Can Progressive Politicians Save Us?

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Hi, welcome to Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. Graham Platner, Democratic hopeful to replace Republican Susan Collins as Senator for Maine, has had a rough couple weeks. The oyster farmer, former marine from Maine running as a progressive everyman is being asked to answer for some problematic shit that’s been dug up from his frankly not so recent past. Today, we’re talking about what Platner’s controversies and the reaction to them, plus the soaring popularity of Zohran Mamdani, and the promise of progressive voices, what can they teach us about the nature of politics, how we hold politicians accountable, and how we get out of this mess? Will progressive politicians save us?

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Let’s talk about Graham Platner, the oyster farmer everyman from Maine who has largely won over progressives even outside of Maine, who has seemed like a real breath of fresh air, an actual Washington outsider who promises to come in and change things up. He is running to be the Democratic nominee to go toe to toe with longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins, whose seat is seen as vulnerable and who truly represents the Washington establishment after nearly 30 years holding onto the seat for dear life. The primary isn’t until June, but Platner has created a lot of buzz already. For the last few weeks, the buzz has not been to his benefit.

First, it was revealed that he had made a large series of problematic posts mostly on Reddit between 2012 and 2021. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of un-PC things fit to offend truly every subsection of the American electorate. Misogynistic, racist, homophobic, socialist, ableist, anti-cop, there’s something for everyone. Under the username P-Hustle, he called himself a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist” but “still got the guns though, I don’t trust the fascists to act politely.” Under a post about the police killing of Duante Wright, after the cops claimed accidental discharge but the bodycam showed otherwise, he commented “I knew there was no such thing as an accidental discharge by the end of range week at Parris Island. I was also a 19 year old moron. Fuck these cops.” Under a post titled “White people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks” he commented “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.” When he didn’t agree with posts, he seemed to have a habit of calling posters the “R” word. He used gay slurs and the word “pussy” pretty interchangeably as insults. And he questioned the validity of claims made by survivors of sexual assault in the military. And some of these posts are from a decade or more ago. But some are from 2021, when Platner was the tender young age of 37.

Then it was revealed that he had a whole ass Nazi tattoo on his chest, which really drove home the questionable nature of his stances, that he could go for 18 years with a totenkopf on his chest and not know it. Now listen I have tattoos, I even have a skull tattoo, skulls and crossbones, very popular subject matter for tattoos. So at first I was like what is this just a hit piece like tons of people have skull and crossbones tattoos. But then when you see it. And then you look at the totenkopf adopted by SS officers, especially the ones that patrolled the concentration camps, and plastered all over Nazi imagery and uniforms it’s, yeah, it’s the same. The angle, the composition, the style. It’s a Nazi symbol. Platner has since explained that he got the tattoo back in 2007 on a drunken night in Croatia with other members of his unit and that for the 18 years he’s had it on his body no one has mentioned anything. It was only just brought to his attention this could be a hate symbol. And he just recently got it covered up in response to the controversy. But then MORE dirt came up indicating that he did, in fact, know exactly what it symbolized. One acquaintance from a decade ago–so like take this with a grain of salt–said he referred to it as “my totenkopf” and his own campaign manager who has since quit said 18 months ago he admitted the tattoo could become problematic for him. His campaign has denied the allegations that he knew it was a Nazi symbol.

Graham Platner, for his part, has issued multiple videos and posts acknowledging the controversies. He has provided explanations and given background for what led to the tattoo and the comments and how he has grown since then. [insert clip]. Commenters' reactions range from continued outrage, mockery, and acceptance. One commenter pointed out Republican hypocrisy: “Isnt it wild that leadership in the Young Republicans who are in their 20s and 30s get a hall pass from the VP for openly praising Hitler but you have to apologize for being mad at the government who shipped you off to fight in a foreign war.” Another commented “Thanks for holding yourself accountable and explaining. We won’t let hit pieces about years old deleted Reddit posts distract us from the bigger picture. They’re gonna keep going for low blows but keep it up!.” Another commented “Fetterman 2.0.” Another commented “How old were you when you said sexual assault victims should take some responsibility?” And someone with the screen name “cigarette flavored yogurt” commented “go back to reddit bitch,” just to add context to the fact that we’re dealing with a twitter comment section here making comments about a reddit comment section, this timeline truly is the dumbest one available yet we must persist and engage with it so here I go.

