Platner vs. Stratton

Do we want progressive policy or anti-establishment branding?

Both the Maine Democratic Senate primary and the Illinois Democratic Senate primary feature a progressive running against a centrist. If you read progressive media or social media, though, it’s likely that you’re read one or more profiles of Maine progressive candidate Graham Platner, and that you don’t even know the name of the Illinois progressive, Juliana Stratton. The first has been touted as an exciting, transformative party figure. The second—whose policies are much the same, and who has been forceful in repudiating Trump and Trumpism—has mostly been ignored.

Why is this? One reason is that Maine is a purple state and a potential Democratic pickup, while Illinois is solid blue. The media tends to hyper focus on swing states to the detriment of other reporting.

But in addition to this relatively innocuous rationale, I think there’s another, less neutral reason. Which is that progressives—and for that matter non-progressives—are often more focused on anti-establishment branding than they are on policy, character, preparation for office, or any of the things that might actually make someone a good officeholder.

An obsession with anti-establishment branding is bad for a couple of reasons. First of all, anti-establishment branding simply is not always congruent with progressive policy and conflating them can lead to poor tactical choices which undermine progressive goals. And second, anti-establishment branding is often linked to certain kinds of (very much not anti-establishment) tropes—which makes it harder for people who are not white and not men to command attention, raise money, and take on leadership roles.

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Platner, Anti-Establishment Bro

I’ve talked about Platner a bit before, but just to recap—he is a veteran who owns a small oyster fishery. He was endorsed early by progressive leader and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who touted him as a working class foe of the elites.

Platner isn’t really working class; his parents were a lawyer and a restaurant owner, his grandfather was a famous architect, and he is now a business owner himself. Nonetheless, his policy positions are solidly progressive: he supports Medicare for All, has called for abolishing ICE (though it’s not clear he’s used that term), and speaks strongly against the genocide in Gaza. That’s all to the good.

The downside for him is that in the not so distant past, he made a series of ugly social media posts expressing gross homophobia, misogyny, and racism. He also worked for the despicable private military contractor Blackwater. And, oh yes, he had a Nazi death’s head tattoo, which he only removed after it became public.

Platner’s opponent in the primary is Janet Mills, the state’s 79-year-old governor. Mills is to Platner’s right on many issues—but she defied Trump to defend trans athletes, which I think was very admirable, and should, you’d think, give her some credibility. She also has a long record of public service, which means that voters can have some faith that she is committed to Democratic goals like fighting racism and sexism.

It’s true that Platner has repudiated his ugly remarks and his ugly tattoo. But he has no record of public service, and talk can be cheap. Is someone who until recently was saying that women are responsible for being sexually assaulted, or who used homophobic slurs, going to have the backs of women or queer people? More, how do we know that there aren’t more ugly revelations about Platner out there, which might badly damage him in the general and cost Democrats a crucial Senate seat?

Maine voters though don’t seem to have many concerns; the most recent poll of the race had Platner crushing Mills in the primary 64-26, and solidly beating Republican Senator Susan Collins in the general, 49-38.

Analyst G. Elliott Morris argues that Platner, as an outsider, is appealing to “anti-system voters”—that is, to people who like anti-establishment branding. But why is he seen as anti-establishment? Yes, he hasn’t held political office—but he is, again, from a privileged background, and his ugly views are hardly some sort of counter-cultural recommendation in an American ruled by fascist bigots. Why do voters—and Bernie Sanders, and the leftish New Republic, and the not all that leftish Pod Save America—see a white male small business owner with a Nazi tattoo as some sort of exciting and thrilling symbol of anti-establishment change in a country ruled by white male business owners, many of whom have repugnant far right views?

The question is kind of the answer. White men are seen as natural leaders under racist patriarchy, and that means they are seen as natural leaders of both the establishment and the opposition to the establishment. Hollywood has not made a gazillion films featuring white male rebel heroes (often with beards) for nothing.

In the usual Oedipal fashion, women (like, say, Janet Mills) symbolize the dull unadventurous status quo against which scrappy men demonstrate their scrappy rebelliousness. Bigotry is seen not as a sign of fealty to the usual gross hierarchies, but as cheeky insouciance, a refusal to play by the rules. Think about all the male Hollywood heroes from Maverick in Top Gun to Schindler in Schindler’s List whose swaggering misogyny and/or philandering is supposed to give them depth and highlight their refusal of respectability. Or consider the new Wuthering Heights film, in which the brutal, exciting bad boy white guy hero is contrasted with an effete boring Indo-British nice guy.

