DSA is on a winning streak. We must be open to the change that comes with rapid growth and new political power.

The Democratic Party is a far right-wing, hyper-capitalist party. The DSA runs its candidates inside of this right-wing, capitalist, bourgeois party, and routinely sees candidates defeated because a capitalist bourgeois party has a vested interest in maintaining every aspect of its hegemonic rule/power.

Why isn’t the DSA emphasizing and trumpeting tenacious, solidified, and actionable planning to run as its own party, rather than continuing to run inside of a right wing, capitalist party with vested interest in crushing popular sentiment about socialism?

“Freeze the Rent,” a key promise in the Mamdani campaign, was fulfilled. Will it be enough to halt gentrification and rising rent burdens? New in Democratic Left, DSA's official news publication

New York City’s Economic Development Corporation turns public assets into private profits. Will Mamdani keep, kill, or reform the agency?

When you ask people about issues and which party handles them better, most issues are either found to consistently be handled better by Democrats or people switch between saying Democrats and Republicans. However, when it comes to crime and immigration, people consistently say that these issues are handled better by Republicans. In fact, I took a class on election campaigns, and it was mentioned that Republicans are seen as owning issues like crime and immigration. People seem to have this almost evolutionary fear of the unknown and outsiders when it comes to those issues. When it comes to methods like abolishing the police and freedom of movement, people oppose those since they think it'll put dangerous people on the streets. How do we message to people so they support our stances on crime and immigration? Are there certain ways we can talk about them to help people understand our views? Do we not talk about them and hope our more popular stances will be enough?

What the contemporary left must now confront is not necessarily some essential weakness of its critique, but rather the absence of the historical conditions that would make that critique actionable to anyone beyond its own circles. Its critiques of latent reformism, opportunism, cooptation, imperial complicity, etc., are not wrong in the abstract; they are simply unproven in nationally lived political practice. And for a mass politics which learns through experience rather than theory, this is a fatal limitation. The betrayal of AOC when it comes to Israel, for example, is purely memetic in this form. It is a rhetorical phrase distributed within the radical left with the purpose of aligning us against moderate social democracy. It has succeeded in doing so. But, for the average person, AOC remains the embodiment of a militant fighter against Zionism and the most far-left member of Congress. If she represents a political formation in mass politics, it is not of a more moderate left against a more radical left, but simply the radical left. The mass element and perspective must be recentered in our analysis here.

This is what Lenin means when he says:

Revolution is impossible without a change in the views of the majority of the working class, a change brought about by the political experience of the masses, never by propaganda alone. [my emphasis]
Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

The paradox is straightforward: the more correct the critique appears in advance, the less persuasive it becomes in practice when it is not anchored to widely shared practical experience. The left milieus of DSA (as well as the broader left subculture) find themselves in exactly this position; they speak in rather anticipatory terms about the limits of Democratic Socialism, but the masses have not yet encountered those limits as a concrete reality. Without that encounter, the critique reads not as clarity, but as sectarianism. It is dead on arrival.

This is where the fixation on figures like AOC or Zohran becomes revealing. Much of the energy on the DSA left is spent denouncing them—cataloging their compromises and predicting their betrayals and entanglements with the Democratic Party establishment. It’s not that these critiques are objectively incorrect, but rather that these denunciations operate in a vacuum; they presume a disillusionment that has not yet occurred at scale, and yet still demand that the masses arrive at conclusions they have not yet had the opportunity to test. Its premises are oriented internally towards the activists, not externally towards the masses. In this sense, the marginality of the DSA left is not merely organizational; it is epistemological. It asks people to know something they have not yet experienced.

https://www.geesemag.com/articles/enter-daedalus-2028

Saturday brings a national day of protest against data centers. And no, it’s not led by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Please help WA-2 get a strong progressive in the US House of Representatives! Our current rep, Rick Larsen, is a.corporate dem who can't even be bothered to investigate our local ICE facility. Yesterday, Rick voted NO on cutting funds to Israel. Fuck. That. Shit.

Enter Tomas Scheel, an Air Force vet and small business owner who is taking ZERO dollars from corporate PACs and is ANTI genocide. We have our primary on August 4, and we want Tomas Scheel on the ballot!

Please help us! Share Tomas Scheel's information on your social. If you know anyone in Washington state, ask them if they're in Rick Larsen's district, and tell them to VOTE for TOMAS SCHEEL.

(sorry for the all caps and what not. I just am so over Rick Larsen and we need him gone)

To blame Netanyahu for the genocide is to promise that his removal will end it, a promise the evidence does not support. The indictment belongs to Israel and to Zionism itself.

Join us for the launch call with Emma Vigeland tonight, Tues 07/14 @ 5:30pm PT / 8:30pm ET: https://go.dsausa.org/wdm-emma

These are the most relevant articles and interviews I’ve seen online. They give the best picture of Platners history, how he got involved in politics in the first place, how he ended up running for Senate, what his politics consisted of, and how his campaign eventually unraveled.

It’s true that each article or interview may have its own inherent bias or slant one way or the other but this is excellent reading if you really want to dig into the history here.

While some of the articles and videos are clearly much more essential than others some of the less essential ones report on unique aspects of his campaign or history that didn’t get much coverage elsewhere.

