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Speaking to a crowd of over 6,500<\/a> in Portland, Maine, on Labor Day, Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner<\/a> offered his assessment of the American political system. <\/p>\n \u201cWe do not live in a system that is broken,\u201d said Platner, a 40-year-old oyster farmer and combat veteran who aims to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2026. \u201cWe live in a system that is functioning exactly as it is intended.\u201d <\/p>\n A fight is what the Democratic faithful want, and it\u2019s clear they\u2019re not seeing it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Platner was appearing alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as part of the latter\u2019s \u201cFight Oligarchy\u201d tour<\/a>. And Platner\u2019s impassioned denunciation of the status quo \u2014 fighting the powers that be and appealing to working Americans \u2014 was right out of the Sanders playbook. But beyond that influence, Platner represents a new pugilistic approach to Democratic politics that is being driven by the base\u2019s anger over President Donald Trump\u2019s policies and the party establishment\u2019s response. <\/p>\n A fight is what the Democratic faithful want<\/a>, and it\u2019s clear they\u2019re not seeing it. The party\u2019s popularity is at historic lows<\/a>, even as only 0.4% of Democrats, according to a new Gallup poll<\/a>, are satisfied with the direction of the country (76% of Republicans say they are). Some more established Democrats, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have embraced the opportunity to offer voters a fighter<\/a>, both trolling the president on social media and resisting his deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles. A July poll<\/a> found the governor\u2019s approval rating among Californians jumped 18 percentage points from a month earlier \u2014 from 38% to 56% \u2014 after the clash with Trump over the deployments. <\/p>\n Solely fighting isn\u2019t enough. That Newsom\u2019s approval was below 40% in a very blue state should concern Democrats who believe the governor offers a strong path forward for the party. Democrats are divided and facing a reckoning on a number of issues foreign and domestic. It\u2019s no coincidence that Platner got one of the biggest ovations of the night when he said<\/a>, \u201cOur taxpayer dollars can build schools and hospitals in America, not bombs to destroy them in Gaza.\u201d Tying resistance to Trump to a winning message with appeal and progressive politics will go further than simply presenting voters with a rerun of \u201cOrange Man bad\u201d messaging (even though, to be clear, Orange Man is, indeed, bad). <\/p>\n The Senate primary in Maine looks like the next test of old guard vs. new for Democrats. Despite being a political novice, Platner raised over $1 million in the first nine days<\/a>. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reportedly is working behind the scenes to get 77-year-old Gov. Janet Mills to enter the race. <\/p>\n Whether Mills enters or not, in the long run this is a struggle the old guard is likely to lose. Platner isn\u2019t alone in combining the new blood of a younger cohort with a more combative, forceful message that positions Democratic values as the path for the party. Already, candidates like Democratic New York mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani have seen success by presenting voters with unapologetically progressive policies and full-throated rejections of Trump. Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a possible candidate for the Senate in 2026, has worked on bridging the gap<\/a> between the state\u2019s Christians and liberal politics.<\/p>\n Whether Gov. Janet Mills enters or not, in the long run this is a struggle the old guard is likely to lose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Other relative newcomers who aim to leverage resistance against Republicans into political success, like Illinois\u2019s 26-year-old Kat Abughazaleh, are leaning into their anti-Trump bona fides. \u201cDonald Trump said that some people in the U.S. want him to be a dictator,\u201d Abughazaleh, who is running for the open seat in Illinois\u2019 9th Congressional District, posted last week<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m running for Congress to stop that from happening.\u201d <\/p>\n In Florida, Elijah Manley, another 26-year-old who is running to unseat Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, has made pushing back against Gov. Ron DeSantis a key part of his message. DeSantis wants \u201ca new Jim Crow\u201d in the state, Manley told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel<\/a> in August in a representative slam at the Republican governor. <\/p>\n Combining a forceful fightback against Trump and the GOP with progressive policies may not be what Democratic leaders like Schumer want to see for the party\u2019s direction, but, as the success of Mamdani, Platner and others shows, this approach has appeal. For fresh-faced politicians like these, it\u2019s an easy sell. And voters agree \u2014 but will the party adapt to the times?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js<\/a> Speaking to a crowd of over 6,500 in Portland, Maine, on Labor Day, Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner offered his assessment of the American political system. \u201cWe do not live in a system that is broken,\u201d said Platner, a 40-year-old oyster farmer and combat veteran who aims to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2026. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Graham-Platners-campaign-to-unseat-Maine-Sen-Susan-Collins-is.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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