This is why Trump is often portrayed as anti-establishment even though he’s led the Republican party now for a decade. Because of racism and sexism, white men are seen as the only people truly entitled to freedom from constraint. As a result, they become symbols of emancipation from the dull bureaucracy. A little bigotry helps remind people of the bigot’s white identity and of the entitled unconstraint they embody. It’s an exciting, familiar story of rebellious sons overthrowing tyrannical fathers and/or mothers. Everybody wants to talk about it.

Stratton and the Progressive Establishment

In contrast to the tropeful tale of Platner, the Senate race in Illinois doesn’t fit into popular anti-establishment narratives.

Stratton, like Platner, is running on a very progressive platform. She wants to abolish ICE; she supports Medicare for All; she wants a $25 minimum wage. She refuses to commit to ending aid to Israel, which is ugly and wrong. On the other hand, she does not have a history of saying racist, sexist, and homophobic bullshit, and never had a Nazi tattoo.

But Stratton is not a political outsider. She has served two terms as Lt. Governor of Illinois under the popular J.B. Pritzker, and before that served in the Illinois House of Representatives. More, she is the solid choice of the Democratic establishment in Illinois; she has been endorsed by Pritzker and by Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, along with an extensive list of Illinois politicians and organizations.

Stratton’s main opponent, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, also has Democratic party endorsements. But his main strength is not establishment support, but buttloads of cash. Thanks to a $28 million war chest Krishnamoorthi has been flooding the airwaves in Illinois for months, trying to make voters believe that he’s the consensus choice, even though he very much is not.

Krishnamoorthi’s money has been raised from “corporate PACs, billionaire tech executives, crypto interests, and Trump-aligned donors” as Qasim Rashid succinctly explains. In other words, this is a case where the Illinois Democratic establishment is the progressive option, and the attempted (sort of) insurgent is floating his campaign through big money outside donors. Krishnamoorthi has been deliberately obfuscating his position on ICE (he keeps saying he’d “abolish Trump’s ICE”) and his pro ICE and pro-crypto votes because he knows that none of that is popular—and he also knows that these views are what keeps the money flowing.

Progressive media could have made a major difference in the race by giving Stratton just a tenth of the enthusiastic coverage that Platner has gotten, drawing the attention of small dollar donors and helping her get in the air war earlier. But Stratton’s story—about a Black woman with middle-class parents who devoted her life to public service and worked her way up the ladder into positions of greater and greater responsibility—is viewed as less photogenic than Platner’s life story—about a white guy with middle-class parents and very dicey politics who decided out of the blue to run for a crucial Senate seat.

Black women are caught coming and going, stereotyped as dull bastions of the sclerotic status quo (associated with public facing government jobs in the post office or DMV) and as being angry, sexualized, and violently unrespectable. Negotiating that kind of double bind is extremely difficult—and it’s why you don’t see many Black women politicians waltzing into a Senate contest without doing the background work.

Stratton couldn’t rely on progressive leaders like Sanders or progressive outlets like the New Republic to come to her aid and drive donations to allow her to compete with Krishnamoorti’s crypto cash. Instead, she’s had to cultivate relationships in the party—most notably with Pritzker, a billionaire who has made generous donations to her campaign.

At the same time, to catch voter interest, she’s had to do more than grow a beard and/or erase a Nazi tattoo. She released one of the most eye-catching and forceful ads of the cycle, filming a range of Illinois residents saying, “Fuck Trump.” That and her endorsements, have put her in striking distance of Krishnamoorthi as more people tune in and realize that she is actually the choice of the progressive state party that most of them support. Krishnamoorthi was ahead by 28 points at the end of January; the most recent polls have Stratton 5 points ahead and 2 points behind.

Could we stop confusing branding and policy? Please?

You can obviously have different views on Platner and Stratton than I do. But I think it’s pretty clear that an obsession with anti-establishment branding favors white guys and novice candidates. As a result, it makes it difficult to coordinate support for progressive candidates ike Juliana Stratton who are not white guys and who have taken traditional paths to seeking office.

Illinois progressives (like me!) are belatedly recognizing that Krishnamoorthi is not our guy and sounding the alarm; that, along with Stratton’s establishment support, may well allow her to finish strong and win the seat. And maybe Platner will not have any more ugly revelations and will not Fetterman us all once in office. Sometimes you make mistakes and everything turns out okay anyway. It happens!

But for outlets like the New Republic and Pod Save America, and for progressives in general, the Platner/Stratton contrast is, I think, a warning about what happens when the right policies are only visible when coupled with the right optics—or when the right optics become substantially more important than the right policies, or the right character. If we want to open a path to high office for people other than white men, and if we want to put people in office who will fight for progressive policy, we need to do better.