What does the science say about these tests? And should you take one? Here’s what you need to know before making a decision. (This isn’t professional medical advice; consult your physician before making any decisions.)

1. What are these Alzheimer’s blood tests?

In 2025, regulators began clearing a new kind of blood test that identified blood proteins associated with the buildup of amyloid beta in the brain, a phenomenon that some organizations say can be a sign of early Alzheimer’s long before any other symptoms emerge. These tests have been found to be very accurate at identifying amyloid buildup in people’s brains.

2. My memory seems to be OK. Should I take the test to determine my risk of developing Alzheimer’s?

Probably not. The test is accurate only for detecting amyloid — not for the development of dementia (see article). In people without cognitive impairment, the test accuracy is less accurate than a flip of a coin. 

3. I’m forgetful.  Should I take the blood test?

If you are worried about your memory, you should see a neurologist who can conduct careful clinical and cognitive testing. Many people grow forgetful over time but are not cognitively impaired and will never develop Alzheimer’s. Up to 51 percent of people who test positive for “mild cognitive impairment” will revert to normal without medical intervention within one to four years. If testing shows you are cognitively impaired, your neurologist will recommend tests to determine why you have memory problems.

4. If I am tested and my result is elevated, should I take the drugs?

There is no research showing that treatment with the new Alzheimer’s drugs, including Kinsula and Leqembi, has meaningful clinical benefits. These same drugs have been associated with disabling and potentially fatal side effects.

5. If I take the test and it’s negative, does that mean I won’t develop dementia?

No, Alzheimer’s dementia accounts for only about 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases, which means even if an Alzheimer’s test came back negative, you could still be at risk. Also, since the test detects amyloid, which increases in the body with age, a single test will not tell you anything about your risk in subsequent years. But that doesn’t mean you should be automatically testing yourself every year: With repeat testing, the risk of false positives increases, bringing with it anxiety, potential denial of insurance, and misattribution of new symptoms. 

6. What is the most effective way to prevent dementia?

A large study found that doing things like getting blood pressure, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia under control; getting proper sleep; exercising regularly; and limiting alcohol intake was not only safer and more effective than new Alzheimer’s drugs, but could also cut the risk of dementia onset or progression by “nearly half.”

You’ll hear Katz tell the story of how he recruited Platner — and the foundations of Platner’s strategy for swaying Trump voters:

“These are guys I launch at the dock with every morning. When we talk, a lot of the time it’s about how corrupt our political system is and how billionaires have far too much power, and regular people deserve to have a voice in our politics. It doesn’t seem that fucking hard. And I think his theory is gonna prove out right.”

You’ll also hear Katz on President Donald Trump’s use of power:

“ Trump made the Republican Party powerful again by dismissing a politics of myths of budget deficits and austerity. And for a million things you can criticize Trump on, you can’t criticize him for not being aggressive in his use of executive power. There are lessons to be learned in that.”

And on the Democratic Party itself:

“There is a segment of the party that still believes we are in an existential battle to protect the institutions and the powers of faith. I would argue that is a deeply wrong theory. The institutions as they exist now are going to fall ...the question is not ‘will things be torn down and rebuilt?’ It’s a question of who’s gonna rebuild them.”

TRANSCRIPT

Following is an automated, unedited transcription of this episode. The text may contain grammatical or spelling errors, especially for proper nouns, or attribute text to the wrong speaker. If you plan to quote any part of this transcript, please first confirm that it is correct by listening to the audio.

[00:00:00] Natalie Bettendorf: From The Lever's reader supported newsroom, I'm Natalie Bettendorf. Last week on Lever Time, you heard David Sirota's candid car interview with US Senate candidate Graham Platner. Today, we're sharing another exclusive interview from David's trip to Maine. It's an interview with Morris Katz, the 26-year-old political strategist who ran Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign in New York City.

Morris also helped convince Graham Platner to run for Senate, and now he's one of Platner's lead political strategists. As the primaries march closer, David wanted to check in with Katz. So they met up at a crowded bar in Portland, Maine. David asked the rising star strategist about his hopes and frustrations with the Democratic Party, and where we go from here.

David started out by asking Morris to tell the story of how he recruited Platner in the first place.

[00:00:57] Morris Katz: The, the first time I met Graham, he really thought Harvard Master was gonna be the peak of his political career. And like some local folks we'd known through labor had flagged him and had talked to him, and I, you know, came to meet with him.

And within five minutes, I felt like, "Oh yeah, this guy's the real deal." Like this is a unique... You know, I think people throw around the term too frequently, but he might meet the criteria of like generational talent. And his analysis of where our politics were and his love of Maine also, which I think is like a, been a massive part of the success.

You know, 'cause it's one thing just to have really good politics and to like, be able to articulate the fact that billionaires are fucking us all. But for him, it was all like, just inherently how he thought about things, deeply rooted in how much he loves his state. And then on top of that, the like, I remember one of the things he said, and, where he was like, "The thing that drives me insane is the way Democrats talk about people who voted for Donald Trump, and as if they're these alien species that we have no idea how to win back."

He's like, "These are guys I launch at the dock with every morning. And when we talk sometimes about, you know, day to day our lives and bullshit, and a lot of the time it's about how corrupt our political system is and how billionaires have far too much power, and we just deserve regular people have a voice in our politics.

And it doesn't seem that fucking hard." And I think his, his theory's gonna prove out right.

[00:02:23] David Sirota: I, I talked to, um, some people who have, who have said that not just Graham, but Graham as an example of like, criticizing the party is why the party is unpopular or has contributed to why the party is unpopular.

What, what do you say?

[00:02:42] Morris Katz: I think let's, let's build a party that's popular enough that the only way to be viable and that isn't to criticize it, and also that people who actually... Right now it is impossible to both- Be someone who can authentically view things the way working people in this country view things, and also view things as having, like, a Democratic Party that works.

Like, those are incoherent and incompatible things. And so we need to build a party where that's not the case.

[00:03:13] David Sirota: Well, I gu- I wo- I would ask you a personal question about, like, wha- how did you get to that viewpoint?

[00:03:18] Morris Katz: Of hating the party?

[00:03:20] David Sirota: Yeah, of like, "We need to do X, Y, and Z. The Democratic Party needs to be a, a different kind of party, and the Democratic Party...

You, you can't actually fight fascism without cr- changing the Democratic Party." Like, where did all that come from in your journey?

[00:03:33] Morris Katz: My, my kind of... The, the moment that fully cemented my beliefs in, like, the corruption of the powers that be was when I was a campaign manager in a US House race in North Carolina in 2022.

And the candidate I was working for was up 20 points in the polls, like a month out. Really incredible woman. It was Erica Smith, who was a pastor, a teacher, lived on the same family farm that her great-grandfather had been enslaved on in rural North Carolina. Like, an objectively, like, really good candidate, I think, and a good person.

And eight years prior in the state senate, she had voted in support of a BDS bill. And AIPAC came in and spent $3 million in the home weeks of that race, taking things deeply out of context, never mentioning Israel, distorting the facts, and she lost that race by 25 points, 30 points. And it was a district where there was no press, so there wasn't even the ability to have, like, press covering this absurd intervention.

And watching that happen, not in spite of the Democratic establishment, but because that was where the Democratic establishment was. And then I'll also say, like, even recently, the primary in New York City, where not that long ago, the entire New York establishment came together to say Andrew Cuomo is unfit to be in office.

