General Discussion

Platner is up to something different. He isn’t running a campaign so much as seeking to build a mass movement against the status quo. He’s not trying to woo the working class to the Democratic Party; he’s trying to mobilize the working class to take over the Democratic Party and use it to fundamentally change the relationship between government and citizens. To him, Trump is a symptom of a larger rot, a fundamentally broken system, and the old rules of American politics are already beside the point. The Democratic establishment is “still existing in this world where they think that if you know the rules the best, you’re going to win,” he told me. “When the other side is just beating you over the head with the rule book, it doesn’t matter.”

In keeping with these themes, he’s running a far grander campaign than Mills in terms of ambition and drive. (It does help that he isn’t limited by the need to simultaneously govern.) He seems to be everywhere, all the time, both on TV, thanks to his nearly three-to-one fundraising edge, and in person. His call for building working-class power aligns not only with his working-man presentation but with his workman-like approach to campaigning: He has held more than 50 town halls — so well attended that people are often turned away — and shows up in every corner of the state. Unlike Mills, he’s not trying to convince voters he will stand up to Trump; he’s trying to start a movement to build a world without the despair and resentment that he believes allows Trump’s brand of politics to flourish.

Maine is certainly not the first place where these contrasting prescriptions for how to end Trumpism have been present in a Democratic primary. But rarely have they been so perfectly embodied by two such different candidates. And if the polls are even close to right, Democratic voters are about to deliver a bracing message about which of these visions they currently prefer.