Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Graham Platner Ends Campaign for U.S. Senate

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Join Sam Stein and Catherine Rampell as they cover the breaking news that Graham Platner has chosen to end his campaign for Senate.For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to https://3DayBlinds.com/BULWARKTAKES.

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing at the Bork. I'm with Catherine Rampel off of receipts, who appears to be in, I guess, MS now corporate offices? I can't tell. Where are you? Yeah, that's right. Definitely not home. I'm not home. This is not what my humble bone looks like. This is what my office looks like. Thank God. It drives me a little crazy. We're here to talk about Grant Platner, who about an hour ago dropped out of the Senate race in Maine. This was a long time coming. Well, I guess not that long. Several days. coming. And he did it with... It should have been a long time coming.

It should have been a longer time coming, yeah. But it happened. Everyone was expecting at this point. It's just sort of a matter of when because he had this July 13th deadline to get to. He had an 11 or so minute video explaining why he was doing this. A lot of preamble, I think roughly seven minutes in. He got to the news. But there was a lot of letting stuff off his chest.

And before we get to portions of it, Catherine, just your first impressions of it. taking no responsibility for any of the events that led to this, just like the drip, drip, drip of scandals, even before the accusations of sexual assault, which he denies, we should be clear, you know, he flatly denies. But even before all of that, you know, the Nazi tattoos and the sexting with women who were not his wife and right at threats, like no responsibility for any of this. Instead, he blamed the corporate media and the political establishment for trying to keep him down and trying to kill his movement. He at one point rambled on about how, like, all he wanted was health care for the people and, you know, an end of corruption and et cetera, et cetera. And it's like these are all, this is all he cares about. But like, I think there was no mention of Susan Collins or Donald. Trump in any of this.

So there was a mention of Susan Collins. Oh, there was. Excuse me. Where he did say they would rather Susan Collins win and see the movement thrive or something like that. Okay. It was a notable line.

I watched it. It was, I want to be charitable here. I want to be as charitable as I can be. Okay. Obviously, this is not, this is a tough period of his life,

putting aside. the fact that he buried himself and deserves this and that he made the mistakes and frankly that his behavior was abhorrent and deserves condemnation and he shouldn't have been a senator. I have to imagine this is an incredibly difficult period to go from being the adulation of so many people to being a pariah. That's my charitable version of this. My honest less charitable version of this is that this was a really bad video, that it did very little to take accountability for anything. In fact, it denied responsibility.

It did very little to sort of accommodate and even acknowledge how the people who legitimately felt victimized by him feel now. It did little to sort of acknowledge that he let people down, right? Like he gave a lot of people hope and then kind of crashed and burned. And like those people are, you know, probably feeling pretty gloomy right now. And he didn't really address that in a profound way at all. And it did little to bring the party together Other than to like say here's some guidelines Yeah

No he like torched the party Yeah yeah he like torched the party By the party I don't mean by the party I don't mean The Democratic Party What I mean by that is like it did little to set the predicate For them to have a successful campaign in Maine Like it just didn't do that So anyways I don't know

It was a rough watch Why don't we play the first part where he actually makes the news About suspending the operations We believe that for the movement To continue It can't be made. And for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations. This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think it's an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not. We're not doing it because of the allegations.

We're doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power. The structures that are being taken away from us by those in power, that really stood out to me. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This whole thing was just like, no responsibility for any of it. Again, even the stuff that he now admits, like having the tattoo, although he's kind of been fuzzy about the timeline for when he knew about that. Like, even if he flatly denies as he has the allegations of criminal behavior in the form of sexual assault, there's other bad stuff that has come out that is maybe not crossing the line into criminal, but certainly has shown bad judgment and bad character.

And apparently none of that mattered at all, right? The only reason why this campaign has flamed out and he is now dropping out is because there's a conspiracy of establishment people and corporate media forcing him out. That's the narrative here. And you know what? If I had seen a transcript of this speech and didn't know who said it and you told me it was Donald Trump, I would be like, you know, it's like a little more coherent. than a Trump speech, but sure, the themes are there.

So you're not the only one who felt this way. Yeah. Let's put up a tree from David Axelrod. In the end, Plattner chose as a closing act of page right out of Donald Trump's Toddger Paguerreys. There you go. I deflect, refuse responsibility, play the martyr, slimy accusers. Platterner built an animal movement, but there was nothing admirable by the way he said goodbye.

