What A Day - Where Does Maine Go Post-Platner?

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

It’s been less than a week since Graham Platner officially withdrew from the Maine Senate race after a serious allegation of sexual assault. Maine Democrats are planning a nominating convention two days before the deadline to select another candidate – and at least seven Democrats have already thrown their hats into the ring. But Maine voters who believed in Platner are left without the fresh, inspiring candidate they supported. Rebecca Traister is a writer at large for New York magazine and a Maine resident. While some on the Left claim that Platner’s existence was an embrace of masculinity and a rejection of QUOTE “Dem HR lady politics”, she found that Mainers, specifically women, had a far different view. We spoke to her about where those voters go next.And in headlines, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gets grilled during his Senate confirmation hearing, the CDC imposes travel restrictions on Americans leaving the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the U.S. Mint will soon produce $1 gold coins with Trump’s face on them.Show Notes: Check out Rebecca's work – nymag.com/author/rebecca-traister/ Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

White patriarchy and white masculinity does a lot of work, which I acknowledge in this piece, right? That his voice can carry in a way that Elizabeth Warren's can't. That he can get heard as inspiring and populist, whereas a Warren or a Stacey Abrams or a Hillary Clinton will be heard as professorial, hectoring has an annoying laugh. You know, there are just differences in how we receive America's original citizen, the white band. I'm Jane Koston, and this is Waday. The show fascinated by Secretary of Defense slash little boy Pete Higgs-sac's exciting new policy he announced on Twitter today. Testosterone replacement therapy for troops over 30. Those under 30 can voluntarily choose to get the test as well.

If treatment is recommended, it's entirely your choice to receive testosterone replacement therapy. You might be wondering, Jane, aren't testosterone levels low? in men in committed relationships and men who are actively parenting. And don't some scientists think that's a biological effort to encourage men to stay in those relationships? It seems to me like the issue in this administration right now is perhaps too much testosterone. On today's show, we talk about Maine, Graham Platner, and where women who supported him go next with New York magazines Rebecca Traster.

Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today, Wednesday, July 15th. Are you in President Trump, France? I'm his lawyer, was his lawyer, and now I'm the Deputy Attorney General. Do you believe it is the president's right and duty to order the investigation or prosecution of his perceived enemies? Yes or no? I can't answer that yes or no. That wasn't the question. And my answer was that as the president of the United States under Article 2, he's in charge of the Department of Justice.

And so my answer reflects that idea, not that he has a right to go after his political enemies. Do you think that blanket pardoned by the president of January 6 rioters was the right thing to do? I think that the Constitution gives the president the full power to pardon anybody for any reason he wants. And so I don't question President Trump's authority or is a decision to do so on January 20th. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had a lot to answer to during his Senate confirmation hearing today. Blanche confronted skepticism from lawmakers about his handling of the Epstein files, the slush fund to compensate allies of President Donald Trump, and a tax immunity deal for the president.

Blanche has been head of the DOJ on an interim basis since April, accelerating investigations into Trump's perceived enemies. He's trying to do what former Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who was dismissed, couldn't. And critics are raising alarm bills that Blanche is still functioning as the president's personal lawyer. But let's be real. When you're leading the Trump DOJ, is there really a... difference? Are you ruling out a ground campaign in a limited capacity? I don't want to say that either, but I would say no if I thought it was appropriate. It's like sometimes you need a ground campaign,

but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us. After relaunching his war on Iran over the weekend, President Trump told Fox News chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yangst Tuesday, that a ground assault on Iran could be on the table. During the interview, he added that the U.S. will bomb Iran until, quote, I say it's enough. said the U.S. will be targeting power plants and bridges next week unless Iran agrees to negotiate. If that sounds somewhat familiar, that's because Trump said almost the exact same things back in April. Remember when he threatened to go after power plants and bridges and said, quote, a whole civilization will die if Iran didn't negotiate? Well, here we are. Again.

Meanwhile, the U.S. launched new strikes on Iran today following Iranian drone strikes on storage facilities in Kuwait and missile attacks in Bahrain. According to Iranian state, media, seven members of the Iranian army were killed by U.S. missile strikes on military facilities in the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says American citizens leaving the Democratic Republic of the Congo now have to spend 21 days in another country before returning to the U.S. The travel restriction comes as eastern Congo faces the fastest growing Ebola outbreak in history. Earlier this month, researchers began a study of two possible treatments, but new challenges are continuing to emerge. Some health center workers at the heart of the outbreak went on strikes

this week over unpaid salaries. Meanwhile, the region is already suffering from bare-bones infrastructure, rebel threats, and misinformation asserting that the deadly virus isn't real. The World Health Organization said Tuesday that 80% of new cases are emerging from unknown chains of transmission. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant announced today that the U.S. Mint will soon produce $1 gold coins with Trump's face on them. Great. Just in time for my birthday. In a tweet, Bessent said the coin would commemorate America's 250th, writing quote, it celebrates the strength of American values and the promise of a nation dedicated to preserving freedom for all.

