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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow a Rich Kid Politician Was Spun as a Working Class 'Oysterman'
And by his mother who owns multiple businesses.
While hes been billed as an outsider candidate with no interest in professional politics, hes actually the activist son of a council candidate and the husband of a town selectwoman, as well as a local official whom the media had regularly turned to for quotes since at least 2009.
Media write-ups about the Maine Senate candidates oyster business typically mention that he grew up in the area leading to the impression that he came from a working-class family from some of the traditional trades, but nothing could be further from the truth about the Platners.
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2025/09/how-rich-kid-politician-was-spun-as.html
Keepthesoulalive
(1,954 posts)For doing the research and getting past the lies and bs.
mr715
(2,152 posts)Shine a little light and he isn't ready for the gig. Shades of George Santos.
Orrex
(66,264 posts)mr715
(2,152 posts)Skittles
(168,230 posts)he sounds like the standard racist MAGAt nutcase to me
yardwork
(68,385 posts)He seems like a Republican to me.
yardwork
(68,385 posts)He seems like a Republican to me.
herding cats
(19,915 posts)The new game is to set us up with a fake Progressive who isn't.
It think we might have caught this one in time. At least I hope so.
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)I sure hope we don't get Fettermaned again.
hedda_foil
(16,854 posts)I'm not sayin' that's the case here but I'm not sayin' it's not.
a kennedy
(34,682 posts)babylonsister
(172,430 posts)He lies way too much for me.
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)However:
Quiet Em
(2,363 posts)I posted it in a different thread but want to post it here too because it perfectly describes the vibe I'm getting from him.
https://www.editorialboard.com/a-nazi-tattoo-cant-keep-a-good-white-man-down/
The title alone says it all.
That is a good article, Quiet Em. Thanks for posting it here.
Behind the Aegis
(55,677 posts)I wish I could say I was shocked, but I am not. Between the homophobia and the Nazi tattoo, now all of this about his background does not bode well. Oh course, as soon as this all cropped up, so did the conspiracy theories, some which are actually being treated as "fact".
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)He is well educated and went to very prestigious schools. He knew what the tattoo meant.
herding cats
(19,915 posts)Just like Kavanaugh. It's not something they can be held accountable for. It's just an indiscretion due to their youthful alcohol consumption. That makes it ok now, right? Boys will be boys and all that.
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)Kids, they do the darndest things.
herding cats
(19,915 posts)And every dumbass thing he has said or done shouldn't be held against him because he's given a hat tip and said, whoops, my mistake! And his high profile endorsements just turned their heads. Like it never happened! As if they're not even pretending to be serious about picking a viable candidate anymore.
Silent Type
(11,576 posts)mainer
(12,458 posts)Otherwise she's a great candidate. But she stood up to Trump and she's a mouthy gal and I like that.
Silent Type
(11,576 posts)sheshe2
(94,484 posts)Absolutely nothing. She has every right to run and she is more than qualified.
As for the polls that just came out, I doubt they had a chance to factor in the issues that have been raised about Platner's past, and Mills only entered the race last week. Also, the election is 8 months away.
ReRe
(12,118 posts)Her only drawback might be her age. But there's no contest between her and Platner other than that. IMHO.
mcar
(45,413 posts)and he's been the darling of the Bernie set. Give it a little time.
msongs
(72,700 posts)PeaceWave
(2,208 posts)iemanja
(56,997 posts)and that sold Bernie.
Keepthesoulalive
(1,954 posts)Nina Turner, Joe Rogan.
W_HAMILTON
(9,726 posts)I hate to say it, but it seems like all it takes to get the Sanders stamp of approval is them giving Sanders their stamp of approval.
Seems very "you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back."
Abolishinist
(2,807 posts)donating thousands to the Vermont socialist who would later endorse his son.
Cha
(315,216 posts)saying he's "working Class" when it's Not true.
Is not his Background good enough? All this was bound to come out... So WHY?
Thanks, she..
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)I wonder who helped build his resume.
Cha
(315,216 posts)tell the Truth in the Beginning. Now not only does Planter have all these revelations slurring :LGBTQ, Blacks, Women, and a Nazi Tat...
He's not even "working class" and has his Staffers sign NDAs...
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)I missed that part, Cha. Seems he has some really heavy hitters supporting his run. Interesting for a newbie, very interesting indeed.
Cha
(315,216 posts)
Cha
(315,216 posts)to Shut Up about me now.. I want it in writing! Show me your loyalty. Was it because of his Political Director quitting?