I disagree on one important note. Donald Trump never would have left a race ever, period. Wouldn't have bowed out. Wouldn't have said, I'll see you later. That's not Trumpian. So there is that one important decision. Yeah, the corporate media thing's kind of interesting. Let's play the clip about corporate media because that is like the classic sort of boogeyman if you want to like not take responsibility.

Here's him talking about corporate media. With no time to truly respond, no time for investigations before a corporate media system. and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end. So I just, I have a little bit of a bone to pick, a big bond to pick with this one. Like, just let's start with the political establishment act as judge and jury and executioner. Like, he had a lot of the backing of the establishment. Yes, I know Chuck Schumer wanted Janet Mills, but like in the end, there was a whole

host of very prominent senators who had to rescind their endorsements because he screwed up. I know that we don't like to think of Bernie as political establishment. Elizabeth Warren was there with him. I mean, Ruben Gallego, other people. Roe Con. Cowan. Like, these are very prominent Democrats. At some point, they are.

are what you would call the establishment, even if they don't want to admit it. And then the corporate media system, it's like you live by it and he died by it, right? So he got incredibly flattering coverage, which prompted, which came with his rise. And for that reason, he probably gained the virality that helped him become a unknown to overtake Janet Mills. And the idea that he wouldn't be scrutinized when he was on the doorstep of the Senate, that people wouldn't look through his past to get a good sense of his character really is sort of a remarkably sort of naive or selfish admission because you're asking people to trust you that comes to the territory.

You do get scrutiny. I don't know how much time he got to respond to these stories, but like the idea that the corporate media turned on because they were asking about whether he treated women like appropriately or maybe even rape. Or rape someone. Yeah. Yeah. is an absurd idea that you shouldn't have that type of scrutiny. It's basic.

Yeah, I do wonder, how did he not have the foresight to realize some of these things were going to come out? Right. You know, he kept lying about stuff or certainly appeared to be lying about things that were, like, relatively easy to fact check or falsify. This happened again and again and again, like about things related, again, to the tattoo and his records. and timelines of things that didn't quite make sense. And it's like when people lie about the little stuff that's often a sign that they might be lying about bigger stuff, but how did he not recognize that some of these things were going to come out? And I will say, my big question about all of this is not just about Graham Platner,

not recognizing some of these unflattering and, you know, allegedly chromatting. things would come out. But like the people around him who wrote that gravy train. Yeah. I know. Who rode that gravy train because look, he's a very grand plan or very charismatic guy can raise a shit ton of money or had been able to raise a shit ton of money pretty easily. You know, I had these adoring crowds, lots of small donors. And people who either didn't vet him to begin with or vetted him belatedly, found out bad things stuck by him. And, you know, we're obviously not financially incentivized to encourage him to drop out of the race, even as the scandals mounted. And it put Democrats' chances of not only winning that seat, but winning the Senate at risk.

Like, what did they know and when did they know it? You know, I have been hosting a show on MS now, where we had Morris Katz, who is one of the senior advisors for Grand Platner among a group of sort of populace left insurgent politicians who have been running this year and challenging not just people like Susan Collins, but Democratic incumbents. And we asked him on the show some version of like, can you assure voters that nothing more is going to come out about Grand Plattner and how he treats women. This was like two or three weeks ago, and he wouldn't answer. We asked several times. Platter himself said that to Chris Hayes, right? Like Chris Hayes, the day after the, or whatever, several days after that first New York Times story came out, Pat. Plater went on Chris Hayes' show and Grace was like, look, everyone's just sort of holding their breath. Yeah.

Wondering if something's going to new will drop. Like, can you assure him? And he more or less said, yeah, nothing else. There's nothing else. Well, if I remember correctly, I think he said nothing else that should worry people or something like that. It was like, I don't remember if it was that an interview or some other time, but he had this weird caveat disclaimer, which was a red flag, right? Like, you don't just say, no, nothing else is going to come out because I'm a good guy. It's like, well, nothing else that's like, I mean, I'm in the camp of like, I kind of drew the red line a long time ago with the Nazi tattoo.

