False Bravery

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, September 02, 2025

 

On paper, Maine Democrat Graham Platner is the answer to all that ails his party.

 

His gruff demeanor and everyman vestiary convey easy and authentic masculinity — a plus in a party that has struggled with that and is shedding male voters as a result. He’s an oyster farmer and a Marine Corps veteran, which could help court the working-class voters who have abandoned the Democrats in the Trump years. And with his pledge not to support Chuck Schumer’s Senate leadership and the liberty with which he criticizes Democrats as well as Republicans, he’s sufficiently anti-establishment in a populist age. It’s no wonder he’s already raised a boatload of cash in his bid to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins in the fall.

 

Beyond the aesthetic trappings that thrill the Democratic consultant class, however, Platner also clearly wants to be recognized for his bravery. He postures as a dauntless truth-teller, one of the few willing to name the forces of domestic subversion standing in the way of progress. “I am not afraid to name the enemy,” Platner said to a packed auditorium over the weekend while campaigning alongside self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. “The enemy is the oligarchy.”

 

The crowd jumped to its feet, apparently awed by the display of raw gumption. It’s not at all clear why. The aspiring senator managed just enough courage to align himself against an imagined cohort of people with which no one identifies. Who are the self-described oligarchs among us? Are they right now circling the wagons around their oligarchical frameworks in which the rest of us are imprisoned? Is there a single person in America who knows Platner was talking about him? Probably not.

 

Demonizing the nebulous abstraction “oligarchy” has become part of the candidate’s shtick. In his introductory campaign video, he got into a little bit more detail about who he believes represents the domestic “enemy” inside America: the “oligarchy,” sure, but also the “billionaires” and the “corrupt politicians.” It’s also “the system,” which is “screwing” the broader public. The “system” is “failing.” It “doesn’t represent” the American majority, and, indeed, “was never made for them.”

 

If we’re going to call this sort of thing brave, we’re going to have to extend that status to every angsty teenager who believes she is similarly beset by ill-defined forces, all conspiring to thwart her ambitions for reasons as nefarious as they are vague.

 

This sort of talk is, however, what draws the paying progressive crowds these days. By joining Sanders’s side and adopting his hostility toward the amorphous oligarchs in our midst, Platner is mimicking the act Congress’s socialists put on with their “Fight Oligarchy” roadshow. This past spring, Sanders joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a whirlwind tour of some of America’s most affluent municipalities — college campus towns and dark-blue urban enclaves — in which everyone lamented their deprivation at the hands of the wealthy and powerful. The events had the feel of a “religious revival,” the New York Post’s Kirsten Fleming observed. It was “their chance to be in communion with like-minded people.” In fact, it had the feel of “a Trump rally — only with different heroes and villains.” But while their heroes are specific, the villains, save Donald Trump himself, are rarely so well-defined.

 

Given the scope of this malign intrigue and the breadth of the cabal orchestrating it, it shouldn’t be too hard to name some names. Indeed, doing so would expose the noble accusers to retaliation – a real threat given the omnipotence of progressivism’s enemies. Even if the confederacy that they’re railing against exists only in their own heads, we could grant them credit for slaying the dragons that are at least real to them.

 

By keeping everything imprecise, the left would claim credit for taking the powerful to task without exposing themselves to reprisals — or exposing the non-existence of this bugbear when no reprisals materialize. We can call that sort of tactic a lot of things, but brave is not one of them.