🦪 Graham Platner Steamrolls in Maine – and Scorches the Media
The Maine progressive won his Senate primary with healthy numbers then took aim at the pundits as well as GOP opponent Susan Collins. Donald Trump's Iran quagmire, meanwhile, got worse.
On this day in 1967, a UN-brokered ceasefire ended the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Having doubled in size, Israel refused to withdraw from occupied regions, including Gaza, with terrible consequences for Palestinians that continue to this day.
Good morning! Andrew here, writing from the great state of Maine, where Graham Platner is now the Democratic Senate nominee and bashing the media for coming after him instead of trying to understand the movement he’s building.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Platner moves on to face Susan Collins in what should be the premier race of the 2026 midterms, the one that will be its ugliest and likely most expensive. I hope you like politics. Elsewhere, the war in Iran is getting hotter, and Republican lies about “voter fraud” in California are only getting worse.
‘This Is a Movement About Us’
As Graham Platner won Maine’s Democratic Senate nomination easily on Tuesday, the Marine combat veteran and oyster farmer torched the national media that’s trying to destroy him.
“The national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by,” Platner said. “But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us – about the far too many, working far too hard and struggling far too much, at the hands of the ruling class.”
Zeteo’s Prem Thakker broke the news of Platner’s Senate bid last summer. (Watch Mehdi’s interview with him here, and read one of mine.) I’ve followed Platner’s insurgent campaign closely on the ground throughout Maine, as he’s held town hall after town hall, discussing his views, the problems voters are facing and the oligarchs robbing them, and his plan to organize to build worker political power.
A first-time candidate for office, the populist, anti-war, anti-genocide Democrat is set to face five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins in the fall. The race, which could determine control of the Senate, is sure to be a blistering one. Democrats have never beaten Collins. This year, she’ll run in an exceedingly difficult environment for Republicans: Donald Trump is deeply unpopular, as is his unending war in Iran, which has sharply raised energy costs.