I understand that a lot of people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he didn't know. And I think it's possible he didn't know when he got the tattoo. But at some point over the intervening couple of decades, he did. And at the very least, it shows, it doesn't mean he's a Nazi, but it shows like bad judgment, which is not a character trait that I particularly want in a senator. But, you know, he really did electrify crowds. And I think people were willing to overlook a. mountain of red flags as a result.

And we're like pretty vicious to anybody who pointed out there were some red flags. And I don't know. I just hope that there's some soul searching. I think there will be. But I'm like Sarah and I were talking about this long. Well, um, and Tim too. Like I think this there will be some soul searching, but I, it's hard to see a future where like a charismatic out of nowhere upstart.

who presents well and goes viral, doesn't, like, catch on and get people excited again. It's just that's sort of the nature of politics. My fear is that, and I don't want, and you know, honestly, maybe that makes me sentimental about this stuff. Like, I don't want that to not happen. Like, I kind of like the idea, like,

that someone can just kind of come in and do things and not have political background. At the same time, though, there's other two conflicting thoughts that I have. One is that we got to stop sort of treating political experience as a scholar letter. Like there's, I think going through the ringer helps. And I also think having relationships in politics and knowing how it works and knowing how to get things done really helps. And, you know, it's not a bad thing to like know how to make progress in politics.

And so I hope it's not, you know, we can recognize that. And the other thing is I do wonder if the next time someone would sort of a genuine record who doesn't have political experience does run, people will be like, oh, no, like we can't risk that again because of grand platinum. I think that there should just be some vetting, you know? Like, there were, I mean, there were so many red flags here. And a lot of it got written off in this sort of patronizing, condescending way. It was like, well, he's working class, which, by the way, I'm not totally convinced. He wasn't.

He was. You know, he went to Hotchkiss and he went to some other fancy private school in May. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, just whatever. Like we can litigate his socioeconomic status. But I feel like there was a lot of like people who are, you know, the East Coast elite establishment that he claims to hate, like writing off.

Yeah, well, writing off a lot of these red flags is like, of course he's working class. Like who, you know, that's just something. You know, working class people say racist things and have Nazi tattoos and have like toxic alcoholic relationships with, you know, prior domestic. you know, romantic partners. Did you never, did you never,

I guess I'm a little bit of a sucker. But did you, did you, you never brought into the idea that like, okay, like he obviously had like, a very troubling, traumatic experience serving overseas.

And like, he's like kind of had difficult to getting out of it. But he's like, you know, people improve. People get better. I bought into that.

And I actually don't think that's neglected here necessarily or negated, I should say. But obviously, you know, he's, it was more than just a troubled experience.

I think I have never served in war. I've never served in the pasturry. And far be it for me to discount those experiences on, you know, and I think it's possible for people to get help and to grow and to change. The problem was that like he continued lying more recently about some of the some of these experiences and kind of like writing it off as well like any bad behavior was youthful indiscretions related to the trauma I experienced in war, even if it was like from like two years ago. And look, people may struggle with mental health problems their whole lives, whether related to trauma like serving in war or otherwise. And that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be given second chances. It doesn't mean that maybe they can even serve in politics. But I don't

think like the next step should be you get a Senate seat without having to prove yourself that you have actually, you know, overcome whatever bad behaviors, bad character traits that may or may not be due to, you know, serving in war or your working class background. I mean, it's just like the whole thing was so condescending. And I think frankly, probably insulting to a lot of other people who have served in the military. Yeah, there's some people in the comments. There's people in the comments saying that. Like, that's not an excuse. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not an excuse. And, you know, there are other things that one can do to prove that they are productive members of society that fall short of, like, you are entitled to a Senate seat. You know, when you've done, we've had, like, bad Reddit threat. Like, I don't think that Reddit threads themselves should be disqualifying. But it's like the Reddit threads. And then the bad behavior, like, was his wife like going through IVF at the time? I'm even, I don't even know. Like, there's so many bad judgment, at the very least bad judgment, you know.

Yeah. So many red flags. Anyway, I just, I feel like I kind of, I've, I've known guys like this, you know, my whole life. And I feel like there should have been more vetting. I guess that's all I, it comes down to. I think it's possible for Mr. Smith goes to Washington stories to happen again. But, like, there should be some. Don't, like the job of the press is to not be too dazzled by.