I am not interested in or willing to defend a politician no matter how progressive for saying abhorrent shit, so let me just put that out there right away. I know I am wading into FROUGHT territory when weighing in on stuff like this and I’m not interested in hanging my hat on any politician and saying they’re above reproach and shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions. Also my legal training and my time experiencing first hand our criminal justice system has made me deeply passionate about redemption and rehabilitation. I think writing someone off as inherently bad for life and unredeemable isn’t very productive, I think people deserve to grow and change and acknowledge their mistakes and move forward from them. That doesn’t necessarily make them an ideal candidate for office, but that is the context from which I come at the idea of redemption generally. Our penal system is the antithesis to it and we see how poorly its working. And especially since the me too movement we have seen a lot of public figures and politicians get called out for abhorrent behavior and do nothing but deny and double down, disappear for a few years, and then come back into the limelight relatively unscathed. So I will absolutely give Platner credit for the video he made addressing the accusations. He didn’t deny, he didn’t double down, some people say he was giving excuses, I’ll meet him where he’s at and say I believe him, the context is helpful to understand where he’s coming from, and I think whether you like him or not there are a LOT of people in America who have had similar experiences to him–angry white men who were shipped off to a pointless war and came back to find a country they no longer believed in, that no longer gave a shit about them. Whether you’re talking about Vietnam vets or veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a sentiment that has plagued especially our servicemembers, who must also then contend with the PTSD and other long-term side effects of engaging in pointless wars.

I saw in him a person who is willing to learn and change their mind, and that is woefully lacking in this country right now. Here on this channel, in my comments section, and in the discourse at large we are often talking about how to talk to “the other side” and how to unbrainwash the masses to move away from complete democratic collapse and back to some semblance of dialogue and a functioning country. And yet I think we are also quick to see things in very black and white terms and fully denounce people who do exactly what we are asking them to do: reconsider their thinking and change their mind. If they’re not allowed to move forward from that then what’s the point, ya know?

And that’s all well and good but then you have to ask the question: maybe he’s allowed a redemption arc but do we have to elect him to be a whole ass senator? There are TONS of people who don’t have nazi tattoos and hateful reddit comments from their past, who have felt anger and disillusionment without being bigoted and weird about it online. It’s a little shocking that there doesn’t seem to be more of an established practice of vetting candidates thoroughly. If CNN could dig up these old posts and point out the Nazi symbolism in his tattoos, couldn’t his campaign have also done so and decided hey maybe this isn’t our guy or at least gotten out ahead of it? Given the nature of the internet, most people under 50 have posted something dumb online at some point, could we not just do a quick sift through to make sure none of it was like openly racist or awful, ya know?

But then that also bears the question: if we are so desperate for candidates that represent the everyman or the will of the people or who are outside the Washington establishment, how much leeway should we give them for their imperfect pasts? It makes me think of the scene from Legally Blonde where Warner Huntington the third tells Elle that if he wants to be a senator by the time he’s 30 he needs to stop dicking around and marry a Jackie not a Marilyn. I am so sick of the Warner Huntington the thirds of the world running our government. The ones who have clearly been groomed from a young age to become politicians, who speak like politicians, who have the resume of a politician, who have connections because they’re also children of other politicians. Those are some of the only people who have been so conscious of everything they do that they’ve avoided doing anything that could possibly ruin their future chances at running for office. That’s gross to me. It’s giving plutocracy it’s giving oligarchy. That being said even THOSE people often do abhorrent shit and then try to cover it up once they run for office. Or they do abhorrent shit literally while in office and then lie about it or try to cover it up. Graham Platner, at least, to his credit, acknowledged what he did and apologized for it. There is more he could do, he could give to a nonprofit for people impacted by his words, he could lay out a plan for how he will do better in the future. But it appears as though this is a guy capable of changing his mind and learning from his mistakes and maybe those are good qualities to have in a politician. That is a decision only the people of Maine will be able to make.

Similarly, Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner of the New York City mayoral race and progressive favorite the world over, has had to answer for some of his previous online comments. He has walked back his comments about defunding the police. He has been taken to task over his use of the term “globalize the antifada.” When he has walked back his statements that angered centrists and conservatives, that has angered his base of progressives. While I don’t always endorse the reporting in the Daily, the New York Times podcast, they did a great interview with Mamdani a week or so ago that I found really enlightening. In it, Mamdani explained that walking back his language about defunding the police was a choice he made after meeting with a lot of different groups, including New York police officers, and determined that full defunding of the police wasn’t the best way forward. He also agreed to move away from using the phrase “globalize the antifada” after being told by various Jewish groups that the phrase is interpreted as antisemitic. This is, again, to me, evidence of someone who is speaking to many different people and learning how to do politics.

