“Hey! That’s not great for you, you f-cking idiot,” Platner says. His hand is bleeding, but he doesn’t stop talking. “Very few people get an opportunity in life to do something really big about things they really, really care about,” he tells me. “And for some weird accident of history, that opportunity arose, and here I am.
”Platner’s story feels a lot like a pat movie plot: With Democratic voters yearning for outsiders to shake up the system, along comes a rough-hewn, gravelly voiced Marine Corps veteran from Sullivan, Maine—pop. 1,300—as their new national star. He barnstorms the state with a -pugilistic brand of economic populism, building a following so quickly that he forces his central-casting opponent, the two-term Democratic governor, Janet Mills, out of the race before voters can cast a ballot. Even in this antiestablishment, unabashedly ageist political moment, Platner’s rise has been remarkable. Yes, Mills is 78. She’s also a lifelong Mainer who served as a state attorney general and DA, went toe-to-toe with President Donald Trump, and was the handpicked Senate recruit of national Democratic leaders. Platner, 41, is a newcomer carry-ing enough baggage to sink an oyster boat: a Nazi tattoo, a DUI from a post-military period of heavy drinking, and a trove of Reddit posts that spewed hostility in almost every direction. Working-class candidates are having a moment—but surely, many Democrats lament, the party could have found one who hadn’t, for example, defended peeing on dead Taliban fighters, or joked about the Virgin Mary being a “skank.”
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