Yes, thank you. You said it better than I could. Honestly, we'll get to it. We're not going to linger on this, but honestly, you got to run less men for office. We're problematic. It's true. All right. What happens next?

I'm not like totally familiar with the main election law. I know they needed until July 13th to do this, which you referenced in the video, that there was this deadline. Now the main Democratic Party, of which there was apparently a hundred, 113 member executive committee. Seems like a lot of people for an executive committee for a small state. But that's how many people. They need to come to some sort of arrangement.

Let's put it that way for how to get a candidate in Platner's place. Can we put up the statement they issued on the nominee process? I'll read from that. Today, the main Democratic Party held a meeting with over 100 state committee members who voted to hold a nominating convention to choose a new nominee, if there is a vacancy to fill. So obviously this was issued before Plattenor announced he was leaving. We will announce the full timeline details for how the nomination process will move forward,

information about how to participate in requirements for candidates soon. We will keep the public informed throughout the process. Transparency is of the utmost importance. And here's a quote. Add a quote, there is an unprecedented amount of energy and enthusiasm among Maine Democrats, driven in part by many of the dedicated volunteers and supporters. who were inspired by grand planers campaign. We look forward to coming together and harnessing that energy around our new nominee

as soon as we work to defeat Susan Collins in November. Okay, so there's going to be a nominating convention. I don't think that, I mean, doesn't necessarily close the door for like another like quasi primary, but I can't imagine they would do it. It's expensive. It's hard to put together. It takes time. You got to print out and stuff.

It looks like it's sort of like a committee type process. Do you have any intel on how this might work? I think they have two weeks to decide who to put on the ballot. And my guess is they want to use as little of those two weeks as necessary. I mean, I don't know exactly how this is going to work. But I think they have every incentive to make this happen as quickly as possible. Like somebody told me earlier today that there are about as many days until the general as there were when Kamala Harris. No. So I looked it up. Biden dropped out on the 21st of July. So we're like a little bit ahead of that

timeframe. That's their time. By like a couple of weeks. Yeah, great. So, you know, it's a compressed timeframe. And whoever gets this position, I believe is going to be pretty hamstrung on cash. Because maybe they can, I don't exactly understand the intricacies here. Maybe somebody in the comments knows more about camping. in finance law than I do. But my vague understanding is that the whatever cash on hand Platner has can be given to the new nominee, but like they will be limited in terms of that, you know, they don't get to max out donors from the primary and from the general. So they will, you know, they're going to start basically from a worse financial standpoint than somebody else would have. So, you know, they're going to be at a disadvantage and I think it's

the Democratic Party has every incentive possible to try to like make this whole unsavory episode go away and get somebody else on the belt somebody else who can challenge Susan Collins

I was going to say something else but I lost my train of thought. I could pick it up from there because I'm just going to I'm going to go through obviously Maine is not the nation so it's less ambitious a project than what Comlayers had to do. But just to give people a sense

of what does have to be done judging on what the Harris people had to do in July and August, you're starting with nothing, okay? Like, you have to hire everybody, everybody, okay? We're talking a campaign manager, the finance committee, comms committee,

a research arm, a social media arm. I mean, you're not taking Grand Planners team and bringing them to your campaign because that's they were part of. Oh, Graham Plattenor's team would love for that to happen. Yeah, they would like it, but that's not going to happen. So you have to build an entire campaign apparatus and you have to do it on the fly. Okay, that's one thing.

You have to hit up every single significant donor and political muckety muck in the state instantaneously because you need them to get on board. You need them to write you checks. You need to go and talk to the DC fundraisers instantaneously because you need to get, money in the door, sorry. You need to get a digital fundraising apparatus up instantaneously because the first day or two when you announce is the most important time when you can fundraise. And then all that, you have to come up with a policy platform, which somewhat matters, and a campaign message and a logo and all the million different decisions.

