{"id":37421,"date":"2026-07-11T05:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=37421"},"modified":"2026-07-10T21:35:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T01:35:32","slug":"populism-on-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/11\/populism-on-the-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Populism on the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I heard a news story that confirmed that everyone\u2019s favorite oysterman has officially told the Maine Secretary of the State that he has withdrawn from the Democratic candidacy for US Senator for Maine.\u00a0 Mr. Platner ended the message with a profane statement about ICE and few other progressive sentiments.\u00a0 Well, what can I say but, \u201cGraham, we hardly knew ye!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But this decisive move by Mr. Platner doesn\u2019t seem to have united the Democrats for the election ahead.\u00a0 You see, there\u2019s the matter of selecting Platner\u2019s replacement in the next week or two.\u00a0 And apparently the process for doing this is sort of undefined and is up to the state Democratic party to decide on and regulate.\u00a0 And apparently, a bunch of Democrats inside of Maine and outside are worried that the selection process might resemble the way Kamala Harris was selected for Joe Biden\u2019s spot on the 2024 ticket when it was discovered that he was brainless doofus.<\/p>\n<p>I saw a <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Xq6OvlBKXJc?si=MUbufny4_kYynNH1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">video clip<\/a> where the inimitable Joy Reid (yes, she still exists) was warning that the establishment Democrats were liable to replace Platner with an establishment shill who wouldn\u2019t denounce AIPAC and wouldn\u2019t say Free Palestine and might not have a picture of St. Bernie Sanders on his bedroom wall.\u00a0 In fact, she told her massive Maine listening audience that unless Platner\u2019s replacement was a virtual carbon copy of good old Graham that she recommended that they stay home and not vote at all.\u00a0 Although she didn\u2019t phrase it quite so politely.\u00a0 And similar things were said by other esteemed pundits on the Left.<\/p>\n<p>Now these discouraging words made me sad.\u00a0 I thought that now that Graham had sacrificed himself on the altar of \u201cBelieve all women,\u201d everything would be honky-dory.\u00a0 But I guess maybe things are a little less \u201cbig tent\u201d and a little more \u201cWe know what\u2019s good for the party so shut up and vote.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a little hard to believe that maybe Susan Collins might actually manage to squeak by in November.\u00a0 But I guess we live in strange times and maybe a New England RINO is closer to an establishment Democrat than a Bernie Bro denouncing AIPAC.\u00a0 Well, I won\u2019t be too shocked either way and honestly Maine is still New England no matter how much dress-up people like Graham Platner do with rubber waders and fisherman\u2019s hats.\u00a0 Eventually all of the Northeast will be a monolith of Mamdani socialists promising to tax the rich and defund ICE.\u00a0 So, when all of this comes to a head in November, we will be able to stop thinking of Maine for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n<p>But something that Platner and Trump have in common and that we should be paying attention to is populism.\u00a0 Providing an economy that creates middle class jobs and lifestyles for the great bulk of the American people is what Republicans need to be designing right now.\u00a0 And if they don\u2019t, then the next Graham Platner will be popping up in Texas or Florida and that will be a much larger problem for all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I heard a news story that confirmed that everyone\u2019s favorite oysterman has officially told the Maine Secretary of the State that he has withdrawn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5233,1382,39],"class_list":["post-37421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-graham-platner","tag-maine","tag-populism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - 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