The 2016 Democratic Divide Remains Alive & Well

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) with Maine Senate
candidate Graham Platner

The Maine US Senate race continues to be a source of fascination, and honestly, endless frustration.  In recent days, both camps released internal polls showing their candidate leading, which is admittedly a terrible look for Gov. Janet Mills, who is the sitting governor, running against a virtual unknown.  In an internal poll from Graham Platner, he's losing among Democrats (which may be why he has become more comfortable on the campaign trail running against the party whose nomination he wants), but winning among independents by large enough margins to make up for that; in an Emily's List poll (Emily's List has endorsed Mills) he is behind Collins by 9-points, and in a loaded, biased question talking about Platner's past comments that should be taken with a GIANT mound of salt given that it's intended to make Platner look bad (even though, admittedly it is what Collins is going to do to him on the campaign trail) that lead of Collins' increases to 19-points.

While this back-and-forth is happening, Platner's campaign continues to have a conga line of red flags coming out of it.  Two of the latest are that Platner is apparently paying his wife Amy Gertner a salary out of the campaign funds.  This isn't illegal, for the record (if Platner's wife is an actual campaign staffer, she's allowed to be paid out of campaign contributions, even if she's a family member...in fact, Platner could even pay himself this way), but it's worth noting given that Platner himself might not be able to take a salary without disrupting his veterans' benefits.  This comes in the wake of Platner's campaign manager quitting (and on the heels of his political director also quitting, quite publicly in this case).  And it now appears that Platner has not released a personal financial disclosure form, which under federal law should've been filed by September 17th (almost eight weeks ago)...something you could take up with his campaign treasurer or finance director, but they've both recently quit as well.

All of this, I'm going to be honest, is driving me a little insane.  Platner, to me, reads as a giant red flag, and at this point, feels an awful lot like a con-artist trying to take advantage of a disgruntled blue base.  His demeanor as a straight, white man with blue collar aesthetic (despite having a very wealthy father and going to an elite boarding school, which would eschew the blue collar vibe) is providing cover for the fact that he has a sketchy history as a progressive (as recently as a a couple of years ago, he was stating racist & homophobic things online that feel a lot more akin to Donald Trump than Zohran Mamdani), and his continued focus on the campaign trail of railing against Democrats rather than keeping his message trained primarily on Susan Collins and Donald Trump...I can't help but think of another Democrat who had a similar push just three years ago, who has gained a lot of comparisons to Platner (some good, some bad), but has been nothing but a disappointment for Democrats: John Fetterman.

In 2022, Fetterman was running (like Platner) against a Democrat with a more established presence in the party.  Conor Lamb had a track record in the US House you could point to (something Fetterman, who had never been a legislator despite holding several public offices) did not.  More pertinently, Fetterman had to talk about an incident in 2013 where he followed an unarmed Black jogger, whom he detained with a shotgun.  At the time, the incident was dismissed, both because (unlike Platner) Fetterman had elected experience, a much more progressive background (Fetterman supported gay marriage before it was legal in Pennsylvania, for example), and that the jogger had stated publicly that he thought Fetterman should be forgiven & he hoped he'd win the race...even though the jogger also said that Fetterman had lied about all of facts of the incident.

Cut a few years later, and it's hard not to notice the buyer's remorse any progressive has here.  John Fetterman is (by far) the most conservative Democrat currently in the Senate, regularly supporting & praising Donald Trump, and feels increasingly at-risk of switching parties (something that he has denied...though he's done so during interviews on Fox News).  Conor Lamb, meanwhile, the boring second place finisher in this race (i.e. the Janet Mills, not the exciting newcomer who doesn't look like a typical politician) is consistently in public statements & social media someone who has stood against Trump.  In fact, in a Twitter exchange with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), she literally said of Conor Lamb "I was wrong about you and I'm sorry...where do I submit my Conor Lamb apology form?"  In this case, the tried-and-tested Democrat was clearly the best bet, and going with the exciting newcomer a terrible decision that Democrats regretted.

Sen. Sanders with Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA)

I'm going to be picking an old wound here, so bear with me, but I need to go a little further here.  The AOC/Lamb exchange happened due to this post, one where Fetterman, in March, taunted the congresswoman about voting to keep the government open during a looming shutdown that many Democrats (myself included) wanted the party to not allow Trump the luxury of getting a bill passed without more concessions.  In the photo in the post, you'll note that a man that ties together all three of these figures (Platner, Fetterman, & AOC) is present: Bernie Sanders.

Sanders has already endorsed Graham Platner in the Senate race in Maine, and while I cannot find evidence that Sanders endorsed Fetterman before the primary (i.e. when there was still a question mark over whom the candidate should be for the left), Sanders did endorse Fetterman in the 2018 Lieutenant Governor's primary, so he had supported him in the past and Sanders would campaign in-person with Fetterman during the 2022 Senate campaign.  Democrats do not like it when you bring up the 2016 Democratic Primary, mostly because it's still an insanely raw nerve, with the Sanders camp accusing Hillary Clinton's people of conspiring with the DNC to hurt his campaign (they say costing him the nomination) while Clinton's supporters will frequently cite Sanders' inability to get his supporters in-line (and his relatively tacit backing for Clinton in the general election) as a reason she lost to Trump.  

In both cases, this is a bit specious (I think both sides have a slight point, but not enough to have cost either of their candidates the race on its own), but to pretend that this isn't a clear echo of that race is absurd.  Like Clinton, Janet Mills is a creature of government, someone who has worked as a Democratic Party politician all her life.  She's not particularly flashy, but the results of her tenure mark her as perhaps more liberal than she'd give herself credit for (both Clinton & Mills are WAY more progressive if you look at what they've done in office than if you talk to the average voter about their opinions on them given they're so staid in their speaking style).  Platner, on the other hand, is (like Sanders) a New England contrarian, one with some pronounced liberal viewpoints, but with a shaky connection to the Democratic Party and not a lot to show for his time in office (Sanders consistently has one of the weakest bill-to-law rates of any US Senator).  

That Democrats continually find these same lines, the ones who support Clinton and the ones who support Sanders, shows that the schism we all are encouraged to believe doesn't exist anymore, is still very much there.  I will own that I supported Clinton in 2016 in the primaries, and am supporting Mills in the 2026 primary.  But I am not uniform in this-for example, I supported John Fetterman in the 2022 primary because I bought the hype that a different type of politician would be a good thing in a swing state (I was wrong, but I'll own that I was hoping he'd beat Lamb at the time).  This is perhaps why I want Democrats to wake up before it's too late on Platner.  He is running a campaign that in many ways mirrors Fetterman, which Democrats regretted when he won, and in more ways his rhetoric mirrors Sanders & his supporters are starting to match it (i.e. a primary campaign that hurts our general election chances if they don't win).  Sanders is a true believer progressive even if he's not a Democrat (unlike Fetterman or Platner, I have no doubt in the consistency of his economic liberalism), but his judgment in primaries since he rose to becoming the leader of the left wing of the American political sphere a few years ago has been repeatedly questionable (I haven't brought up Tulsi Gabbard in this article yet...but know she's also a billboard for Sanders' shocking ability to attract terrible ideas).  This sort of blind allegiance to a candidate, even when confronted with new and oftentimes damning information (like we ignored with Fetterman, and many seem to be ignoring with Platner) is a good way to get another senator whose true beliefs are constantly in question, or worse yet, another term for Susan Collins.