Genevieve McDonald
OAITW r.2.0
(30,798 posts)Now, I know better. I'll be voting for the real Democrat in the primary.
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)OT; Thank you for all the help you gave to our fellow DUer, 2naSalit. I never moved states before; will they be able to register to vote in June?
Thanks, you are a good guy, OAITW.
OAITW r.2.0
(30,798 posts)I like to think I'm a good guy, at least 93% of the time,
The other 7%, only God knows.
If you happen to find your way to the middle of nowhere, contact me!
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)It's a lovely place. I doubt I will get there again, though if I do, I will look you up.
You are indeed one of the good guys.
Kingofalldems
(39,946 posts)sheshe2
(94,484 posts)RandySF
(78,712 posts)Then we should also police our own violators.
Well said, otherwise, we would be hypocrites.
Prairie Gates
(6,590 posts)RandySF
(78,712 posts)Prairie Gates
(6,590 posts)Maybe not.
cliffside
(1,447 posts)RandySF
(78,712 posts)cliffside
(1,447 posts)"Daniel Greenfield is an Israeli-born journalist and columnist with nearly 20 years of experience writing for conservative publications. His work spans national and international stories, covering politics, history, and culture. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with industry legends like David Horowitz, interviewed senators and congressmen, and shared the stories of ordinary people overcoming extraordinary challenges. His first book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers' Fight Against the Left, explores the forgotten struggles that shaped Americas early history"
Do a little digging IMHO
Celerity
(52,709 posts)https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2005/03/about-daniel-greenfield.html
About Daniel Greenfield

My name is Daniel Greenfield. I am a Shillman Journalism Fellow and the Executive Vice President of Programs at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. My beat at Front Page Magazine, its blog, The Point, and my own blog, DanielGreenfield.org also known as SultanKnish covers everything from the Left's war on America at home to Islamic terror abroad.
I was named a "hate group of one" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC may not have been too happy that I caught them faking statistics.
From exposing Biden's theft of money from 9/11 victims to fund the Taliban to surveying the Most Corrupt Village in America to racial quotas in the military to being among the first to break the story of government mandates causing widespread COVID deaths in nursing homes, I cover everything.
I delved into Jihadists in the Biden administration, showed Facebook uses UN regulations to censor conservatives, including President Trump, how the CDC Deputy Director helped cover up COVID deaths and documented how Biden's funding of terrorism killed Israelis. Including money sent before the Oct 7 attacks.
I have appeared on the shows of Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and many others. "You are one of many people who have given me feedback that my reading and interpretation of that piece by Daniel Greenfield was of profound enlightenment," Rush Limbaugh said of my writing.
snip
My investigative pieces have included the story of Obama and Pfleger, which I broke months before the mainstream media. I also broke the story of many of Obama's radical clergy ties, including Farrakhan supporters, I revealed that the Vice-President of the Center for American Progress and the former senior adviser for Nancy Pelosi had participated in terrorist fundraising
snip
leftstreet
(37,706 posts)cliffside
(1,447 posts)TommyT139
(2,006 posts)cliffside
(1,447 posts)thank you for doing so!
Prairie Gates
(6,590 posts)Silent Type
(11,576 posts)why Democrats into 1970s werent todays Dems. Dont want to do it again over a Democrat with a Nazi tattoo.
I will say I find Hegseths Crusader and rifle tattoos equally disgusting.
cliffside
(1,447 posts)"My name is Daniel Greenfield. I am a Shillman Journalism Fellow and the Executive Vice President of Programs at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. My beat at Front Page Magazine, its blog, The Point, and my own blog, DanielGreenfield.org also known as SultanKnish covers everything from the Left's war on America at home to Islamic terror abroad.
I was named a "hate group of one" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC may not have been too happy that I caught them faking statistics.
From exposing Biden's theft of money from 9/11 victims to fund the Taliban to surveying the Most Corrupt Village in America to racial quotas in the military to being among the first to break the story of government mandates causing widespread COVID deaths in nursing homes, I cover everything..."
Keepthesoulalive
(1,954 posts)I want the truth about our candidates and let the voters decide if it is relevant.
cliffside
(1,447 posts)I do not want to be duped by anyone.
https://www.jns.org/writers/daniel-greenfield/
"Daniel Greenfield is an Israeli-born journalist and columnist with nearly 20 years of experience writing for conservative publications. His work spans national and international stories, covering politics, history, and culture. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with industry legends like David Horowitz, interviewed senators and congressmen, and shared the stories of ordinary people overcoming extraordinary challenges. His first book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers' Fight Against the Left, explores the forgotten struggles that shaped Americas early history."