And then the moment it was politically convenient and it seemed like he was going to inherently be backed, everyone fell the fucking line. And they were talking about someone who's, like, a sexual predator, who defunded the MTA, who created a fake caucus to keep Democrats out of power, and no one fucking cared because they thought it was convenient, and it's what the donor class had lined behind.

And the moral cowardice that that requires, the lack of any backbone or any beliefs, like, I think is just... I will not n- ever move past that. That

[00:05:21] David Sirota: was your radicalizing moment.

[00:05:23] Morris Katz: That was... I would say, like, I kind of have my, like, kid radicalizing moment that kind of helped shape the worldview. And, like, that was my moment of the, like, there is a rot that is not about the whims of a political moment, but is about a fundamental lack of courage and beliefs.

[00:05:40] David Sirota: Where the populist, I'm putting that in quotes, lane or theory to change the party because the party is, like, pathetic and immoral, et cetera, et cetera Like, is it rooted in ideology or is it rooted in, like, these people-

[00:05:57] Morris Katz: If you care about winning- Yeah ... regardless, like even if you, if you thought corporations are incredible and we need them, and healthcare is better if we have a private sector healthcare.

But if what you actually cared about was winning, then you would be saying no Democrat should take corporate money, and every Democrat should be saying Medicare for All because those things fucking poll incredibly popular time after time after time. And that's the kind of reality. It's an electoral analysis in that sense of it, it is the only path to a new kind of majority and to a generational majority and to a party that people don't have to fucking run against to win.

I also think you would have to be fucking blind to not think we're at, like, a moment of devastating income inequality. And income inequality is actually only one of the crises we're facing. We just can't even fucking get to the other ones until we face this. Like, we can't get to the mental health crisis a new generation faces, the climate crisis that's destroying the fucking planet, until we tackle the crisis that's, like, right now.

And to, for people who don't understand that judgment, I mean, even like some of the people right now in New York are upset about the pied-à-terre tax. I mean, I'm like, how out of touch you have to be with where the electorate is right now, with where people in America are right now, to think that. It's like go to other countries where the rich have 20-foot walls around their homes and 30 security guards to keep them safe because of what income inequality looks like.

That could be here too, because that's where we're headed if there isn't, like, a radical intervention.

[00:07:30] David Sirota: Why do you think we went from Obama to Trump?

[00:07:34] Morris Katz: I think it's a mix of things. A- and I think I'm, I'm more Obama sympathetic than you probably. Uh, not a, a low bar to clear. Um But I think no one going to jail after 2008 is, like, was a thing that looms large.

I also think that there are a lot of things that, like, I, I, I do not think Obama could have gotten more than he got in Obamacare with that Senate majority. But I also think sometimes it's important that people see you fight even if you lose, and I think a culture that at oftentimes in, like, the heat of political negotiations makes sense of, like, "This is a backroom negotiation, we gotta iron it out here," ends up, like, robbing people of some faith in democracy and in this project.

And so I think those are components then. I, I also think, like, what drove his popularity with the American electorate was that he was an outsider who was taking on a broken Washington and was aggressive in his rhetoric towards Wall Street, and no one, like, the, like, class of consultants and staffers and politicians who came out of it somehow entirely missed that.

[00:08:39] David Sirota: I th- I think the, the... I asked Graham this question, I'll ask you this question. Um, so if, if this is an- analogous to 2006, this moment, midterm, second-term president, like- How, how are the m- the, if not mistakes, then the failures, h- how do we not repeat the cycle, right? S- 2006 leads to 2008 win. '09 and '10, you know, arguably didn't fully deliver.

You know, like, I think all that has... Like, how, how, how are we just not in the same time loop?

[00:09:15] Morris Katz: I think we need to learn from the past. Um, I mean, o- one thing I'll say, which, who knows, this could be the same situation here, is like, I think, like, as a thought exercise sometimes, I'm gonna... How different is the Obama era if the Great Recession doesn't happen?

And just, like, the analysis of, like... And it's, like, a le- a less sexy part to talk about, but I think there's a reality of, like, the political capital that was used early on that, and the kind of the budget realities of that, and the sucking of ambition of that. But I think, I think you need things that redefine the day-to-day existence of people, and it's never been easier to feel like a piece of shit, like, than it is in contemporary society with social media, with post-COVID, all those different things.

And I think the issue right now is people wake up, and they feel, like, entirely alone and like no one cares about their lives. And the things that we then, like, took this thing of a, as a party where we became apologetic for government, and I think it's one of the biggest mistakes we made. And then it's like, to be electable, you have to still be apologetic about government.

It's like we will never win on those grounds. We should be relentlessly communicating about the importance of government, 'cause now we have, for the first time, and it's a lot of the problems we face. Like, if you're under the age of 60 or even older, you have not actually seen the social safety net in this country change.

Like, there was a generation that got Social Security, and remember that that was not a, that was a controversial thing, and then got Medicaid and Medicare, that saw highways paved where there were never highways before, that saw, like, government. And then we've, like, to use it, like, one thing I, a mistake I think Obama made was when he apologized for his, like, "You didn't build that alone" comment.

And it's like, no, that should be who we are as a party. Of course you didn't fucking build it alone. You drive on a road the government fucking paved, the government maintains, after dropping your kid off at a school that the government pays for. And then when, when you're sick, you're able to get better because of the fucking government subsidizing healthcare.

And, like, that is government, I think, like, being deeply unapologetic and thinking of the new ways in which we need to reimagine. You know, I think, like, a new New Deal is over you of all that stuff, but I think it's true of, like, there's no... Because I think sometimes, you know, people do the thing of they're like, "Well, is Medicare for All enough?"

And it's like Medicare for All is not gonna change everything. It's like, well, no, of course, but no one's saying it's enough. It's about Medicare for All, and universal childcare, and raising the minimum wage, and making it possible to start a small business again, and breaking up monopoly. Like, and then people are like, "Oh, okay."

It's like, no, that's actually, that's what the New Deal was. That's what the New Frontier was. These aren't, it's not a radical concept, and we just need people who embody that and fight for it. I mean,

[00:11:40] David Sirota: it kinda sounds like what you're saying is that, like, if the Democrats are going to be, whether fairly or unfairly, known as the party of government- They have to actually defend, tout, and own making it work.

Like, you can't just be the party of government then be like, "Government sucks." Like, that- it's, it's a problem.

[00:11:57] Morris Katz: No, like, well, yeah, for better or for worse, that is the lane we have. Right. And so why would you suddenly create a context that is inherently worse for you? It makes, it makes no sense. And I think, like, I, and I actually think, like, the best evidence against this, even if just that it's no longer a liability in any way, is Trump.

Trump made the Republican Party powerful again by dismissing a politics of, like, myths of budget deficits and austerity. And for all the a million Trump things you can criticize him on, you can't criticize him for not being aggressive in his use of executive power. And then there's, like, DOGE is a good example, where it's like he runs on way stuff, and it...

Early, they fucked it up, but early on he's like, "We're doing it, and we're going with the fucking wrecking ball, and we're gonna move quickly and with the full force of the government." And there are lessons to be learned in that. Well, so

[00:12:53] David Sirota: there's the whole no kings thing. One takeaway from the no kings thing is, like, when the Democrats get power, they should use their power to disempower themselves to prevent a king.

