A lack of qualifications is not a qualification and other thoughts on Platner

Picking up from Joseph's post.

Not being from Maine, I didn't spend a lot of time reading or writing about the Senate primary. Here are, I believe, the entirety of my social media posts on the subject. If you look closely, you might spot something of a common theme.

Anyone else getting a Fetterman vibe here?

— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) October 25, 2025 at 9:40 PM

Sinema was an unconventional candidate who was going to bring in young voters. Fetterman was an unconventional candidate who was going to bring in young voters. Starting to question that particular argument.

— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) October 24, 2025 at 8:56 PM

Like I said: Sinema was an unconventional candidate who was going to bring in young voters. Fetterman was an unconventional candidate who was going to bring in young voters. Platner was an unconventional candidate who was going to bring in young voters. Starting to question that particular argument

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— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) January 8, 2026 at 12:54 AM

You would think the normal reaction to how Fetterman turned out would be "how can we avoid this happening again?" not "let's give it one more try."

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— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) March 4, 2026 at 8:09 PM

I still think the relevant comparison here is Sinema/Fetterman. We see the same anti-establishment framing, the same arguments about the need to select an outsider, in many cases the same people pushing the candidacy. What I want to know is how people still think this is a good idea.

— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) April 12, 2026 at 3:49 PM

He's an enormously problematic candidate brought to us by literally the same people (such as Morris Katz) who brought us Fetterman, using many of the same arguments. If you can convince me that Fetterman was a good choice, I'll send Platner a check.

— markpalko.bsky.social (@markpalko.bsky.social) March 4, 2026 at 8:58 PM

All sorts of big issues are raised by this story—too many to list—but for now, here is a quick list, starting with the recurrent theme of my social media thread.

One of the silliest and most dangerous political ideas to emerge in the past few years is the notion that the best qualification for high public office is a lack of qualifications.

Not being a professional politician has a certain gut-level populist appeal, but it is almost never a positive, particularly when it is combined with a lack of any relevant experience. And no, "my parents bought me an oyster farm" is not sufficient.

This raises another point that I find particularly annoying. I grew up, if not poor, then certainly frugal, in the rural South. Perhaps for that reason, I have always had exceptionally little patience with the fake man-of-the-people schtick. It shows a cynicism and a disdain for voters that I find deeply offensive.

Poor-boy cosplay also provides an area of vulnerability in the general election, which leads to yet another issue. Non-politicians are almost always non-vetted. While it's true we can't always assume the flip side—that elected officials have been well vetted (Swalwell slipped past voters for years)—as a general rule, the bigger and tougher the races someone has won, the more difficult it is to dig up dirt.

It's important to note that Platner never even made it to the general election, where the really nasty rat-fuckers were sharpening their knives. Instead, the damaging stories started coming out almost immediately, possibly even organically, and simply picked up steam. It was less like a drip, drip, drip and more like a growing stream, with progressively worse details constantly emerging. I'm reminded of the scene in the Buster Keaton film where, starting with a few pebbles, progressively larger rocks come tumbling down the hill toward the hapless protagonist.

Much of this dirt was disturbingly close to the surface. A halfway diligent background check, along with a few hours of Internet searching, would have revealed much of it. A competent campaign would have been able to get ahead of many of these stories rather than just trying to dodge each rock individually.

Good journalism, another key component of a well-functioning primary system, would have brought lots of these things out in a more timely manner. If you read papers like the New York Times today, you will find all sorts of sharp reporting focused on the failed candidate, but at the time the vast majority of news organizations were more than content to simply play along with the simple "oyster man takes on the political establishment and wins" narrative.

It wasn't until after he became the presumptive nominee that we started seeing the right questions being asked, and not until the days after the vote that we saw aggressive digging.

Last July, in a small town in coastal Maine, a couple of progressive, self-styled recruiters of economic populists showed up at the blue-shingled house of Graham Platner, a little-known oyster farmer and Marine veteran who lived largely off government benefits.

They knew his name from local labor organizers and activists, and they had watched a video on the internet of him talking about oysters. Struck by his left-leaning ideology, his working-class affect and his gravelly voice, they became convinced that he could win a Senate seat in Maine — and quickly persuaded Mr. Platner of the same.

The initial headhunters, Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan, and then a third out-of-state operative they called up to Maine — Morris Katz — told Mr. Platner he was “the one,” a “hero of the movement,” “a historical figure” who could be “leading a revolution,” according to half a dozen people with knowledge of their conversations.

But a clutch of people who cared about Mr. Platner were telling him something else. They worried about his mental health, amid his ongoing efforts to heal from post-traumatic stress disorder after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. They feared this trio of out-of-state operatives was a dangerous combination of inexperienced and overconfident. The worst-case scenario, they thought, wasn’t running for Senate and losing — it was destroying the life he worked hard to build.

 

 The NYT started this piece with their usual self-congratulatory spiel talking about how thoroughly they investigated the story, but while I appreciate professional reporting, I'd appreciate professional reporting done in a timely fashion (say eight months ago) a hell of a lot more. At the risk of being both preachy and obvious, one of the most important roles of journalism is informing voters. Waiting until the die has already been cast is often easier and safer, but it defeats the purpose.

The Maine primary was a textbook case of how not to select a nominee. What needs to be a process of scrutiny and skepticism, especially with an untested candidate, instead became a bizarre rush to declare the matter settled months in advance, even while increasingly damaging revelations were steadily coming forward. There seemed to be a widespread fear that if we let the primary do what it was supposed to, we would somehow damage our chances of unseating Collins.

For me, that might be the final and most important lesson. When you tell yourself that a vigorous democratic process is too risky, you are wrong on principle and stupid in practice.