Derek V.

Midcoast Mainer, Boston by Way of Life

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@AnthonyMEmerson The crowd-surfing douchecanoe just won 72% of the vote, Anthony. There's clearly an appt. for that. By your own description, why would you want the exact oppo? You campaigned hard for Platner, then Troy, and now you’re all-in for this onslaught of NeoLib UChic Shah. It’s odd.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@Sherman_FFB Wait, the Bain Consultant is pro AI?

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@AGlavkoverkh @mainepilled @MassJumbo It's similar but different, similar in the sense that if you're not exposed to it, it sounds a lot like someone mumbling with ice cubes in their mouth. No offense to any of my friends who might see this.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@mainepilled @MassJumbo Took my wife to the coast where I grew up, and we stopped by the wharf my mom manages. She met a few lobstermen there and was absolutely floored by the accent. She’s lived in New England her entire life and had somehow never heard anyone sound like that.

[Emma Vigeland @EmmaVigeland]

So many people in the national press seem motivated to paint Maine voters as a bunch of dumb hogs who were hypnotized by Platner's voice and didn't care about taxing billionaires and cutting arms sales to Israel. I wonder why they'd want to foreclose these conversations, hmm...

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@mainebeerbrewer @aseitzwald He dropped out to endorse Mills and wouldn’t say it was a genocide in 2025. None of this is believable.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

No, it’s supposed to make you define your terms, because right now you’re using education as a proxy for class position, which is a pretty patronizing way to talk about the working class. Lack of a 4 year degree and working class are not synonyms. If your point is that he was losing non Bach degree voters, you can just say that without casting aside nurses, teachers, public employees, degree holders who work for wages, etc. Something you should seriously consider learning.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@jameslineky Please tell me you’re not adopting the Fox News framing that “working class” only means people without 4 year degrees, are you?

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

Brother, you worked on a staff that lost to Trump. I’m not sure you’re really in a position to be dunking… so no need for the disingenuous bs.

Back to the point, I’m not sure how credible r*pe allegations coming out against Platner (that took all hands on deck 10 months to find) leads you to - this guy (not Platner) knows nothing about working class movements. Platner won every town in Maine.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@Emicatlover @AnthonyMEmerson It’s wild. Every crazy ass rural Mainer I know thinks Platner was exclusively fucked over by his own party.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

You were never going to be allowed to vote again. They were always going to ratfuck it, which is why calling for Platner to release all leverage was always a misunderstanding of the situation. The disparaged guy was, and is, the only chance you have of working-class politics sticking around for the general.

[moe tkacik @moetkacik]

Racicot:
-Was asked by a friend whether she should set up another friend with platner. She answered elliptically. She said he was intelligent and didn't listen when drunk. She did not say he was a rapist.
-Told Tapper "compliance is not consent." I would be interested to know whether this argument has ever held up in court, with a defendant who was blackout drunk. She didn't come forward the first time because she knew she didn't consider him to be a "rapist" because if she did see him that way she would have told her friend that was the case. She was emotionally blackmailed by Lyndsey Fifield who is a ride or die genocide cheerleader & professional liar, and most assuredly the promise of unlimited pro bono legal representation for her services to the Gratuitous Suffering & Death Lobby. I doubt she fully gamed out the sequence of events her new revelations would set off but Lyndsey Fifield absolutely did. One question is, did the funds that boosted him along the way game it out as well? Remember who funded Hamas to divert support from the PLO, people!! What was Seth Frantzman's role?

Now Abundance Barbie shows up to scoff aipacfully at the desire of Platner's campaign team to have a role in choosing his replacement. These Demonicrat party hacks, the ones who appointed Epstein's best friend Larry summers, the man who oversaw the liquidation of Russia after which Scott bessent modeled the DOGE coup, the one who said unemployment needed to go to 10% in order to discipline the workforce into accepting shittier wages and working conditions, to run the economic policy component of project 2029, these ghouls will crush you, take everything you have and spit on your face. Grow a spine and please decide whether Graham Platner or someone with a similar level of baggage is worse than all that.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

Yes, Kate!!! Folks need to grow up and learn how to play politics.

[Kate Willett @katewillett]

Platner owes it to the people who voted for him to use his leverage to ensure a new candidate is selected democratically. The establishment wants to install a corporate ghoul with no input from voters, this is completely cynical:

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

This is a centrist trope designed to clear the lane for their preferred conservadem candidate. Don’t fall for it. Playing into it only weakens the movement

[Anthony Emerson❤️🌲🦞🇾🇪🌹 @AnthonyMEmerson]

He absolutely is. People who voted for him in the gov race are telling me they think he might be too connected to GP to win now and are considering Shah and Bellows too.

Each moment GP stays in the race hurts Jackson’s chances.

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@mcbyrne @katz_morris Who said Platner is staying in?

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@mcbyrne @katz_morris Do you have faith in the democratic party to do the right thing by its voters? If so, why, how did you come to that conclusion?

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

@AnthonyMEmerson Shah said he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the Landlords and that they’ve been seen as the problem for far too long… he’s a NeoLib. During this entire senate process, what’s given anyone the idea that Mainers want a NeoLib as their candidate? Those poor landlords…

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

I don’t think Platner is delusional. He knows he no longer has the support to win, so if that’s a bit of credence we’re willing to lend, polling, donors, and endorsements is irrelevant, right?

What he does realize (imo) is that he has leverage. What I believe he’s trying to ensure doesn’t happen is a normieDem being handed the keys to the castle, because “we tried it your way, now we’re going to do it our way.”

[Derek V. @DerekVannah]

I disagree. With an ear to the ground in Maine, and two Republican parents who planned to vote for Platner, their first time voting Democrat in their lives, they’ve seen the light. They want someone with his policy positions. They want someone from that same movement.

Platner seeing this through, and passing the torch to a like-kind candidate, gives them further validation that he was sincere when he said the movement to replace not just Republicans, but corporate Dems too, is bigger than him.

Mainers have lost to Collins for 30 years. They’re skeptical. He was the first one to bring them a different kind of politics.

Yes, he should drop out. Yes, he should feel shame. But for better or worse, a lot of folks still want to hear what he has to say about the path forward.

🌹