I would ask you, um, something I'm thinking a lot about, which is, like, actually should they just use all the power that Trump has accrued? Like, should they go the entire other way? Like, no bad kings, we're gonna use all the power.

[00:13:18] Morris Katz: Like- I, I think a, a different... Uh, a, a, a thing I talk about sometimes that I think is just a version of the same thing is there is a segment of the party that still believes we are in an existential battle to protect the institutions and the powers that be.

I would argue that, like, that is a deeply wrong theory of the case. The institutions as they exist now are going to fall. Like, things will not continue to work the way they have. The question is not will things be torn down and rebuilt, it's a question of who's gonna rebuild them, and the sooner we get to that place, the sooner we can be, like, having serious conversations.

[00:13:53] David Sirota: Yeah, I mean, are you... I, I mean, there are so many things a president could do with all that power. End wars instead of starting them. Yeah, t-totally. I mean, the EPA designation that climate... You know, the, the cl- you could go the entire other way and say, like, all the greenhouse gases are null, right? Like, I, I, well, I worry the Democrats don't wanna use power.

I wanna circle back to Graham for a second. One thing that Graham talks a lot about is power, the politics of power. It's, like, very much about we are going to use power. It's not just like, "They suck, I'm not gonna be them." I mean, I feel like underneath all this is, is, like, the idea that Democrats are perceived as not being seriously interested in using power for anything.

Is that a fair way to look at it?

[00:14:39] Morris Katz: Yes. I think it's like what's radical is the idea that- regular people don't have power. And the idea of no, we have power, is fundamental to this project, and is also kind of just the theory of change thing. And, like, that's, that's what Graham's tapped into, where he's not asking people to blindly believe in him.

He's asking people to take back what's theirs, and he's, like, distributing power to them.

[00:15:06] David Sirota: You're, you're picking out candidates to work for that are, that are, um, of a certain ilk. Like, talk to me a little bit about, like, how you would describe the kind of candidates you wanna work with. So

[00:15:17] Morris Katz: I, I, I believe in a big tent party.

But right now the tent is, like, structured in all the wrong ways. We are a big tent party where you can basically vote however the fuck you want, believe whatever the fuck you want, as long as you're willing to take money from anyone and everyone. And I kind of feel like we should flip that . Where it's like, yes, every place is different.

Like, we should not have the same politics in the mayor of New York as we do f- in the center of Montana. But I think Jon Tester was a really good member of the United States Senate, and I think Zohran Mamdani is the best mayor in the country, and there should be room for both of them in our party.

Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester, I would say probably, I could be missing someone, but like are, are the two best, like, non-Warren, non-Bernie senators. And they were in the two of the most competitive seats and had the two biggest over-performances. It's not an electoral thing. It's like a DC culture of corruption thing, where it's like we actually care more that you're just, like, willing to cash an APAC check than we care about anything else.

And I think we need a party that does not take corporate money, and a party that believes we're in a moment of economic crisis. And outside we should be able to disagree on a lot of other things, but let's be able to agree on those things.

[00:16:27] David Sirota: So there is a through line between somebody in Montana and somebody in New York City, even though they wanna pretend like they have nothing to do with each other.

[00:16:34] Morris Katz: I think there's a, there's a through line in, yes, in, like... I think there's a through line in people who are willing to stand up to corporate power and moneyed interests to deliver tangible things to make people's lives better. And again, that sounds, like, really simple, but that's actually just not in any way where the party is right now.

[00:16:55] David Sirota: I guess la- last question I would say is, like, talk to me a little bit about what the reaction from the DSCC, the D triple C, the sort of the old, the Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer, that, that whole blob to, like, what you're trying to do. Because I ask that question having gone through that myself. Like t- 15 years ago, there was less of a space for what you're talking about.

Like, I'm just curious, like, what, what that experience is like. What do you hear from them?

[00:17:21] Morris Katz: I'll be honest, like, there are... There, one, there's not, like, a ton of frequent touch in general. I think there's a little bit of a, uh, on the, on the Senate side particularly, like where we're in, I do actually believe that the people in that building care very deeply about winning the United States Senate.

Like, I, I think that that is true. And obviously we are sometimes at- dramatic, dramatic odds in our analysis of what that should look like. But I think they're like smart, good faith people regard. And I think it's just coming from a different theory of politics, but there's like a shared respect in that we are up at night thinking about the same problem.

Um, I think on, it's interesting. Like there's some races where you're seeing this theory come into place, like Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania, for example, like has the blessing of Josh Shapiro and the blessing of Bernie Sanders. And like Bob is awesome. And I think he's going to flip that seat and he's going to be an incredible member of Congress.

There are other places where it's like, there's still more of a tension. I think there's, it is a club and no one is thrilled when like a, someone who wasn't invited crashes the club. Um, and that's a little bit the moment, but I think, you know, there are a lot of bad faith actors in our politics, but a lot of the time I think people, everyone in those are like actually have good things at heart, but have been plugged into a more broken, larger system.

And it's just a tug of war of trying to fundamentally change that system so that decisions are easy to make. Thank you.

[00:18:49] Natalie Bettendorf: Thanks for listening to this special bonus episode of Lever Time. And thank you for your support. You make our work possible. We'll be back later this week with a new episode of Lever Time.

Gone was all mention of “Project SAFE HAVEN,” the “question-based AI interface” that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planned to use to track immigrants and categorize them as potential threats. But that wasn’t all: The company also scrubbed details about its leadership and past clients.

Now, a Lever review raises questions about whether several of the people and undertakings that Edge Ops advertised in the lead-up to its multimillion-dollar government deal actually exist. 

In one case, a company that Edge Ops has claimed to have partnered with on wildfire detection technology told The Lever that it was not working with the vendor at all. 

In another, Edge Ops used a stock photo for the headshot of its ostensible lead computer scientist, for whom it included no easily identifiable biographical information.

While these references have vanished from Edge Ops’ website, questions about the company and its new millions still linger.

An opaque vendor evading standard competitive bidding to win a valuable ICE contract — this is largely par for the course amid Trump’s immigration spending blitz. The GOP megabill last year handed ICE an unprecedented $75 billion windfall. The agency has since gone on a spending spree to build out its surveillance and detention infrastructure, to the benefit of longstanding ICE vendors like private prison companies and tech giants.

But the case of Edge Ops — which has Pentagon ties but no apparent federal contracting experience as a company, and which was apparently founded to own a sailboat — brings up fresh concerns. The company’s questionable bona fides offer a glimpse into the wild west of Department of Homeland Security contractors, where smaller and more obscure wildcat vendors are also vying to profit from Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“It’s unique. Let’s put it that way,” one industry attorney, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, said of Edge Ops’ $12 million contract.

Edge Ops did not return repeated requests for comment from The Lever, nor did the Department of Homeland Security.

The Case Of The Missing Executive

The first public indication of Edge Ops’ work for ICE came on April 13, when ICE released a public notice of the $12 million sole-source contract. As The Lever revealed the following day, the purchase was for an analytics tool called Project SAFE HAVEN, which purportedly deploys AI to map out the routines, habits, and “patterns of life” of immigrants targeted by federal authorities.