And then prepare your own research because God knows they're going to be coming through. your files, so you got to do self-research and screenings and all that stuff. And it's just, it's an incredibly monumental task that's like nearly impossible. And yet, and yet, I want to show you the calciads on the Senate scene. I know. All right. You see where the blue line starts to move away from the red? That's when the Platonor scandal, the Politico story broke.

basically like the market assumes that the environment is so favorable to Dems but the only thing they really could have stunted them in Maine was a shitty candidate and once it became clear that he was not going to be on the ticket the market was like yeah we think the Dems can handle this I don't know if that's overly bullish because Maine and we'll get to this later is got a history of choosing Collins but I mean what do you think of all that well Maine has a history of choosing Collins, but Maine also has a history of rejecting Trump. Trump lost Maine three times. Every time he was on the ballot, he lost Maine. Maine is a blue state in that sense, right? If you have the

whole map of red and blue from presidential elections, it is a blue state. It is more liberal than the rest of the country. So, yeah, on paper at the very least, this should have been an easy win, an easy pickup. Yeah, but Maine rejected Trump in 2020, but they also sent Susan Collins back to the Senate. Like that is the history. Well, I think that, well, I was going to say, they rejected Trump three times.

Sure. Oh, no, did I lose? Okay, there go. Those two things together, I think, should have made this an easy pickup. Now, yeah, Susan Collins is a formidable candidate. She's been there forever. And she does deliver certain things for Mainers.

For example, you know, when Trump sent in ICE to Maine and I thought, what did they call it, like Operation Catch of the Day or something? They had some disgusting name for it. You know, reportedly it was Susan Collins lying to the White House that like got them to pull that back. I don't know that any of that's been confirmed, but like they do have some advantage. from having a Republican in that seat, at least to the extent that Donald Trump realizes that it is important for him to keep a Republican in that seat. And he doesn't always understand his own political interests. But Susan Collins has also, you know, voted 99.9% of the time for Trump's agenda, which has oftentimes been bad for people in Maine, particularly those blue voters in Maine who care

about reproductive rights, who care about not having tariffs because Trump has now destroyed. destroyed the main economy because they've pissed off all the Canadian tourists who used to come in and heard a bunch of exports and things like that. So like, yeah, having Susan Collins or having, I should say, someone who enables Trump, not specifically Susan Collins, but having somebody who enables Trump has been bad for Mainers. And so the question is, like, how attached are they to this idea that she's this moderate who's going to like be independent, regardless of what her actual voting record shows and maybe she can call in favors every once in a while. How much do main voters emphasize that, put weight on that versus they're pissed off at Donald Trump. And they're pretty,

again, they're pretty liberal relative to the rest of the country. Like, I don't know how that shakes out. I think if you had, if you had like, you know, generic D, generic Dem on the ballot this whole time, maybe not Janet Mills, I guess, but like, Some, you have like a composite, have chat GPT create a composite of a generic Democrat. I think this would have been a much easier pickup for Dems. But, you know, exactly what you, that chart that you show, the prediction market. Calci suggests that's exactly the case, right? That's like, will a Dem win?

We don't even know who the Dem is. We don't care. Just needs to be one tarnished by scandal. All right, we got to take a quick commercial break. And then on the flip side, we're going to talk about Patrick Dempsey. Don't go away. This is just bought to you by three-day blinds. So here in DC, you might know it has been unbearable this summer.

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talking about a bands. It was not time about the bands. Oh man. Millennial throwback. I know. Well, it hit my heart. We were talking last thing about Susan Collins

in this kind of campaign she's running. It did remind me I put this in the story I wrote for morning shots. I forget when it's like two days ago or something like that. But she's like, as Podner's world is exploding and he's got all this scandal like, Susan Collins is putting up these tweets

and I think we have it where she's like, I, you know, I have gotten these taxpayer assistance center closures and Maine reversed through the Appropriations Committee process. It's like, okay, yeah. And that actually doesn't matter. And it's like she's doing all this kind of retail politics stuff. And it's just it's like diametrically different types of campaigning.

Okay. I tease Patrick Dempsey. And there's this one person in the, in the chat, Colleen likes. And I, I don't want to like, I feel bad because Colleen is just. talking up Dempsey and i want to break the news to coline which i think others in the chat have done but colin i i'm so sorry patrick dempsey uh he wrote up bed today saying he's not running okay so sorry Colleen um no senator McDreamie were you a big grace were you a big grace person i was not i was not that's fine don't worry i wasn't either is it wait is it still on tv i feel

like it's been on tv for a gazillion years but can we get a fact check in the in the in the chat Is Grace still on TV? And how is that possible if it is? And has every lead character like died and some dramatic death? Yeah, I thought it was like a fully turned over cast or something, but I'm far from an expert on this. Josie Dragon says sure is. There you go. It's still on.