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)Please point out what he said is untrue. There are many publications that have posted the same things. Much of this is from Planters own statements and of his family's history.
His Wiki page states his education and wealth. So...
LearnedHand
(5,079 posts)This guy is not a credible source.
cliffside
(1,447 posts)and that has played a role in the replies over many different threads.
I know not everyone likes Sanders, I've been here since 2004, that being said, Daniel Greenfield has a slew of prior writings/posts which I find offensive and would not use him as a source, JMHO.
PufPuf23
(9,632 posts)cliffside
(1,447 posts)sheshe2
(94,484 posts)Celerity
(52,709 posts)sheshe2
(94,484 posts)What isn't true?
Cha
(315,216 posts)Here's that other source in your thread, she...
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20744711
sheshe2
(94,484 posts)Thanks, Cha.
Celerity
(52,709 posts)As an undergrad, I mocked the radical leftist turned reactionary. But with his cruel, vindictive politics taking over the government, he had the last laugh.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/david-horowitz-radical-son/
https://archive.ph/0DzXr

David Horowitz, who died in April, spoke on the CU Boulder campus on February 14, 2005, about whats wrong with various professors in US universities today.(Brian Brainerd / The Denver Post via Getty Images)
The first time I thought about David Horowitz was in 2006, when I was a 22-year-old senior at Horowitzs alma mater, Columbia University. A friendlike me and Horowitz, a Jewish Davidhad commissioned me to review Horowitzs latest book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, for the Columbia Political Review. As a snotty undergraduate, I agreed to do so on the condition that I wouldnt have to read the book and that I would admit that I hadnt upfront. Rather than an actual review, I wrote a generalized attack on Horowitz as a once-radical hack, accusing him of producing a McCarthyist screed and of libeling nine Columbia professors among his chosen 101but I also reduced his life, or what I assumed without any research to be the broad outlines of his life, to a cliché:

Its embarrassing to revisit some of my earliest writing, but still, I was pretty close. Horowitz was born in January 1939, eight months before World War II broke out in Europe (arguably, it had already begun in Asia). He grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, about five miles from Morningside Heights as the crow flies. He was indeed a second-generation American on both sides, and his parents really were Stalinists, though it was Nikita Khrushchevs secret speech in 1956 rather than the earlier Doctors Plot that broke them. He did at some point socialize with Kristol and Podhoretz, he did protest the Vietnam War (not sure about ROTC), and the rest of that second paragraph is essentially accurate too.
dalton99a
(90,882 posts)summer_in_TX
(3,882 posts)Thanks for sharing that, Quiet Em.
His was the first online publication I sprang for. (Of course once the dam broke I found a number of other excellent, ethical journalists and writers to support.)
Cha
(315,216 posts)says the same thing as the OP..
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20744711
The quote from someone from Graham Platner's past who said he called it his "little Totenkopf" way back shows he absolutely knew what he had done, that he put on his body permanently.
Cha
(315,216 posts)that have come out about the LGBTQ, Blacks, and Women he's slurred.
And, now after all this time and it's Exploded he says he's "covered it".
summer_in_TX
(3,882 posts)That plus the tattoo, not to mention the NDAs, are pretty damning to me.
I see the Maine primary is not until June. I suspect these are the beginning of the revelations.
Cha
(315,216 posts)awareness on how he could have hurt vulnerable people.. "
Especially now when they and so many people are getting Extremely Hurt by the Neo Nazi in the Gold Demolished house.
Oh and the NDA's for his staffers.. possibly brought on by his Exit of his former Political Direcor.. Genevieve McDonald... and any further revelations..
Celerity
(52,709 posts)https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2017-12-12/sexual-misconduct-reckoning-is-opportunity-for-democrats-to-reinvigorate
Dec. 12, 2017

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., leaves the Capitol after speaking on the Senate floor, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Franken said he will resign from the Senate in coming weeks following a wave of sexual misconduct allegations and a collapse of support from his Democratic colleagues, a swift political fall for a once-rising Democratic star. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
I lost count of the number of people last week who said, with the air of arch authority, that the Democrats were playing a sucker's game in pressing U.S. Sen. Al Franken to resign. "This is why Democrats lose," some left-liberals said while anti-Trump independents said, "This is why I am not a Democrat." The complaint is that the GOP would never eject one of its own over sexual misconduct, so why should the Democrats? Typical, critics said. The Democrats choose purity over politics.
