06/12/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BAKjx8pV2/?mibextid=wwXIfr
For a week, I’ve watched the commentators and the party line up to tell me Graham Platner is too compromised for the United States Senate. Last night, the Democrats of Maine answered them. He won his primary, carrying nearly every county in the state. This is not the outcome for a candidate distrusted by the voters; in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s a landslide.
The media and the Democratic establishment have been scouring Platner’s personal struggles and trying to equate them with his fitness to serve. Relationships that ended badly. Texts he regrets. The years he spent drinking, trying to outrun what he brought home from Ramadi and Fallujah. He’s a Marine who came back with PTSD and a drinking problem and did the work to come out the other side. That’s not a disqualification. In most of America, that’s the story of a man growing up. But run for office as a regular guy, and every private wound becomes a headline.
I don’t feel betrayed by Platner. I feel betrayed by the people sitting in judgment of him. Half the Senate calls itself moral because they never yelled at a girlfriend, while they vote to arm and fund the killing of tens of thousands of children. The real risk for Democrats was never Platner’s past. It’s running one more cautious, poll-tested candidate nobody believes in. Read more from Corbin Trent: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/graham-platner-senate-race-democrats-media-hypocrisy-corbin-trent/