What season could they possibly be on this hospital is the longest functioning hospital? Season 22. Okay. All right. Maybe another character can run for Senate. How's that? Yeah. So there are other.

There are other possible candidates beyond Patrick Dempsey and people keep floating Stephen King. No, he's not going to run. Heather Cox Richardson, not going to run. But there are real people who are considering running. Among them is Dan Clavin, who is a, was a candidate for Senate back in the day. He's a brewer. As you can see by his handle, Maine beer brewer. It's a clever handle.

I've been overwhelmed by the countless calls from Maineers encouraging me to consider this race. I love Maine. and everything is given me. It's where my wife, 22 years, and I have raised our teenage twins. And after talking with them, I'm in. Well, there you go. Again, Dan did mount a Senate run. He was the third candidate next to Mills and Platner, and it didn't go very far.

But people like Dan for sure. And then the other person who was committed to going is Troy Jackson. Troy Jackson, who is, I believe, the head of the state Senate. I might be wrong about that. You can fact check me. He says there's a powerful movement of working class people in the state of Maine. Millions more across America who are ready to send a progressive fighter to the Senate. I've been fighting for that movement my whole life.

And I'm sure as hell not backing down now when this fight is needed most. Amen. We're going to feed Susan Collins. Maine deserves a senator that will fight for working families. Jackson is considered the closest sort of spiritually to Plattenor in terms of his politics. And the assumption is that Plattenor would prefer for him. him to be the candidate of choice. There was also Nirov Shah, who was second in the gubernatorial primary, and then

Shennebello's who ran for the Senate seat against Collins. Lossman has had a successful political career since. I know very little about main politics, honestly. I'm going to be honest. Yeah, same. But you at least are up in the Northeast on occasion. So you have, like, bi-geography. I don't know that that really grants me a lot of.

specialized knowledge here. Well, pretend. Okay. There was also a woman who claimed... Oh, yeah, that was wild. Yeah, she, like, claimed that Graham Platner had endorsed her, but I don't know that there's any evidence that that happened. Did not happen.

Yeah. I also don't know that I would really particularly want the endorsement of a guy who is leaving and, you know, amid accusations, again, that he denies of sexual assault. But I guess to each their own, different people have different paths to Washington. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it seems like this guy, Cleveland, had a lot of energy behind him at one point early on. I think there was a story in notice, as I recall, N-O-T-U-S notice, about how the Schumer campaigners or the Schumer folks like told him.

to drop out. I, again, maybe somebody in the comments knows more about what happened there. I just saw that come over to the transom earlier. But yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. The Platner campaign has demanded a say in who replaces him. And they were sort of holding, yeah, they were like sort of holding the position or holding the resignation, whatever, dropping out hostage for a while. But it seems like they didn't get their way. there's going to be this convention thing instead. Yeah. There's two ways to think about this.

And maybe you have another way to think about this. But it's like you choose someone who's like, you know, Plotner-esque in his politics or her politics. And like you get people excited maybe. But like is the transfer complete? Like 100% to 100%. Because I guess what we're trying to figure out here is for better or worse, Plotter wasn't winning over these, you know,

working class white voters that everyone assumed he would because he was coastplaying an oyster man but he was bringing in maybe younger people of which there are not that many in Maine but also sort of politically unengaged people who really that is actually a real thing um and you kind of want you obviously want to keep those people engaged now by virtue of planter being out and the way he went out with this video where he like said the establishment decides to get me and the corporate means have to get me are they just like gone like can you even keep them engaged can you try like how do you do it i don't know i mean if he's feeding them this narrative of the establishment forced me out and it's a great conspiracy to rob you of your champion