And I think this gets at a very important point that I wanted to make in this episode, that I’m hopeful can help us as we navigate our own reactions to politicians like Graham Platner and Zohran Mamdani–progressives who have said and done things we don’t agree with (obviously Platner’s past is much more egregious I’m just comparing the two, as many others have done, because they are two new progressive voices in the country that are getting a lot of attention). The point is this: despite our very human tendency to think in black and white terms, politics actually doesn’t lend itself well to black and white thinking. And a way around this is to think about candidates and government and politics as navigating two different issues at the same time. On the one hand you have ideology and philosophy: what do you believe in and why. On the other hand you have the logistical reality of the act of politicking which requires strategy and compromise and is a game that you can never win but that you must always be playing. And I think in the US at least we really get these two things conflated. Especially on the left. You’ve got the armchair philosophers and the ideological purists who say if you do not agree with me on every important issue that matters to me, then I will not vote for you and I would rather vote for nobody than vote for someone who stands for something I don’t agree with. And you also, in this camp, have the people who are always pushing for more and for better–healthcare for all, free childcare and higher education, universal basic income, taxing the rich, getting money out of politics, moving more towards democratic socialism or full blown socialism or whatever political philosophy it is they believe in. Maybe they’ve studied the philosophers, they know their theory, they’re completely dissatisfied with the status quo. And that’s fine. That’s great, in fact. Yes even the armchair philosophers screaming in the comments. I think this is all essential to society and to politics. People need to be engaging, thinking, arguing, this is shit AI can’t do. I mean it can, I’ve seen the videos where they pit AI against each other in a creepy little debate but you know what I mean, humans interacting with each other over complicated ideas and philosophy and theory and envisioning better futures, we need that. That is essential for a thriving democracy and for a functioning government that is equitable, by and for the people.

But within that reality lies a truth that necessitates the strategic, pragmatic game of politics as well, and that is that there is never a scenario in politics, in building a government to run a society, where everyone is happy. There is actually never a scenario where even one person is perfectly happy and gets their way all the time. That would be a king. That’s what’s happening for Trump right now. But in a functioning democratic government the act of politicking very much necessitates compromise, a coming together of people intent on forming a society together and willing to make sacrifices and be a little disappointed in order to form a government. And it is the literal job of a politician, if they are actually doing their job, to acknowledge those compromises and competing visions for the future and work with and across them all to actually get things done that are required to run a country. And the ideological purity and the strategic politicking both exist simultaneously, and the problem is that a lot of people conflate the two, or expect both to happen simultaneously within the same person, within one politician. They expect to find in a politician the purity of their ideological vision reflected back to them. But that is not the job of a politician. The job of a politician, in an ideal world, is to represent, to the best of their ability in the context of the system, all of the members of their constituency. For Zohran Mamdani yes this includes the members of the New York Police Department and the Jews who are offended by the saying “globalize the antifada” and the business owners who don’t want to be taxed. He has to exist in the real world, not in political philosophy. And if you listen to him speak, I think he is acutely aware of this. The difference, and the thing that makes him such a breath of fresh air even for people who don’t live in New York and have no skin in the game, is that he genuinely seems interested in representing as much of New York as possible. He is not rolling over and capitulating to the class of people with the most money and power, to the 1%. In the face of push back from rich business interests, he is standing by his promise to raise income taxes by 2% and corporate taxes from 7 to 11%. His loyalties continue to lie with the constituents he is running to represent, which, at least given his popularity, appear to be New Yorkers who are increasingly concerned with the affordability crisis in that city and in this country and interested in a politician who will actually do truly anything at all to represent their interests over corporate interests. And so what I hear in Mamdani is a man with very strong ideals who is also interested in hearing people and compromising where he can while still pushing for policies that will resonate with the people it is his job to represent. For him that has meant stepping back from his past calls for defunding the police, but continuing to promise a focus on creating a response system like we have here in Minneapolis which has been successful where there is a specific team that handles crises that do not require the full force of the militarized police. There is no way to be an ideological purist and a politician at the same time. At least not an effective one. What I personally am looking for in a politician is someone who more often than not puts the needs of constituents above corporate interests, because for far too long this country has been run by the 1% to the detriment of the rest of us which has undermined the ability of our government to respond to the true will of the people.