ICE purchased Project SAFE HAVEN analytics for its Homeland Security Task Force, a project designed by White House homeland security advisor and anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller. Led by ICE’s special investigations division, Homeland Security Investigations, the task force is a collaboration between ICE, the FBI, the military, and other federal agencies. It is made up of more than two dozen regional task squads around the country,

The task force claims its focus is on hunting down transnational criminal organizations, not civil immigration enforcement. But concerns about mission creep have dogged the project since a White House executive order launched it in January 2025. 

As ProPublica reported last year, some federal law enforcement worried privately “that the new task forces will focus on rounding up undocumented immigrants who have any sort of criminal record at the cost of more significant organized crime investigations.”

A description of Project SAFE HAVEN previously featured on Edge Ops’ website seemed to validate some of these concerns. The vendor boasted that the tool, purchased for use by the task force’s National Coordination Center in Virginia, “transforms the way we identify, locate, and map illegal migrants.” It did not reference gangs or cartels. 

William Owen, communications director of the watchdog group Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, called the descriptions of Project SAFE HAVEN “highly concerning and alarming.”

"This sort of contract — multimillion dollars — really reflects the revolving door between agencies like ICE and spyware firms,” Owen told The Lever.

After The Lever reported on the contract, Edge Ops stripped all information about Project SAFE HAVEN from its website. At the same time, the photo and bio of Edge Ops’ top computer scientist disappeared from the site’s “leadership” section.

An archived copy of the company’s website preserves the previous details of its leadership team, an iteration that was live as recently as April 16. The old page featured an executive named Diya Das, who “leads the development team.” In her bio, Das was described as an “innovative and results-driven computer scientist” with a “proven track record of developing robust, efficient software.” 

Look closely, though, and Das’ headshot bears a watermark that reads “Dreamstime,” a popular online stock photo website. Her bio, meanwhile, contains virtually no identifiable biographical information, such as her alma mater or previous employers.

In fact, the image that Edge Ops was using for the computer scientist is a stock photo that The Lever identified on a variety of other websites, including an online therapy platform and a life coaching service. The photographer selling the image is based in the United Arab Emirates, according to his Instagram profile.

The original image is still on offer for royalty-free use on the Dreamstime website under the caption, “Indian lady relax on sofa using tablet look at camera.”

The Lever provided its findings on Das, among other abnormalities in company marketing materials, to Edge Ops and asked for clarification. The company did not respond to these inquiries.

“I Have No Clue Who This Guy Is”

Stock photo or not, Das may still be a real Edge Ops employee. But it’s not the only questionable detail that has now been removed from the company’s online marketing materials.

Until April, the company suggested on its website that its services had been used on an “ultra-early” wildfire detection technology. 

“Working [with] Dryad Networks, Edge is helping to deploy an AI driven wireless environmental sensor network,” the blurb read. It was one of several projects — including Project SAFE HAVEN — that Edge Ops said online was “enabled by” its technology.

Dryad Networks is a German company that sells wildfire sensors. The photos of the technology that Edge Ops displayed on its website are found in Dryad’s marketing materials.

But when The Lever contacted Dryad to inquire about its work with Edge Ops, the company said there was no partnership between the two firms. 

“We are not working with Edge Ops LLC, or at least I am not aware that we do,” Carsten Brinkschulte, the company’s CEO and co-founder, wrote in an email to The Lever.

When The Lever asked if Dryad had worked with Edge Ops founder Robert Piccerillo in any other capacity, Brinkschulte said he had never heard of him.

“I have no clue who this guy is, and I don't know why they use photos of our tech,” Brinkschulte wrote. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Piccerillo did not return multiple phone calls and text messages from The Lever about Edge Ops’ claims, including its work with Dryad.

Edge Ops no longer lists its work with Dryad on its website.

Additional attempts by The Lever to identify past clients of Edge Ops led to similar dead ends. In March and April, the company’s home page highlighted a quote from a satisfied customer: Sarah Mitchell, identified as the “chief operating officer” of “InnovativeTech Solutions.”

“Working with EdgeOps has been a game changer for our business,” Mitchell was quoted as saying. “We highly recommend EdgeOps to anyone looking to enhance their business operations and drive sustainable growth!”

No Sarah Mitchell at such a company appears online, however. And when Edge Ops updated its website, it altered the reference, reworking several lines of the quote and changing the name and attribution to simply “Sarah” at “Operational Mission Support.” 

The final line now reads: “We would strongly recommend Edge Ops for mission-critical analytic support.”

Charles Tiefer, professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law who formerly served on a federal commission investigating government contracts during the Iraq war, called The Lever’s findings “worrisome,” especially given the nature of the technology detailed in the company’s new no-bid contract: AI-driven surveillance.

“I think they make submissions as part of their claim for being the one and only responsible source that are misleading to the government,” said Tiefer. 

Smooth Sailing

There are two names associated with Edge Ops that are less slippery: Robert Piccerillo and Jennifer Piccerillo, its chief technology officer and CEO, respectively. The husband and wife have longstanding ties to the defense industry.

Robert “Pic” Piccerillo, an Air Force veteran and former Defense Department official, first incorporated Edge Ops LLC in 2014 with a Maryland address. At the time, it did not appear to be hawking surveillance technology. Incorporation documents obtained by The Lever show that its listed purpose was “To house and to hold a new sailboat.”

But when Trump won a second term in 2024, the company’s name resurfaced. On November 6, 2024, the day after the election, Edge Ops LLC was registered with the federal government contracting website Sam.gov. It claimed to be a “veteran-owned business,” a “women-owned business,” and a “small disadvantaged business,” all categories that improve vendors' chances to score government contracts, thanks to various federal programs.

Jennifer, who also served in the Air Force, has a defense industry background as well; she worked for the weapons company Raytheon for several years as a program manager.

Jennifer Piccerillo did not answer multiple email, text, and phone inquiries from The Lever.

According to his bio, in 2009, Robert founded an information-sharing hub at the Pentagon called the Multi Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE). Although its website is now defunct, internal descriptions of the project bear similarities to the Trump administration’s Homeland Security Task Force and National Coordination Center.

MACE was focused on breaking down information silos in the many arms of the U.S. security state. The operation would promote “greater information sharing among the Department of Defense and its partners,” including the Department of Homeland Security, per early descriptions. 

MACE was subsequently run in part by private industry, led by the Sierra Nevada Corporation, a major defense and aerospace contractor. Sometime in 2025, the project’s website was taken down.

It’s not clear when Piccerillo left the Defense Department or what work he has been engaged in since. In addition to his role at Edge Ops, he is listed as a director at Candy Data Analytics, an arm of U.K. logistics firm the Candy Group that was incorporated in November 2024. 

Two weeks after The Lever reported on ICE’s $12 million no-bid contract with Edge Ops, the agency released heavily redacted documents related to why it had made the purchase without allowing other companies to compete for the opportunity, as is standard practice.

In the documents, ICE argued that Edge Ops was “the only one source that can provide analytic support services” to the Homeland Security Task Force, despite other vendors expressing interest. 

According to Tiefer at the University of Baltimore, dubious sole-source contracts have abounded under Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. During former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s tenure, the agency used an emergency exemption to award $220 million in contracts to a firm to which she had close personal and business ties.

“It seems like competitive procurement is the exception rather than the rule," Tiefer told The Lever. "They have a lot of money, they're in a rush, and they don't want to follow the rules.”

