Considering he’s coming from a rather humble profession completely unrelated to politic and hasn’t done anything of the sort yet: maybe pump the brakes on the wild, unjustified pessimism until he actual does something that’s worthy of being pessimistic about. This guy is the caliber of politician we should be lauding and supporting.
Why? (One word question, but sincere)
Let me answer your question with another question: if you immediately assume bad faith and maliciousness of literally anyone who tries to get into politics, regardless of their motivations and beliefs, what does that say about your own opinions of the (small d) democratic process, and representative democracies in general?
If am a passionate progressive ( I am not, but let us pretend), how do I decide which candidates to promote in the primaries? Each candidate I wish to support takes my limited time and resources, and time away from family and work. Even if I believe in good candidates, how do I not get fooled given there is already a long proven line of con artists? Should I look at someone’s personal history to see how they stand out from others who let me down? (this is what I asked, dear reader, in all those comments previously)
why is he running for senator, not governor or representative? Why not a city council? Why not state senate or house? How is he going to introduce legislation with zero experience in government service? He needs to answer those questions, but his answer is “Im a successful businessman and I will just use morality to introduce bills! I know legal text and thats why I am prepared to fight all of the lawyers who make up the republican side. I have a history of working with others to bring about change by… digging up oysters and getting rich by it?”
Senators are legislators, not “leaders” who make decisions. If he wants to make main prosperous through his decision making skills, thats the fucking governors job.
Can he read this and accurately vote for legislation around this legal text? That will benefit mainers? Does he even know how to read this? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/19/1675b
That is just one fraction of the US legal code. aka the fucking law of land that republicans are using and abusing to bring about fascism. How can he weaponize it to stop them?
Because the DNC is manifestly incapable of enacting meaningful change, and often simply acts as captive opposition. Mamdani’s campaign is running on largely the same point.
mamdani isn’t pretending to be a legislator either. He’s actually doing something to benefit others with an actual plan. Becoming a legislator isn’t a plan. This oyster farmers plan is to become a legislator to enact what new legislation? Who is his team of legal code experts to do his job for him? “I have legislation ready to help maine, for example I will introduce a new bill to do x y and z for mainers and can be achieved in a bipartisan manner because of my experience in a b and c” that is what a leader in legislation does. Oyster farmers just say “its time to end corruption by voting for me!”
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