And you are completely within your right to be fucking pissed about this–about Mamdani’s backing off defunding the police, about Graham Platner’s abhorrent past, about these politicians failing to live up to your highest expectations. And in fact it is our job as constituents to be really loud and annoying about how they keep disappointing us. That is how movements happen. That is how ideas make it onto major political platforms. It happens slowly but it does work. Some politician didn’t just wake up one day and think god wouldn’t it be cool if I wrote a law about workplace protections, banning child labor, and an 8 hour workday?? That idea came from the people. Some politician didn’t wake up one day and think wow you know what let me write some civil rights laws to give black people fairer voting rights. That idea came from the people. If there’s one piece of legal wisdom I can impart on you today it is that lawyers and lawmakers are not writing laws and bringing cases in a vacuum. It is a response to the larger conversation, distilled into laws and lawsuits but based on the discourse at the time. And these big ideas came in some part from political and social philosophy, passed to the people from academics, activists, developed in unions and expounded upon in the town square. And the movements pushing for these laws were messy, they involved protests, they involved direct action, they involved boycotts and strikes, they involved violence, and after many tumultuous years, starts and stops, imperfect movement building, and lots of yelling and screaming and yes even violence and death, sometimes these things finally made their way up so some politicians and lawyers could be like wow the people really seem to want this let me write this law.

And so the two different parts that I am pointing out to you today: philosophy and ideological purity on the one hand and the strategic realities of day to day politicking on the other, work together to shape and mold and change our society. But I think it is a mistake to conflate the two and place those expectations on the back of a single politician and expect ideological purity or nothing. But it’s a delicate balance. Like I said, open debate should be encouraged, criticism should be encouraged, there’s a reason why there is a HIGH bar on politicians being able to sue people for defamation–the law is written to protect the open dialogue even if someone gets their facts wrong in the process, that’s how much we care about allowing for open debate and criticism, at least in theory. And while the mainstream media and commentators like myself who are not in Maine or New York and won’t be voting can pontificate all we want, it will be the people of those places, the potential constituencies of Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner, who will be engaging in these debates and who will have to decide whether this candidate actually represents their will, as best as possible under the circumstances. And this includes really hard conversations over redemption and whether someone with a history like Graham Platner is fit to serve as a representative of a wide range of constituents, while ALSO taking into consideration the real world strategy of politics–will he be able to effectively get things done, will his challenger Janet Mills be better suited to beat Susan Collins or will he? That is something only Mainers can decide, and it could very well be that the answer is that Graham Platner has to go. Or it could be that people think he can beat Susan Collins, believe him when he says he’s changed, and care more about the policies and ideology he represents than about what he’s done in the past. I hope voters’ decisions, on Graham Platner or any other candidate, takes ideology into consideration but also takes the other point into consideration as well, the part where by voting you are participating in the everyday activities of doing politics, which necessarily requires compromise and strategy and an understanding that things don’t work in an ideological bubble, and you have to acknowledge that you live in a society with other people who may not agree with you and the politician you elect has to very directly contend with that every single day. And so even if you think the establishment or the system doesn’t represent you, never has, and you’re absolutely sick of it and don’t want to participate, I think that is important to voice and never shy away from, those feelings, because they are valid, but I think its important to interrogate whether you are expecting perfection in behavior and ideology from your politician or whether you are also considering strategy and the everyday act of politicking in your consideration. Because theory doesn’t exist in a bubble, and voting for a politician is just one way to engage with society building and civics. Because of this, I think it is also really important to keep in mind that politicians are never perfect, they are humans who are incapable of perfection, ideological or otherwise, and they are but one mechanism for building a just society where people can thrive. They will almost always invariably disappoint you, again because of the aforementioned realities of day to day politicking, of the realities of having to compromise with people you don’t agree with in order to go about the business of running a government. And so it is deeply misplaced to look to politicians as a source of hope, heroism, moral purity, or anything like that. That is not the point of a politician. It’s really exciting when they do give you that hope and that excitement about the future. I’d be lying if I said I don’t get a little teared up hearing Zohran Mamdani speak. I felt that way about Obama, too. And then he failed to follow through on a lot of his campaign promises. But I was young and he was inspiring and so I was frankly lulled into a sense of comfort because I placed way too much faith in a politician in a way that I took for granted that he would be advocating for the will of the people and not for the will of big business or against immigrants or drone bombing other countries, the list goes on, the point is that even the most inspiring politicians in history were a fucking disappointment. And I don’t say that to discourage you from participating or from voting. I just say it because I think it is important to frame politicians as a tool for the people and not as individual saviors come to set us free.

