Are Democrats Having a Tea Party Moment?

National Review Online

Monday, May 04, 2026

 

The sudden decision by Governor Janet Mills to drop out of Maine’s Senate primary and effectively yield the Democratic nomination to radical upstart Graham Platner shows the Democrats could be experiencing a grassroots revolt of the sort that Republicans experienced in the Tea Party era.

 

An activist, Marine veteran, and oyster farmer, Platner was barely known when he launched his campaign last August, but he quickly gained momentum and soon enough an advantage over Mills.

 

He garnered national attention when it was revealed that he had a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest. It wasn’t just any symbol — it was a skull-and-crossbones image that was adopted by the branch of the Nazi SS that served as concentration camp guards. In the years since the war, it has been used by various neo-Nazi groups. Platner claimed the tattoo was an accident and had it covered when called out on it during his campaign. But considering he had the tattoo for nearly 20 years, it’s difficult to believe that he had never before been aware of its origins.

 

Platner’s Nazi tattoo isn’t the only example of him dabbling in antisemitism, which he has attempted to excuse as mere criticism of the U.S. relationship with Israel, an alliance Platner has called “shameful.” Platner promoted a social media post from the neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Stew Peters, and he not only granted a lengthy interview to antisemitic conspiracy theorist Nate Cornacchia but also claimed to be a longtime fan.

 

Democrats, who spent the Tea Party era claiming that opposition to national health care and appeals to our founding constitutional principles were coded racism, have made excuses for Platner. Former Obama speechwriter and left-wing podcaster Jon Favreau claimed Platner was “a good, decent man who’s struggled and grown and is always trying to do better.” Senator Chris Van Hollen blamed Platner’s rancid posts on PTSD from his military service, saying that “he went through a really rough period.” Yes, somehow, there are millions of military veterans who have served our country honorably without feeling compelled to stamp a symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel on their bodies.

 

Platner, who is now expected to go up in the general against centrist Republican Senator Susan Collins, may be a sign of things to come. Throughout the country, far-left candidates have been running in Democratic primaries as change agents — a message that invariably comes with hostility toward Jews and Israel. This was central to the victory of socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City and is something we are witnessing in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, with the rise of Abdul El-Sayed.

 

Platner has radical positions on any number of other issues besides Israel — including a wealth tax, single-payer health care, packing the Supreme Court, and impeaching sitting justices. “We need to elect people to the Senate who want to wield power like that, who understand that power matters, that it’s real and you can use it,” he said.

 

During the Republican Tea Party era, which roughly lasted from 2009 to 2015, insurgent candidates knocked off prominent establishment-backed candidates in Republican primaries. Many political analysts have tried to portray this as a reckless tantrum in which the party threw away a lot of winnable races. But this analysis focuses on high-profile mistakes, such as the nomination of Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell in Delaware. In reality, the movement was a net positive for Republicans. At their pre–Tea Party levels, Democrats controlled 60 Senate seats and 258 House seats; by 2015, Republicans had 54 seats in the Senate and 247 in the House. That represented cumulative gains of 14 Senate seats and 70 in the House. Also, the party became more ideologically conservative. Senator Mike Lee replaced the more moderate Bob Bennett in Utah; the free-market Pat Toomey replaced liberal Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter; and Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz defeated the establishment picks, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst, respectively.

 

We are, of course, not comparing the likes of Platner or El-Sayed to Cruz or Rubio. However, it’s a mistake to assume that by nominating more ideological candidates over more conventional ones, Democrats are necessarily throwing away Senate seats (Janet Mills, a 78-year-old with a poor record as governor, wasn’t obviously a stronger general election candidate than Platner). The reality is that wave elections, which Republicans could be facing this year, often sweep in candidates once thought unelectable; sometimes such candidates better channel an anti-incumbent mood than more generic figures.

 

The best recourse Republicans are going to have in a tough year is waging a very negative campaign — secure in the knowledge that there is a lot to be negative about.