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.”
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