As David Dayen recently wrote for The American Prospect, quote “Treating politics like sports fandom where you stan your team and rage against the others loses sight of how change is better made by building terrain and moving public opinion so politicians are forced to walk onto your side.” WE control the discourse. We do. Not the politicians. From that same article, quote “Polling now shows Americans opposing military aid to Israel and sympathizing more with the Palestinians. The numbers among Democrats are a whopping 54-13 in favor of Palestine. This is at all levels of the party, including older voters. So unfolding events moved the center of gravity on this issue, and forced all factions of the Democratic Party to its side. But it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For all the discomfort over college students protesting on campuses, it played a major role in pushing attention and changing minds.

In other words, the issue led the politicians, not the other way around. College kids and activists don’t have a super PAC, and in 2024 their few champions in Congress actually lost ground amid an onslaught of AIPAC cash. But none of that mattered when public sentiment changed: Those in power got out in front of the parade and pretended to be leading it.” End quote. Not willingly, of course. Not enthusiastically. But because we the people forced them to. And of course it is far from a victory, politicians are still largely in the palm of Israel’s hand, there certainly hasn’t been a REVOLUTION in favor of Palestine, but the discourse has changed around the issue and the plight of the Palestinian people, who have been living in an apartheid state for DECADES, has never been more top of mind. That came from the people.

And so my central message today is don’t put politicians on pedestals. Don’t assume they will save you. We save us. We push for change. We take ideology and issues we care about and we scream about it until they are forced to give a shit. They will not give a shit otherwise. And especially now that our democracy is overrun with corporate and billionaire interests, the hill I will die on is the importance of getting money out of politics and taxing billionaires out of existence. Everything would be better, our democracy would be more responsive, we wouldn’t have to scream quite so loud for quite so long if we weren’t being drowned out by billionaires. And even in just the last few years that I’ve been screaming about this, I’ve noticed others have joined me in screaming too. And now we have progressive politicians going on tours talking about it. And the state of our democracy and the no kings protests and the recognition that Trump is completely corrupt and bought out by corporate interests–something a lot of us knew but even his supporters are starting to recognize–is only helping to propel the issue. And I will probably spend the rest of my career in some way or another screaming about the issue, because the fix will not come quickly or easily, and it will be only through our collective growing unrest over the issue that politicians will finally pay attention.

And you may be wondering like Leeja our country is literally a crumbling fascist regime why are you talking about voting as if our elections will mean anything going forward. To which I say true!! But as I’ve also said and will continue to say, this will pass eventually. Fascism eats itself alive and burns itself out and causes a ton of damage along the way but eventually it does end. And we will need to pick up the pieces and move forward somehow with whatever’s left when it’s done. And I can’t come on here every day and just scream about the latest stupid shit Trump has done, though I will continue to also do that, sometimes I’m in the mood to give more of a little pep talk. And maybe you hated this one or completely disagreed with me, and guess what that is fine!! That is my literal point!!! It is these very discussions that we have to be having, these open debates, these disagreements and arguments over who is fit to represent us, how we choose them, what hills we die on versus let go of, how we strategize while keeping our ideology in tact, it is these very messy conversations that we have to be having, and that the regime doesn’t want us to be having, in order to build something better in the rubble of a country that frankly has never served a large swath of the population. So today I’m engaging in some optimistic nihilism for the hell of it. And Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner offer examples of the different futures we could build, and provide us with the opportunity to have difficult conversations about the path forward, which is a welcome break, for me at least, from the panicked navel gazing of the last 10 months. So by all means tell me why I’m wrong in the comments!! That’s democracy at work!

And if you’d like to support my work, consider joining here on YouTube by clicking the big join button below, or supporting me over on Patreon, patreon dot com slash Leeja miller, where you get access to all these episodes completely ad free. Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about whether Trump can run for a third term.

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