Tiefer and other experts interviewed by The Lever said they were skeptical of that justification in Edge Ops’ case.

“The fact that other defense and security contractors don't have the capability to provide this is a bit unusual,” the industry lawyer said.

Tiefer added that the $12 million price tag for Project SAFE HAVEN was “an incredible amount for a tiny firm.”

While it’s possible that Edge Ops is partnering with other vendors to provide its technology, the procurement documents say that “they do not subcontract out their work, only Edge Op, LLC [sic] employees can perform the required services.”

They have created a fiction inside their mind pretending that for the first time in American history, a population was economically pulverized as oligarchs were given bailouts (that were never paid back) — but in their telling, all of that somehow never affected our country’s politics.

Are they right? It is an important question — so important that we decided to spend two years reporting on it for an audio series called Meltdown. It is important because this isn’t some academic argument about history. It is actually about the future, and about whether we are about to repeat the same cycle that originally led to Trump.

First, let’s understand some motives: Liberals and country club Republicans (“Never Trump Republicans”) need to believe Trump flipped 200+ Obama counties for any and every other reason than the economic cataclysm of the late 2000s and the government’s pathetically weak response to it. They need to believe that because that way, they can still tell themselves that we can go back to a pre-Trump “normal” of professional liberals and country club Republicans getting rich in yuppie information economy gigs while working-class voters are economically massacred by both parties’ deregulation, free trade, and neoliberalism.

In short, believing in the possibility of resurrecting this previous “normal” is a coping strategy for a relatively affluent segment of the population that was quite comfortable for a long time. But that economic “normal” was bad for the much larger swaths of the nonaffluent population — and one of their coping mechanisms ended up being casting exasperated votes for Trump, American politics’ equivalent of the Joker.

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Yes, it’s obviously true that many factors were at play in Trump’s rise, including Democrats’ terrible candidate selection as well as racial resentments that can intensify at moments of economic crisis. But pretending the election hinged on everything other than voters’ deep disillusionment after 40 years of economic immiseration capped off by a financial crisis, bailouts, and get-out-of-jail-free cards for rich bankers — well, that’s just absurd.

Sure, the exact political and electoral effects of the financial crisis and its aftermath might be difficult to concretely quantify, but there were effects, they were indisputably real, and I’d say they were generally a deep sense of disillusionment that Trump opportunistically took advantage of.

“I was 34 and just had my first (only) child when (Obama) was elected,” as one person on X put it. “It was the culmination of 16 years of being politically active to get this supposed progressive elected with a 60-seat senate. The disappointment isn’t measurable because so many chose to disengage in the aftermath.”

What’s amazing about liberals’ coping strategy of denying this reality is that it defies not only logic, but also what we know of history. We know, for instance, that financial crises tend to lead to the rise of right-wing populism. In Europe, one comprehensive study found that “financial crises put a strain on democracies: government majorities shrink, parliamentary fractionalization rises, the number of parties in parliament increases, and the far-right parties see strong political gains.”

America isn’t much different. The stagflation of the 1970s led to the Reagan Revolution, just as the financial crisis and Democrats’ weak response to it led to Trump.

Of course, America did once deviate from the trend during Franklin Roosevelt’s tenure — but not by accident. Unlike modern-day Democrats, Roosevelt vigorously combated his era’s economic crisis and its attendant threat of fascism with the New Deal. He understood that his economic program designed to deliver for the working-class wasn’t just economic — it was a political weapon to preserve democracy and stop the rise of the far right. You can tell he knew that from his 1938 fireside chat:

Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations — not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership in government. Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.

We in America know that our own democratic institutions can be preserved and made to work. But in order to preserve them, we need to act together, to meet the problems of the Nation boldly, and to prove that the practical operation of democratic government is equal to the task of protecting the security of the people.

Trump’s horrible tenure and policies may give Democrats another chance to wield power. If Democrats do win office, it is imperative that they heed Roosevelt’s warning and do not repeat what happened after 2008, which led to Trump’s rise.

But Democrats and their liberal fans constantly and smugly soothe themselves by pretending the rise of Trump had nothing to do with the financial crisis or economics — this pathological denialism threatens to create the conditions to repeat the same cycle we experienced in the trajectory from Obama to Trump. 

Indeed, if a Democratic president takes office and then isn’t serious about delivering for the working class because he or she believes liberals’ fantasy that a failure to do that had nothing to do with Trump’s rise, then they are likely to repeat the same failures — and the next version of Trump who emerges is likely to be as equally malicious as the current president, but far less incompetent.

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The counter to all of this is always the same: In the age of filter bubbles and algorithm-amplified partisan punditry, liberals have been indoctrinated to immediately reject anything that challenges the stories they’ve been telling themselves. They inevitably scream that any mention of Democrats’ shortcomings in the past is just a cynical ploy to divide Democrats and help Republicans and the far right.

But I see it exactly the other way around: If you don’t want another political cycle that leads to an even more destructive right-wing authoritarian in the future, then part of the work in the here and now involves disabusing a whole generation of liberals and emerging Democratic politicians of their self-soothing fictions about their own party.

After all, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it — and that should be unacceptable to everyone.

Muzzling Musk

A group of Texas residents have sued SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace company, alleging that acoustic pressure from its rocket tests have damaged their homes.

The 77 residents take issue with SpaceX Starship test flights, which have taken place for the last five years in Boca Chica Village, Texas, since renamed Starbase, after SpaceX bought up much of the property there. 

The residents allege that Starship flight planning relies on acoustic calculations for much older rockets, underestimating their impact on the surrounding communities. The Starship is significantly heavier and significantly louder than Apollo-era rockets and SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 rockets, which are currently used for crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station. 

Researchers had long noted the Starship’s risk to residential communities near the launch site. One test flight in 2024 was 50 percent louder than a supersonic Concorde jet’s sonic boom. For years, the Concorde was banned from overland flight. That is, until President Donald Trump lifted the ban last year.

The Federal Aviation Administration gave SpaceX permission to increase its Starship rocket launches in Texas to up to 25 liftoffs per year — five times more than previous limits. Regulators authorized that expansion while Musk was working in the Trump administration to rip up regulations impacting his own companies.

A Week Of First Amendment Wins

For the second time, a federal judge has blocked the Justice Department from accessing a Washington Post reporter’s devices that the department obtained in a search of her home in Virginia.

The FBI searched the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into a government contractor who the Justice Department alleged had leaked classified material to her. At the time, The Washington Post’s executive editor denounced the search as an “extraordinary, aggressive action.”

Lawyers for Natanson and The Washington Post argued in court that the seizure of her devices, which was conducted through a search warrant, violated Natanson’s First Amendment rights. In February, a federal judge allowed the Justice Department to keep Natanson’s devices, but stopped short of allowing the government to review them until after the court had decided whether the data in the devices were relevant to the government’s investigation of the contractor. 

The government appealed that ruling. But now another judge has upheld the earlier ruling, noting that a small portion of that data on Natanson’s devices is relevant to the prosecutors’ case against the contractor.

The judge’s decision comes on the same day as The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize’s prestigious public service award, largely for Natanson’s coverage of the Trump administration’s slashing of the government’s work force and federal programs. The Pulitzer Prize Board also belatedly honored a friend of The Lever, Julie K. Brown, for her groundbreaking investigations into sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, years after one editor helped block such recognition.

