The Democratic Party's Tea Party Moment Has Begun

On things that can't be fixed.

This summer, after countless years in the wilderness, the left wing of the Democratic Party dared to dream once again.

Quite a lot had been going right for the wing over the course of the year. After it had been all but written off as completely discredited by Trump’s hardcore red-baiting campaign, a combination of inept decisions by its opponents and timely shifts on its own part had put it firmly in control of the post-election narrative. Less than five months into the new administration, it pulled off its biggest victory in generations by means of Zohran Mamdani’s freakishly successful campaign for New York City mayor. It was winning over voters it had never won before and riding the largest wave of liberal discontent in living memory. With the 2026 midterms looming, it seemed as if it could become something that it hadn’t been even at the height of Bernie’s campaigns: a true national force capable of winning truly big races.

Then, on a Tuesday morning in August, all of these hopes and dreams suddenly took the form of one man: a former mercenary and current oyster farmer from Maine named Graham Platner. From his rhetoric and to his very person, Platner represented everything that the new-look left of 2025 was about. Here was a blunt talker, a white male veteran with a blue collar job and a laserlike focus on anti-oligarchy, anti-war, and anti-establishment stances. He raised an immense amount of money, won support from a wide range of backers, and started polling competitively against a five-term incumbent shockingly early on. Even with only 45% name recognition in his state, he was already running even against Susan Collins less than two months after he entered his race. When that same sample of voters was exposed to a sample of his campaign messaging, he led her by a staggering 14 points, with particular strength among men, rural voters, gun owners and the youth.

Then, less than a week after this poll was released, this dream became a nightmare. Immediately after Janet Mills, the establishment-favored septuagenarian and sitting Maine governor, entered the race, a trove of intensely troubling Reddit posts written by Platner were released to the media. Here, in view of the full world, was this new left-populist champion playing down the issue of rape and questioning the tipping habits of Black people while simultaneously calling himself a communist. Then, somehow, things got worse. Later that week, Platner himself admitted that he had nothing less than a SS symbol tattooed on his chest.

Will Platner survive this? Should Platner survive this? These questions have riveted the online left, which had been using Platner’s candidacy as a proxy for the worth of the neo-Bernie 2016 style of politics since his campaign was announced. Those who had already mocked the idea that an ex-Blackwater employee could ever be a tribune of the people have gleefully gotten their hits in, while others who were unapologetically inspired by him have scrambled to mount a defense. It’s a very spirited debate, and it is all but totally irrelevant. As things stand, approximately none of Platner’s major backers have shied away from him. If his campaign is to be believed, its monthly recurring donations haul of $400,000 a month has not changed since CNN first reported his Reddit posts.

And among the actual voters of Maine, at least one poll shows that he holds a gargantuan 34-point lead among likely voters against an incumbent with universal name recognition.

All of this gets to the real forces behind campaigns like Planter’s—forces that the organized left doesn’t own and cannot control. The story here isn’t just one race, or one scandal, or how one candidate in one race might respond to one scandal. It is the story of a base-driven freakout that a leftist counter-establishment is desperately trying to control—one that could very well have Democratic elites wishing that they had embraced Graham Platner’s politics when it is all said and done.

The Libs Have Gone Insane, Part II