The Democrats are doubling down on crazy, and they show no sign of moderating their radical social and cultural agenda any time soon.
Last week, 78-year-old Maine Gov. Janet Mills bowed out of the primary contest for senator. Mills used traditional Democratic fundraising conduits to raise an impressive $5.4 million in two quarters. This isn't a big haul for a large state, but it is pretty good for Maine.
Meanwhile, the infamous oyster farmer, Graham Platner, the man with the Nazi tattoo, raised $12.5 million. Mills woke up last week and realized there was no way she could compete with a juggernaut like that. Besides, Platner had awoken something in the usually staid and sensible Maine Democrats. He was leading by 30 points in some polls.
Sen. George Mitchell served three terms as a Democratic Senator from Maine. He was the Majority Leader of the Senate from 1989 to his retirement in 1995. Mitchell was the last elected Democrat to serve in the Senate (Angus King is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats).
Mitchell was a poster boy for Democratic Party moderates. He was a consummate Senate insider who put getting things done ahead of partisan bickering. His kind is gone now. They've been shoved aside by hysterical radicals whose grasping for power presages a dark period in U.S. political history.
Democrats blame Donald Trump for the radical turn of the party. The real reason is that they are losing elections. Worse, they are losing elections in areas where the demographics say they would ordinarily win. The lessons they should have learned from the 2024 election were buried last December when, instead of blaming the far-left's radical social and cultural agenda for scaring the electorate, they simply refused to release the party's "autopsy report." Democrats who are actually interested in winning elections are still agitating for the release of the report, but embattled party chair Ken Martin isn't budging.
Now, crazies like Platner in Maine, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and a dozen or more radicals running for a House seat don't have to worry about hearing that Americans aren't buying their radical agenda. And they will have plenty of cash to be competitive.
Platner’s cash streamed in from small, unitemized donations of less than $200. Early in his campaign, his small donations averaged $31. Platner’s share of money raised from small donations (64 percent) was more than twice Mills’ share (31 percent).
Basically, Platner’s new model of fundraising crushed Mills’ old model. Mills depended on itemized, large-donor contributions and institutional-style support. Platner, by contrast, sought and received national media coverage, national endorsements by progressive figures like Bernie Sanders, and a high profile in the online, generally progressive and antiestablishment Democratic discourse. That was then translated into massive numbers of small online donations through the ActBlue fundraising platform. Mills simply could not match this energy—and money.
The implications go well beyond the Maine nomination contest. It’s always been possible to mount insurgent campaigns for statewide offices, but getting enough “mother’s milk” to be truly competitive against an establishment-backed candidate was a barrier. That barrier has now been dramatically lowered.
"In a sense, the progressive online Democratic community has become a new, distributed establishment," writes Ruy Teixeira in The Free Press. "If you can get the ear of this new establishment, suddenly that money barrier starts to disappear."
This new paradigm demands craziness in order to get noticed. In this universe, Platner's Nazi tattoo is actually a plus; it accomplished more than $10 million in advertising could ever accomplish. It brought him to the attention of the gimlet-eyed online radicals who talked him up on social media and energized a base of tens of thousands of other radicals who sent whatever they could to Platner's campaign. A barista at Starbucks is not a big-dollar donor, but when thousands of baristas send $10, $20, or $25, it adds up quickly.
Nothing in politics is copied more quickly than success. Tapping the new revenue stream of radical populists backing the likes of Platner and El-Sayed is the new game in town for Democrats.
The recent breakthrough in small donations will not be lost on aspiring Democratic politicians nationwide. Scheming and plotting to get into that online progressive Democratic discourse will increasingly replace worrying about call time and other traditional fundraising tools. Naturally, this will advantage hard-edged progressives who are adept at rhetoric that attracts attention and are more than willing to take positions that excite the online Democratic community. For these politicians, there is little to lose and much to gain.
What about the rest of the Democratic Party? There are still millions of blue-collar and rural voters who pull the lever for the Democrats. What of them?
The same cannot be said of the Democratic Party as a whole. It faces the daunting task of making its brand salable in non-blue parts of America. This new fundraising model will make it ever easier for progressive flamethrowers to mount competitive primary campaigns that will reward those progressives but do nothing to change the toxic image of Democrats in much of working-class and rural America. That disadvantage will show up in general elections rather than primaries, but by then, the damage will already have been done.
Platner et al. may have tapped a previously underutilized source of revenue, but what good will it do them if they get slaughtered in the general election?
The scary prospect of candidates like Platner actually winning should motivate Republicans to prevent that scenario from happening at all costs.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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