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Farm Aid 2026

The Republican-majority House passed a $390 billion farm bill on April 30, updating major federal agricultural and food policy for the first time since 2018. 

The bill reaffirms the Trump administration’s assault on social programs first passed into law in last summer’s GOP megabill, The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, expanding work requirements for SNAP benefits and preserving cuts to the program. But in the margins, Republican infighting between Big Ag interests and supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement allowed the passage of amendments expanding food benefits and protecting farmers and consumers.

Under the House bill, hot rotisserie chicken would now be an eligible purchase for SNAP recipients. Though hot prepared foods are historically ineligible under the government food-assistance program, rotisserie chickens have become recognized as an affordable, versatile product that Americans consume across multiple meals.

Democrats and Republicans also voted to strip language from the bill that would have banned states from imposing cancer-warning labels on pesticides. No state currently requires such labels, even as research supports such a move, but the decision could open the door for states to regulate pesticides and related products. Trump’s environmental regulators have been working to ban states from warning people about pesticide risks, and the Supreme Court is considering a case on whether companies are liable under state law to health-related lawsuits for not including such warnings.

The farm bill now goes to the Senate for consideration, where Republicans will need Democratic support to bypass the filibuster.

Meatpacking Management Strikes Out

Workers at a Colorado meatpacking plant won concessions from managers in the industry’s first major meatpackers’ strike in 40 years, three weeks after they walked off the job on March 16.

The strike went against the workers’ national union, UFCW International. Under UFCW’s national agreement with JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, workers had agreed to a 90-cent wage hike over two years and a new pension plan.

But the 3,800 workers of the Local 7 union at the company’s flagship plant in Greeley, Colo., had demanded greater wage increases and an end to a company policy charging workers for personal protective equipment required for their job, such as gloves and arm guards.

Under the new agreement, workers at the plant in Greeley, Colo., won’t join the pension plan. But they will receive a $1.50-per-hour wage increase over two years and be reimbursed for the equipment the company has forced them to pay for in the past year. 

The strike was notable for its threat to the nationwide meatpacking company. The Greeley plant is responsible for 6 percent of the country’s beef slaughterhouse capacity, according to an industry consultant, and the strike occurred while beef prices were already high and U.S. cattle ranching was suffering from declines.

The Justice Department announced this month that it was investigating meatpacking companies for anti-competitive practices. Just three other companies, alongside JBS, control about 85 percent of the country's beef processing market.

Big Pharma Cleans Up Its Mess

On Thursday, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a $12 million investment for drug recovery groups in the city, focused on hiring 500 people with histories of drug addiction trained to help others.

The money goes “right back into the communities that were ravaged by the opioid crisis,” Mamdani told Lever reporters, who attended the announcement. “Peer specialists are so uniquely situated to combat this crisis because they themselves have experiences of substance use disorder. They come with a level of credibility that so many others do not in this work.”

The investment draws from legal settlements the state of New York made with pharmaceutical companies for their cultivation of the opioid epidemic. New York has received more than $190 million from those settlements, and is expecting to receive more than half a billion dollars in total over the next 15 years. The city spent $41 million of that fund last year on substance abuse services, with plans to disperse $48 million this year.

Five years ago, opioids contributed to 85 percent of drug overdose deaths in New York state . That declined to 76 percent in 2024.

In this episode of Lever Time, you’ll hear Platner on where he thinks the Democratic Party went wrong, why he thinks the United States swung from President Barack Obama to President Donald Trump, how he feels about combat and war, his latest views on gun policy, and, if he wins, what kind of senator he intends to be.

A full transcript of today’s episode is available below.

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TRANSCRIPT

Following is an automated, unedited transcription of this episode. The text may contain grammatical or spelling errors, especially for proper nouns, or attribute text to the wrong speaker. If you plan to quote any part of this transcript, please first confirm that it is correct by listening to the audio.

[00:00:00] David Sirota: Beth, you ready?

[00:00:05] Maine Resident: Sorry, Dave. Just real quick. Can I just say hi to you? I just need proof that this-

[00:00:06] David Sirota:  Yeah, of course. Of course. Let's do it. Let's do it.

[00:00:07] Man on the Street: I just need proof that this actually happened-

[00:00:08] David Sirota: Let's do it ...

[00:00:08] Maine Resident: 'cause nobody's gonna buy it.

[00:00:11] David Sirota: Email it to me, okay? Okay.

[00:00:15] David Sirota In Studio: From The Lever's reader supported newsroom, it's Lever Time.

I'm David Sirota.

[00:00:18] David Sirota: All right. So you're gonna record ...

[00:00:22] Matt the Driver: Ryan's grabbing the lavs.

[00:00:23] David Sirota In Studio: What you're about to hear may be one of the most consequential car rides in American politics right now, not because I'm in the car, but because of where I was going and who I was traveling with.

[00:00:35] David Sirota: Hello.

[00:00:36] Graham Platner: Hey. What's up? Nice to meet you.

[00:00:38] David Sirota: I'm so glad to meet you. Uh-

[00:00:40] Graham Platner: As am I.

[00:00:41] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:00:41] Graham Platner: I just have to...

[00:00:43] David Sirota In Studio: that's Graham Platner. He's a military veteran, an oyster farmer, and as of last week, he's also Maine's presumed Democratic nominee for United States Senate in a race that could end up deciding control of Congress amid Donald Trump's authoritarian rampage.

I traveled to Maine last weekend to spend a few days following Graham Platner on the campaign trail. I wanted to see how voters were responding to Platner, this first-time candidate and long-shot underdog running against the Democratic Party's preferred candidate, Maine Governor Janet Mills.

But two days before I hopped in the car with Platner, this happened.

[00:01:20] CBS 13 News Archive Clip: A major new development in Maine's hotly contested US Senate race as Governor Janet Mills decides to suspend her campaign and drop out of the race.

[00:01:29] David Sirota: With Janet Mills out of the race, the fate of the US Senate midterm elections, and perhaps the future of the Democratic Party and America, were suddenly in the hands of a man who the party establishment does not want in office, a man who, in his high school yearbook, was voted, quote, "Most likely to start a revolution."

Here's Graham Platner speaking shortly after Mills dropped out.

[00:01:52] Graham Platner: We both got into this race because we knew how critical it is to defeat Susan Collins, and her decision today reflects a commitment to that project.

[00:02:02] David Sirota: So there I was on a rainy Saturday afternoon in Maine, about to spend the next two hours with US Senate candidate Graham Platner.

We were going to drive north from a carpenters' union rally in Portland to a town hall meeting as this pivotal figure entered the next chapter of his Cinderella story of a campaign. I've interviewed Platner once before, and I've been following him online for months, watching him push his populist message about affordability and the fight against oligarchy and corruption in Washington.

He told me once that my podcasts, Meltdown and Masterplan, heavily influenced his worldview. As the car started rolling, I kinda felt like I knew who he was. But as he buckled his seatbelt, a thought flashed through my mind. What if Graham Platner is not who I imagined? What if he's totally different behind the scenes on the back roads of rural Maine?

And if so, what does that mean for the fate of the elections and this country? Today on Lever Time, we're bringing you along for this car ride. For the next hour, you're gonna hear Graham Platner speaking in his own voice without a podium or a teleprompter. And just as a heads-up, this is an unfiltered interview, so you're gonna hear some strong language that may not be appropriate for younger listeners.