Some people can't see that Franken's resignation stems from values as well as politics. The Democrats are signaling to every women who ever faced sexual discrimination (which is a lot) that the party is their home, and they are creating conditions in which President Trump's past lechery has the potential to be as threatening to him as past entanglements with Russia. U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the leading Democrat in the Franken purge, said Monday he should resign.
Will Gillibrand's call amount to anything? I have no idea. Given what Trump and the Republicans are willing to do to secure Judge Roy Moore's victory in Tuesday's Senate election in Alabama, I doubt it. But achieving concrete results is only part of the reason for political parties. They exist to provide, as clearly as possible, an expression of the principles they believe serve a majority of Americans in their particular time and place. In this post-Harvey Weinstein moment of reckoning, the Democrats are building a platform from which to say: Freedom is your destiny in the 21st century, and our brand of liberalism is the means of achieving that fate.
snip
I suspect the women driving this moment of reckoning with no end in sight have heard Edsall's reasoning a few times. I suspect they know a thing or two about not speaking up about the man in charge for fear of retaliation. If these women took Edsall's flawed reasoning to heart, we would not be witnessing this renewed liberal moment. Thank God, they didn't.
snip
summer_in_TX
(3,882 posts)I wasn't aware of Stoehr back then.
But I did not agree that Franken's conduct as far as I could tell at the time rose to the level that he should be forced to resign. But I didn't get much insight into the details of later accusations from the accounts I read so I may have missed it.
He was incredibly effective in digging into all the Russia connections, and I always figured that was the reason he was targeted. The rush to judgment and not allowing time for a full investigation was deeply sad.
cliffside
(1,447 posts)The candidates who have raised at least 100k
scroll down to see money raised, there are three other Dems besides Platner.
https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_election_in_Maine,_2026
Mills campaign money is not listed as she joined later after being recruited by Dem Senate leaders, see linked article below. I'm guessing she'll have good financial support from some group of people.
https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2025-10-14/maine-gov-janet-mills-enters-crowded-democratic-race-to-unseat-susan-collins
Posted here earlier, Jordan Wood is right behind Planter for funds raised, Dem Senate leaders recruited Mills.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220744517
cliffside
(1,447 posts)Sounds like a great Dem/liberal guy, but he wrote something against a candidate that Bernie Sanders previously endorsed, so he's our guy?
Forget everything else he espouses.
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2025/10/how-trump-can-bust-dem-money-machine.html
"On September 22, 2025, President Donald J. Trump designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Now its time to cut off their funding and go after those groups that support them.
In 2023, Freedom Center Investigates exclusively reported that Antifa was raising money through the same Democratic Party platform used by the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). When Kamala became the candidate, the Harris-Walz campaign went on to use that same platform. And the DNC and Antifa are both still on it today..."
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2025/10/mamdani-will-unleash-violence-against.html#more
AND
Mamdanis Terror Mosque Called For Taking Over America
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2025/10/mamdanis-terror-mosque-called-for.html
From his website ... and so much more.
DemocratSinceBirth
(101,437 posts)Ocelot II
(127,905 posts)but this article is by one Daniel Greenfield, who is a writer for the David Horowitz Freedom Center. What we should know about the David Horowitz Freedom Center is that it is a very conservative, anti-Islam organization that is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a far-right organization and a hate group. Whether or not there is truth to the allegations in the article, should DU be citing materials from a source the SPLC calls a hate group?
LuvLoogie
(8,359 posts)Like he was trying just a little bit too hard to seem populist rebelly. I was skeptical. Still am, since.
As I remain skeptical of Michael Avenatti
betsuni
(28,482 posts)Myth that only working class can understand inequality and any political experience means a record of how one works with others, compromise and incrementalism, fundraising and other sins.
Democrats are bashed as out-of-touch wealthy elite establishment incapable of understanding inequality (exception for FDR who was a secret socialist, another myth).
If a candidate comes from a middle or upper middle class background, good schools, university, entrepreneur, worked for a presidential campaign but when deciding to run for office herself turned into a minimum wage working class outsider, then what happens when you want to write a memoir? You can't! The story isn't true. Nothing wrong with middle class! It's silly.
It's so stupid, this working class on a pedestal thing. In solidarity, revolution, okay whatever. Americans don't obsess about class.














