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.”
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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?