Okay, but how is Trump involved in all of that? A Treasury Department spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal, the coin will be available this fall. She added that the coin won't contain any real gold. It will just have a gold-like finish. Just how Trump likes it. And that's the news. Let's talk about Maine.

It's been less than a week since, and Platner officially withdrew from the Maine Senate race after a serious allegation of sexual assault. Maine Democrats are planning a nominating convention two days before the deadline to select another candidate, and at least seven Democrats have already thrown their hats into the ring. But Maine voters who believed in Platner are left without the fresh, inspiring candidate they supported. Rebecca Traster is a writer at large for New York Magazine and a Maine resident. While nationally, some on the left claim that Platner's existence was an embrace of masculinity and a rejection of, quote,

damn HR lady politics, she found that Mainers, specifically women, had a far different view. We spoke to her about where those voters go next. Rebecca, welcome to Wadaday. Thank you so much for having me on. So in your piece and anecdotally, one of the things that's been striking me is just how many women supported Grand Platner, even near the end of his campaign. You live in Maine, and you wrote that you supported him at one point. And you also wrote about the complicated relationship voters, specifically women, had with Platner as a candidate. What were those initial exciting conversations like that you had with women who were supportive of Platner?

Early on, before there were bad headlines about him, in the early fall, he got in in August and September before there was any other serious competition Janet Mills hadn't gotten in yet. And I saw his first ad. I was like, sure, great. I might like him, but he's not like the perfect match for me. And it was really in September when he was doing rallies in Portland, which is where I live, but I was traveling for work. And my friends, my girlfriends, my professional friends here, parents at drop off. And many of them women and men were like, have you seen Graham? Have you seen Graham?

And I was like, no, I don't need to see Graham. It's fine. I got it with the kettlebells. I got it. I bet I like his politics. I might even vote for him. is he's not going to be my thing. And then in early October, I was assigned a piece for New York magazine about the gerontocracy in which that was not just about Maine. It was about races all over

the country. At that point, Janet Mills had gotten in or was about to. And here was this woman who was going to be a 78-year-old, the oldest freshman senator, if she won, versus this out-of-nowhere young oysterman. And because I was reporting that story, I was, went to a town hall in the very rural, very conservative hometown that my mother's family comes from for generations. It's a place I know very well. It's very different from Southern Maine. But that was the first time I saw him. I sort of expected him for that audience to be pandering and doing so much of the like masculine left Bernie Bro thing. And I can't tell you how much this community is not Bernie Bros.

But I was very startled to hear him in that context talk about protecting trans kids, protecting immigrants, asked who his political hero was, he said, Francis Perkins. This was not like economic populism, Bernie Bro, dirtbag left. We don't care about identity politics. And I watched people in this community kind of light up. And that was the first sort of moment that I thought, oh, there's something really exciting about this candidacy. But all of that was before the bad Reddit headlines. Once the Reddit stuff, the tattoo stuff, the sort of endless headlines and oppo that was dropped, things became much more complicated. And so so many of the women who had just been sort of unequivocally and unapologetically excited about this candidate who was talking about a person. a progressive and exciting vision of a more equitable future of making bigger changes than he felt

his party has wanted to make in the recent past, talking about history. All these women I knew who had felt great about that suddenly were like, am I supposed to not be excited about this person? And so that was the beginning of what would be iteration after iteration after iteration of really intense conversation. People were arguing. They were you know, trying to change each other's minds. And in the midst of this, he kept being the candidate. He wasn't knocked out. And the backdrop to that is that the national conversation was so surprised by that

and kept having an entirely different conversation than what was happening in Maine. Can you get into that a little bit more? Because you have a candidate who, to your point, was not running a dirt bag. left campaign. He was talking about trans kids. And he also was giving credit to women who had come before him who didn't get credit. You note in your piece about this race that when a progressive candidate ran in 2020, Platner was talking about how she was treated and called a witch. And that now Platner could come in in 2026 and say the same things that you're talking about. And people were like, this is great. We love it. Did his support come from the fact that?

that he was talking like this while looking like that kind of dude. Well, one thing that's really important to note about how he looked, which I think has been fetishized in the national media, where there's this story that these operatives came into Maine and unearthed this man who looked like Graham Platner because he was a cosplayer of the American working class. That's such an amazing part of how the story is told. And it is absolutely worth doing the reporting and the critical reporting on how he was found embedded and all of that. but his look is only exotic to a national audience. Yeah, no.