But you're also gonna hear Graham Platner talk about where the Democratic Party went wrong, why he thinks America went from President Barack Obama to President Donald Trump, how he feels about combat and war, where he arrived at his controversial views on gun policy, and if he wins, what kind of senator he really intends to be.

That's all coming up on today's episode.

[00:03:47] Matt the Driver: Okay. Buckle up will you, buddy.

[00:03:48] Graham Platner: Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:48] David Sirota In Studio: We're on the road to Appleton, Maine, a tiny rural town where US Senate candidate Graham Platner is set to hold a town hall and speak with voters who are curious to see what he's all about. The community meeting is set to be in a barn on the outskirts of Appleton, a town with fewer than 1,500 residents.

These are the people who Platner wants to reach, working class folks, some of whom voted for Donald Trump and who do not trust Democrats. With Platner now on track to become the Democratic Senate nominee, his campaign is entering a new phase. So I started by asking him how he was feeling about everything.

[00:04:25] Graham Platner: I mean, this whole experience has been surreal in ways that I can barely describe it. But since, I mean, Thursday happened and we got the news, we weren't remotely expecting it. I mean, we had just the day before, like, had a bunch of meetings about the next six weeks and debates and all this stuff And then that occurs and all of a sudden you're standing there and you're just like, "Oh, huh,

fascinating."

But at the same time, we legitimately are doing this very differently than campaigns are usually done.

[00:04:55] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:04:56] Graham Platner: Yeah. And, and what we set out to do at the beginning of this thing was, was to organize. When my wife and I agreed to start, "Well,

[00:05:06] David Sirota: yeah,

[00:05:06] Graham Platner: it has to do this," our one real stipulation was that we treat this thing like an organizing project first.

[00:05:11] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:05:12] Graham Platner: And everything else comes out of that. One, because I think that is the electoral strategy, and it's a win. I believe this kind of politics, and I think a lot of people, we've all been sitting around for years waiting, hoping. You know, Bernie came along in '16, again in '20, gives us like kind of a glimpse of it, but then the system turns around and smashes him down.

And, but he, you know, he kept, he kept it up. He kept moving forward, and now as things get worse, it's like the right-wing populism can never fix any of these fucking problems. It never has in history. It just takes advantage of people's anger. That anger still exists, and the material conditions that create it still exists.

You know, fuck it. If we have a chance to use a US Senate race as like an organizing tool, then let's do it. And that's what we've been doing, and then it like actually worked. I mean, deep down inside, I think a lot of us The early campaign folks, we were all like believers. Some people in the campaign got told by the Democratic Party like, "You will never work in politics again."

People got told that like their, their careers were gonna be over. I got told they were gonna fucking destroy my life and like rip everything apart. I mean, all the threats, all of it. And we all told them to go fuck themselves because, you know, who cares? And they can't take away like my boats-

[00:06:27] David Sirota: Right ...

[00:06:27] Graham Platner: and my wife.

[00:06:28] David Sirota: Right.

[00:06:29] Graham Platner: Not in that order. My wife comes first. Oh, right, right. My wife and my boats, and my dogs and my house. When we set this thing in motion, and we've just been kind of doggedly plugging away at it, Thursday comes and it's like, "Oh, that's great. It worked." But it also is like, but the project isn't remotely close to being finished.

Yeah. So it's like we... And the way to finish the project is to continue doing exactly what we've been doing. Journalists all week are like, "Oh, what's the pivot to the general look like?"

[00:06:55] David Sirota: Yeah, I mean- Yeah,

[00:06:55] Graham Platner: it doesn't really look like much actually. It looks like us, we continue to just do the exact same thing.

Just, yeah,

[00:06:59] David Sirota: plow ahead. How applicable is it to elsewhere, or is there something about Maine whi- that makes it possible to do? Like, the size of it, like what-

[00:07:08] Graham Platner: I mean, we definitely from the beginning felt that doing this kind of politics in Maine is kind of a unique opportunity. One, because the population is small.

Many of us, but we're spread out. So a lot of us live in very small communities. And even though with all the political polarization, people still know each other and people still show up for each other. But community still exists in Maine in a pretty serious way. Mostly it's out of necessity. And that is an asset that we get to take advantage of.

That's an asset that I think is specifically applicable to this kind of politics. No

[00:07:50] David Sirota: matter who you meet, you're two or three degrees of separation

[00:07:53] Graham Platner: from all state. I have this joke. I'll be in every part of the state and I'll be like "Does anyone in this room know my mother?" And invariably someone laughs and puts their hand in the air because that's the kind of place that it is.

And it also means that like if you're not full of shit, if you're like an actual normal person, it's pretty easy to start... Like, people will know that fast because they'll literally be like, "Nah, my cousin knows that guy." Big one recently is people are like, "Oh, no, I was at a wedding and that guy was literally shucking oysters at it."

[00:08:23] David Sirota: Yeah, right.

[00:08:23] Graham Platner: Yeah. And, and like, "And I talked to him and he clearly-" Yeah ... is like a nice..." Like it's, you know, there's like that kind of, that kind of stuff.

[00:08:28] David Sirota: I'm just gonna go right to it. Why do you think We went from Obama to Trump

[00:08:35] Graham Platner: Because we did not stop the neoliberal project. That's why. I think that we went from Obama to Trump because, one, I think people really did think in a way that, like, we were going to do things differently.

After the Bush years, I think people really did, like... They were like, "This is not good, and we want change." But I... There was, I think, still less of an understanding than there is today th- of kind of, like, how we wound up in this, like, economic and political situation in the first place. You know, it's... I mean, things like Master Plan didn't exist yet.

[00:09:12] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:09:13] Graham Platner: There had not yet been this kind of more public discussion about the long-term project that got us there. And so when Obama comes in and so many people are, like, looking for this, like, significant change, and then materially we kind of just continue with the same, like, neoliberal policies, the same idea of...

I think it, it's, it... Even though it wasn't the same exact thing, but it was still trickle-down economics in some ways. I mean, that's bailing out the banks and not bailing out the homeowners. I mean, that's what that is. And we continue the forever wars. You know, like, all of the stuff that I think a lot of us were looking to actually shift, and then it doesn't.

That engenders an intense amount of anger and frustration and I think total disillusion with the system itself. And then I think, you know, when you look at the old blue wall labor states, there was just the fact that it had just been another eight years of a continued, a subversion of the power of labor.

And you continue to see places that used to be strong, strong unions, like, like bastions, they just became Trump-voting places. And I think that that was part of the disillusionment there, but I, I honestly think that is much more connected to the Democratic Party continuing to not show up for organized labor in those places.

And so you've got folks, their material conditions are getting worse. They want things to be different. They, they just got excited and thought they were about to be different, and they weren't. And then Donald Trump comes along and says, "No, it's all fucked up. All these people are scumbags. All these people are stealing from you.

The system's rigged against you. American carnage," which ironically he has now absolutely created. Yeah. But, like, that whole thing, you know, we all got beaten into the ground by this, like, long neoliberal project that was always bound to fail for working people, and that was it.

[00:11:17] David Sirota: Do you think, like, rank and file Democrats, liberals have reckoned with that vis-a-vis Obama?

[00:11:25] Graham Platner: It's a good question.

[00:11:27] David Sirota: Do you think there needs to be a reckoning? Without.