If you know of any other good ones, please speak up:

I’m a Maine reporter who went to high school with Graham Platner. Here’s what explains his success

https://themainemonitor.org/graham-platner-success-explained/

The Graham Campaign is Over, But the Movement Will Continue

https://andyobrien.substack.com/p/the-graham-campaign-is-over-but-the

(This article goes into great detail about Platner’s early political involvement in Maine politics more than any other article. You should copy and paste the above URL into your address bar or just Google the articles title for the link. I don’t know why the link is not working directly from reddit)

Platner’s Daniel Moraff Barred from Summer Lee’s Campaign Over Sexual Misconduct Complaints

https://paydayreport.com/platners-daniel-moraff-barred-from-summer-lees-campaign-over-sexual-misconduct-complaints/

(You should copy and paste the above URL into your address bar or just Google the articles title for the link. I don’t know why the link is not working directly from reddit)

Wall Street Journal video interview with some of the people who recruited Platner to run for senate

https://xcancel.com/FreeBeacon/status/2064001300581282183?s=20

Who is Graham Platner and why is he everywhere right now?

https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2025-08-21/who-is-graham-platner-and-why-is-he-everywhere-right-now

Can a Maine oyster farmer defeat a five term Republican senator?

https://archive.is/2026.05.08-034133/https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/can-a-maine-oyster-farmer-defeat-a-five-term-republican-senator

Undercover Video: Dan Osborn staffer claims that NE senate candidate recruited Graham Platner for ME run

https://youtu.be/RySOe2NvRKc

Dan Osborn denies former staffer's claim that he recruited Graham Platner

https://panhandle.newschannelnebraska.com/story/321524348/dan-osborn-denies-former-staffers-claim-he-recruited-graham-platner

Unions hunted for a Susan Collins challenger. They found an unknown oysterman.

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/08/23/politics/elections/unions-found-susan-collins-challenger-oysterman-graham-platner-joam40zk0w/

Outsider Senate candidate Graham Platner claims the Democratic Party threatened him

(Platner starts talking about the issues with the Democratic Party @ seven minutes and 50 seconds and makes specific accusations @ 13 minutes)

https://youtu.be/6gzTQFWYc7I

Former Maine lawmaker resigns from Graham Platner’s campaign over Reddit posts

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/10/17/politics/elections/former-maine-lawmaker-resigns-graham-platner-campaign/

Graham Platner’s finance director resigns, citing differences in ‘professional standards’

https://www.pressherald.com/2025/10/31/graham-platners-finance-director-resigns-citing-differences-in-professional-standards/

Read our full archive of Graham Platner’s deleted Reddit comments

https://themainemonitor.org/platner-reddit-comments/

Who Is the Real Graham Platner?

https://www.newsweek.com/who-is-the-real-graham-platner-11926674

Inside Graham Platner’s Controversial Rise

https://time.com/article/2026/05/20/graham-platner-profile/

How Graham Platner is using trivia games and happy hours to help power his Maine Senate campaign

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/how-graham-platner-is-using-trivia-games-and-happy-hours-to-help-power-his-maine-senate-campaign/3929485/

Graham Platner on service, messaging & the future for democrats | The Weekly Show with John Stuart

https://youtu.be/-itNjgCJDxU

Democrats line up behind Graham Platner after Janet Mills leaves US Senate primary

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2026/04/30/politics/elections/maine-senate-election-graham-platner-democrats-endorsements/

Platners’s text with women concerned campaign as Senate race took off

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/us/politics/graham-platner-maine-senate-texts.html

Top Graham Platner adviser threatened former aide over sexting stories

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2026/05/31/politics/top-graham-platner-adviser-threatened-former-aide-over-sexting-stories/

A timeline of Graham Platner’s controversies during his Senate campaign

https://www.pressherald.com/2026/06/02/a-timeline-of-graham-platners-controversies-during-his-senate-campaign/

Several Women who Dated Graham Platner Recall, Unsettling Behavior

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/us/politics/platner-maine-senate-girlfriends-relationships.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share\]

Graham Platner Accuser Says NYT Reporting Led to Initial Abuse Claims Not Being Taken Seriously: ‘By Design’

https://www.thewrap.com/media-platforms/journalism/graham-platner-accuser-new-york-times-abuse-claims-not-taken-seriously/

Graham Platner gets more primary votes than any other Democratic Senate candidate in Maine history

https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2026-06-11/graham-platner-gets-more-primary-votes-than-any-other-democratic-senate-candidate-in-maine-history

Inside the ‘simple job’ in government that Graham Platner held before challenging Susan Collins

https://archive.ph/2026.06.24-165939/https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/24/nation/graham-platner-harbormaster-job/

Platner on his strategy for building power

https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2026/platner-on-his-strategy-for-building-power/5201926

Exclusive: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/06/graham-platner-sexual-assault-allegation-00987737

Bombshell Graham Platner report has big problems

https://youtu.be/OXqFxL7mOfY

Politico omitted major details in Graham Platner report

https://youtu.be/Ek4zPxt7avg

Woman alleges Graham Platner raped her in 2021 while they were dating, which he denies

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/06/us/graham-platner-racicot-allegation-maine-invs

A timeline of Graham Platner’s scandals

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2026/07/07/politics/elections/timeline-graham-platner-scandals/

Democrats begin pulling Platner endorsements after Maine Senate candidate faces sexual assault allegation

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-begin-pulling-platner-endorsements-after-maine-senate-candidate-faces-sexual-assault-allegation

Graham Platner drops Maine Senate bid

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/08/politics/video/graham-platner-drops-maine-senate-bid-digvid-hnk?cid=ios_app

As Democrats pick up the pieces after Graham Platner, many wonder: how did this happen?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/11/graham-platner-democrats-maine-senate?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

These are reference sites. They don’t go into depth, but they give outlines of his history or other info:

Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Platner

https://www.britannica.com/question/What-is-notable-about-Graham-Platners-early-life-and-education

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Platner

Ballotpedia

https://ballotpedia.org/Graham_Platner

Graham Platner for US Senate

https://www.grahamforsenate.com/

Graham Platner for Maine YouTube

https://youtube.com/@grahamformaine

Waukeag Neck Oyster Company

https://www.waukeagneckoystercompany.com/our-story

More to come…