My impression is that that's just kind of what men in Maine look like. My husband and I had a joke for the past 10 months where we'd walk past and we'd be like, Graham guy, Graham guy, okay. So that look and also his class position is not particularly mysterious in Maine in the way that it is in the national conversation. White patriarchy and white masculinity does a lot of work, which I acknowledge in this piece, right? That his voice can carry in a way that Elizabeth Warrens can't, that he can get heard as inspiring and populist, whereas a Warren or a Stacey Abrams or a Hillary Clinton will be heard as professorial, hectoring, has an annoying laugh. You know, there are just differences in how we receive America's original citizen, the white band.

That's entirely tied up with gender and race. But the thing that's being fetishized in the national conversation, which I think reveals a lot about how distant from an American working people, a lot of the people in charge of our institutions, media and political art, in Maine, where you have an economy that's based. in part on a very wealthy tourist population and a local working population, these kinds of combinations that Grand Platner embodied, being an oyster man who also went to a prep school, they're not illegible here. It wasn't like people were like, ooh, an oyster man. That was just not how he was received here. He was received really because of his ideas and how he made his audiences feel. And that is tied to his communicative talents. And again, I want to say so much of what I'm saying in this conversation is positive about

Grand Platner. And I'm not pausing to say that this man was credibly accused of rape and any number of other things. And I feel like when I try to get to a serious conversation about what was appealing about this campaign, it can often get lost that he shouldn't be the candidate. Right. And then I'm horrified by that. But I do think it's important to look at what drew a record number of Democratic primary voters in Maine to cast their ballots for a candidate who is obviously very flawed in all these ways and had this bad history. We'll get back to my conversation with Rebecca Traster in a moment to talk about where Maine voters and women in Maine go from here.

But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, live a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a day is brought to you by Nutrafol. Summer is full of vacations, weekend getaways, and spending more time outdoors. And when you're packing for a trip, the last thing you want to be worrying about is your hair. Nutriful is the number one dermatologist-recommended hair growth supplement brand. And it's the number one hair-growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. Nutrifle's hair growth supplements are peer-reviewed, NSF certified for sport, and clinically tested.

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You've already seen Chuck Schumer say, like, I'm staying out of Maine. I do not want to get involved in that. And people want a way to express that, especially, and you and I both know this, women, liberal women are pissed. And I think, Plattner, to your point, it sounds like what he was able to have is that simultaneous anger, but also hope than something better. Where does Platner's failure, given what he is credibly accused to have done?

Where does that leave us and that movement in Maine and across the country? So I think there are two different answers to that. In Maine, I am surprised to be able to report that it feels right now not as bad as I thought it would. People held on with this guy for a really long time, and I worried that there would be such anger at the perception that the establishment finally got him, right? Anecdotally, that's not the feeling I have. There's an enormous amount of sort of civic excitement about we're going to have a state convention.

There are going to be delegates. We're going to vote on the delegates. There's some grumbling about we're not going to have an, you know, we're not going to be able to choose our candidate. But actually, that's pretty minimal. Now, is there another candidate who checks the boxes that Graham Platner, checked. No, there's nobody who's exactly like him, but that's good because exactly like him turned out to be very dangerous and bad. But it's always been a hard seat to win. So I'm really curious more than anything else to see how this very scary, very perilous, but also very different circumstance where it leads us. So the most important thing,

that Graham Platner was supposed to do as the main Democratic Senate candidate is beat Susan Collins. That's it. That's why we're all here metaphorically. Do you think there's still a chance to find a candidate who can beat Susan Collins? Yes, I still think there's a chance. But I always think there's a chance. Mainers have been working to defeat Susan Collins for a long time. I was optimistic about Collins losing in 2020. And she didn't. So I don't think there's anybody who can say with any assurance. This also gets back to one of my hobby horses, which is so much in political journalism is understood now to be predictive rather than descriptive. And I think that's created real problems politically and stoked some of the frustration that voters, liberal women, have with just wanting to participate in a process without somebody telling us like with a needle in a problem. percentage point in polls, whether it's going to work or not. Part of the ideal version of

American democracy is that we can try new things, which I should say is one of the things that Platner talked about and that I think people found exciting, that we don't have to just do things the way our party has done them for the past 40 years, that we can look to other periods in history where they're coming out of periods that were this terrifying, grim and oppressive, that there have been other equivalent moments in which politicians and leaders spurred in many cases by grassroots organizing have sort of reinvented systems, have reimagined how to create rights protections, policies that would create a juster world. People want to feel that hope that there's a future and an imaginative future that's not just sort of a grim rebuilding of the broken and corroded systems. that have been attacked so vociferously over the past decade. So I always want to feel like anything's possible.

And I believe that, again, there is a chance that Maine voters may defy every grim expectation that now we can't win this seat and be able to do it. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. That was my conversation with Rebecca Traster, writer at least. large for New York Magazine. Before we go, at Crooked, we believe the answer to right-wing authoritarianism is a big, welcoming, fun, pro-democracy movement. So join us at CricketCon on November 5th through 7th in D.C., just after the midterms. We think you'll want to meet all the like-minded folks and see if we

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