Hey have you heard about Graham Platner?

I’ll confess I hadn’t ever paid much attention to Graham Platner, because by the time I was more than vaguely aware of his existence it was clear he was going to be the Democratic senatorial candidate against Susan Collins, so in that context his dodgy past was far less relevant or interesting than it would be otherwise. And this is still true: If somehow Platner were to survive the apparent collapse of his campaign, there would in my mind at least be no question that every anti-Trump person should support that campaign going forward, not that this is going to happen, at least probably not, although 2026 so who knows?

Anyway . . . I did a little reading about Platner, and a couple of questions come to mind:

First, how did this happen? By “this” I mean how did someone this utterly obscure become a major party candidate for the US senate in the course of a few months? Platner’s obscurity pre-July 2025 was sufficiently total that he was practically unmentioned in the Lexis news data base prior to then. The lone notable exception is a 1,700-word essay/interview with him in the Jerusalem Post in 2021, which features him as the sole source for its thesis that the failure of the US mission in Afghanistan was due in large part to that mission’s foolhardy attempt to undertake something analogous to the Vietnamization process that failed so spectacularly in that country a generation earlier.

To me the most noteworthy thing about this story is that at no point does its author, Seth Frantzman, reveal that his source for it is also his step-brother, to who per Platner he has been quite close for many years (Platner’s mother married Frantzman’s father). Frantzman certainly seems like an interesting guy, who among other things is per his background way more qualified to be the next junior senator from Maine than his step-brother . . . Hey I have an idea for Netflix series . . .

This connection suggests that Platner didn’t exactly come out of nowhere per se, but is the kind of guy who knows a guy who knows this other person . . . what I’m suggesting is that there are various forms of cultural capital rolling around in this context, that got converted into sudden political plausibility in various ways. The Wikipedia explanation for Platner’s sudden strutting and fretting upon our stage:

In July 2025, a coalition of labor and community groups approached Platner to suggest he consider running for Senate.^[9] He has said his first reaction was to reject the idea, but that he reconsidered it with his wife when the group returned with a detailed plan.^[26]

Platner launched his Senate campaign on August 19, 2025, with a video produced by Morris Katz, a senior adviser and admaker for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.^[27][20] In the video, Platner highlights his military and working-class credentials, while criticizing his prospective opponent in harsh terms:^[28]

A potential irony here I suppose is that the whole initial pitch deck for Platner was that he wasn’t “grown in a vat” — he was authentic dontcha know, in a way that my perfect cousin, who went to all the right schools, did the right internships, met the right people in DC and so forth and so on, wasn’t. (Whatever I do he doesn’t). But in retrospect all this authenticity sure does seem to have a lot of consultants ginning it up, in a rain on your wedding day kind of way if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Which reminds me of something I wrote about awhile ago, which is how political “charisma” in large part — not wholly of course but in a significant way — is not something that candidates just naturally possess, but rather is a quality that is PROJECTED onto them by an audience that’s desperately looking for this precise quality, and finds it in no small part as a product of that very desperation. Donald Trump, Authentic Tribune of the Most Despised Group in America, aka Ordinary Americans, is of course the Platonic ideal of this phenomenon in our time. Trump is, it should be unnecessary to point out, the phoniest phony who ever phonied in every way possible, but his whole standup schtick — le mot juste — is that he’s “not a politician,” he “tells it like it is,” he isn’t “politically correct” etc etc etc.

Another parallel that struck me kind of funny as I looked over these fragments I’ve shored against my ruins is that between Platner and J.D. Vance, another Authentic Tribune of the White Working Class People. Platner and Vance are almost exactly the same age, both are veterans, both come from somewhat chaotic family backgrounds against which they each rebelled in different but related ways, that left them with ambiguous backstories — sons of privilege, or liminal working class truth whisperers? — and both, perhaps, are ultimately products of the Machine that creates the latest hot new political thing out of not a whole lot other than something that can be spun as a compelling biography that could make up that Netflix special or series if you squint just right. I’m just saying . . .

. . . Also too in re Platner and Vance I should have mentioned the beards. I mean Ted Cruz has a beard now. There’s got to be some whole consultant thing going around about how a beard makes you authentically masculine and definitely not gay. Which is funny because to the boomers male facial hair still codes as “hippie” I think . . .