the one person who's going to deliver you health care and the one person who's going to take on don't Trump and blah, blah, blah. Again, he don't think he even said Trump, but, you know, the one person who's going to deliver on all of your hopes and dreams, I do think that risks alienating a huge portion of the voter base. I mean, I see people in the comments who are like, you know, screw this. They're out to get him. There's no evidence, blah, blah, blah. And there have been people who have been smearing the women who have come forward, smearing some of the former campaign staff who try to sound the alarm early on that there were problems and hope that he would step aside. Like, there's a lot of kind of nastiness out there, and some of it is more naked misogyny than

others. And some of it, I think, it's just going to be disillusionment. So I do wonder what that means, come the general, like who, regardless of who's on the ballot, it's obviously not going to be Plattner. But even if it's somebody whose politics look very similar. to Plattenors, he has not really, so far, set that person up to inherit the enthusiasm that he did gender, you know, in Maine and with these more marginal voters. So, like, he kind of like torched everything on his way out. Now, maybe, you know, with the passage of time, like, things will get a little bit better. But right now, it doesn't really seem like he's done the party any favors. No, if anything, he's made it a little trickier.

I'm reluctant to say this, but like, I'd be very curious if he makes more public appearances between now and election day. I really would be. And in what format and in what outlet? Yeah. That would be just you can read between the lines about where my line's racing here. So the alternative is you pick someone who's, you say, well, you know, we've got to pick someone who can like try to keep, you know, steal some of those voters from Collins because we know we're not going to get the the people who were you know really gung-hole for platinum just will never vote any other way

unless he's on the bell we're never going to get them back and it's not even worth trying so we got to make it up somewhere else and that way kind of leads you towards a more like kind of moderate path I suppose but there's risks in there too and you know I guess it's worth pausing for a second saying the three planks that platinum ran on really were Medicare for all, right? Israel and APEC are awful. And more or less a kind of like, we got to soak it to the rich because they're kind of like

bleeding us dry and taking all the country's wealth. I think a candidate, a Democratic candidate could probably adopt a version of that, maybe not go as far on all three planks, but get close. But does that do it? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I think, again, a lot of the enthusiasm was really about his charisma, and he is a very charismatic person and not so much about the fine details of his policies. I mean, like even the stuff about Soak the Rich, I mean, he gave a bunch of interviews recently where he talked about how people who make $25 million a year are working class. I'm not making this up.

Like he he did multiple interviews where he talked about that. So like, you know, does that really have a million dollars a year? Yes. Working class? Yeah. Well, he talked about how like working class is anybody who works at all. And so even if you are a business owner who makes $25 million a year, he said, I'm paraphrasing, but it's not that far off from what he said.

You are close. Somebody who makes $25 million a year, you are closer to someone who is living in abject poverty. than to the billionaires who are the real rich. Now, I would say there's a pretty big difference in living standard between earning $25 million of year and being an abject poverty. And I would not call both of those prototypical examples working class. But, you know, again, I don't think this was really about policy. I think it was about vibe.

I think it was about charisma. I think it was about, you know, again, like this performative aspect of like this is what, highly educated white people thought less educated white people liked because of how he dressed and talked and everything um but he he was is was i don't know like a gifted politician in the sense that he really animated crowds now that is not sufficient obviously in my view um to earn you a senate seat or even necessarily to beat someone in a senate race uh so you know like but like maybe somebody has the same vibes and less baggage. Or maybe they're just a generic dem and they're pissed off enough about Trump that they vote Democrat.

Again, that's what the Calciat suggests. Or maybe, you know, Patrick Demp's out there watching this and wondering if he can, seeing all the times Colleen likes is in our chat posting about her desire to see Patrick went and maybe he'll decide to run. We'll see. All right, you know what? I'm planning to have, honestly. too much about this guy.

42 minutes is a lot. And you're still at an office. Yeah, I'm going to go home soon. I hope. Go home. Go home. But before we do that, thank you. I appreciate he jumped on and did this with me.

That's very kind of you. And I want to thank the comment section. I had to do only a little bit of policing today. Good job, guys. I'm proud of you for keeping it so much civil. Really proud of our community here. No, I really do mean it. It's great to do these things.

lie with all of you because, you know, it's like important to have a community that you can talk through. So talk this stuff through with. So with that, subscribe to the feed if you can. We really appreciate that we got those numbers up. Subscribe to our substack to. We got to support of business by third eye blinds, third day blinds, three day blinds. All right, Catherine, take care. Have good night. Good night.