[00:11:29] Graham Platner: Yeah. No, with- without question. And I wanna make it clear, like this... My criticism is... It's not, like, of Obama personally. It's really just kind of of... 'Cause, you know, Obama hired a lot of old Clinton advisors. Like, a lot of the same people, a lot of the same...

That, that political apparatus that brought us triangulation, these same people who, who at one point were like, "No, it's... Billionaire money is more important than a union." And then, you know, over time you just get people who are kind of ideologically committed to that. Like, it starts off possibly as political cynicism, but after two decades, now you just got people that believe this shit.

And, and I think, you know, I do think we need to have a reckoning within the Democratic Party, that

for the Democratic Party to continue to exist, for it to have any hope in the future, in my opinion, it needs to excise from itself corporate power and a relationship with, with neoliberalism, uh, quite frankly. And right now in a lot of places of leadership and a lot of places of power and all the consultant class and all the...

That's all still, I think, quite strong. I mean, that's why you're seeing this huge shift between that part and the, and the members, the actual rank and file Democrats who may not have yet that exact critique. But I'll tell you, man, I mean, going around Maine, talking to a lot of, I would say, people would probably call them normie Dems, they get it They're like they might not like they might not yet have read exactly the books, but man, they're going to here in the next year or two like they're on the path.

[00:13:09] David Sirota: So 2006 midterms, Bush, Democrats win big.

[00:13:14] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:13:15] David Sirota: That's like let's call that the equivalent of right now. Then the Democrats, you know, knock on wood, it's not Vance Trump 2028. I guess the question for you is like what has to happen to not repeat 09 and 010 turning into then 16?

[00:13:36] Graham Platner: One, and this is literally one of the main reasons I'm doing this, is that we need to have very public and loud voices explaining exactly what the fuck happened back then and explaining exactly what we need to be doing now.

And what we need to be doing now is getting that way of thinking, getting that ideology just out of the party. I'm all for a big tent. I firmly believe that. Like nobody has to have my exact politics. We can disagree on some stuff, plenty of stuff, actually. But there should be no place in the Democratic Party for someone who is like chummy with Silicon Valley tech bros.

There should be nobody who like has a close relationship with fossil fuel companies. Like and if people want to go have an argument with themselves about whether their kind of progressive social ideas are more important than like protecting billionaires' taxes or lack of taxes, go have that fight in the Republican Party.

Make that their problem. Because I think we just need to be very clear that that is not a thing that we should welcome at all in our party. And the only way to get there is to frankly like have the conversation. Because I'm convinced that the moment you say this stuff out, I mean, that's why this thing's working so well.

People are already there. The rank and file is already there. We got to say it out loud and bring it about in that way. When we, fingers crossed, get power here hopefully relatively soon, next few years, if we do not show up for the American people in a strong material way, if we don't go after the institutions and the people that have been fucking us all this whole time, if we don't do that, we don't get this chance again.

And the next version of Donald Trump is not gonna be incompetent, and the next version of Donald Trump is not just gonna be, like, a bunch of bumbling idiots or just happen themselves into power. If the next version is competent and good, we are in a very dark place. I mean, what's crazy to me is I really think the opportunity to not have that happen is so there.

I'm not gonna say it's easy, but to me it's so clear what we have to do, and that is the moment we get power, we start wielding it. You know, I mean, last night I, uh... You know, Tim Walz, Klobuchar spoke, and I remember when, when they got the, uh, the, the House and the Senate and the governor of Minnesota. Yeah.

I think, like, with one sit. And they show up, and they just start passing everything. Yeah. And it's just people are like, "No, don't do it. It's gonna swing too far back." And you're like, "Fine. Make the Republican Party take things from the American people."

[00:16:15] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:16:16] Graham Platner: We should be the party that gives it to them, and if the Republican Party wants to come along and say, "Hey, yo, that healthcare that you got, we're taking that back," do it.

Do it. We need to, like, fine, give that a shot and see what happens.

[00:16:30] David Sirota: How much of it, of the failure to deliver on those- things has to do with money. A lot. And if it has to do with money, what I worry about is that, that for every campaign that can happen like this, where, like, the conditions are right, perfect storm, Bernie helps, there's grassroots fundraising, it's a national Senate race.

[00:16:56] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:16:56] David Sirota: One level down, you know, my wife's in the legislature. My wife cannot nationalize her legislative campaign, right? Yeah. She can't do it.

[00:17:05] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:17:05] David Sirota: Right? She runs the budget of a whole state.

[00:17:07] Graham Platner: Yeah, exactly. And I- That's what the party's supposed to be for. The Democratic Party needs to be rebuilt, essentially from the ground up, because, uh, you're right, she can't do that.

That's what the party's supposed to exist... Like, we have political parties in this country that essentially have forgotten what political parties are supposed to be. One, they're supposed to have ideology.

[00:17:26] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:17:27] Graham Platner: But be like, uh, it's not- Yeah ... just supposed to exist for the sake of existing, it's supposed to have a thing it wants to do.

Right. It's supposed to have a politics that it actually, like, can... Not even just, like, use as a foundation, but at least the politics it can just remotely articulate in some way, which it just-

[00:17:45] David Sirota: Yeah ...

[00:17:46] Graham Platner: don't really... I mean, the Republicans have that.

[00:17:47] David Sirota: Yeah, they do.

[00:17:48] Graham Platner: That's the problem. As long as the party continues to act as this, like, essentially this, like, sort of meeting of consultants, and a way of moving a, an immense amount of donor money into the pockets of the campaign industrial complex, which is exactly...

I mean, which I have now learned is insane. I was already angry.

[00:18:11] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:18:11] Graham Platner: And then I did this, and I was like, "Oh, God, it's, like, so much worse than I could have ever imagined." But, like, that's what the party's for, and I'm not, I'm not saying this is gonna be easy. It- f- from my perspective, it's just a fight we have to have.

[00:18:24] David Sirota: Right. So what I'm asking is, if the party is basically a slush fund of money- essentially, and consultants who broker that money. Like, is it public financing of elections?

[00:18:35] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:18:36] David Sirota: What's the, the thing or set of things to break the stranglehold of that money?

[00:18:43] Graham Platner: This is the problem, where it's like the chicken and the egg thing that we run up against, which is- The answer is it's absolutely structural.

I mean, people forget, but you know, Zohran pulls off New York because of matching funds. That was huge, and that's just a structural thing that exists in New York that they got... they could take advantage of. Here in the state of Maine, we have ranked choice voting. That's a structural thing that's gonna... I mean, not in my race exactly.

Yeah, yeah. But like, but across the board though, that does give a bit more small D democracy. Yeah. Uh, I mean, look, I mean, long term, uh, elections should be publicly funded.

[00:19:18] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:19:18] Graham Platner: And they should last about two months.

[00:19:20] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:19:20] Graham Platner: And if a billionaire looks at a TV ad the wrong way, we put them in prison. And like, like it's, uh, it, we...

But it's gonna take a while for us to get there, and that's... And this is one of the reasons why I'm so focused on building, at least in Maine, or rebuilding I should say- Yeah ... the old coalitions. The old coalitions of organized labor, of civil rights groups, of community organizations, of the, the old way of actually doing politics, which is engaging with people, and often, like, helping them.

I mean, this is like, this is a thing that we always kind of forget about, but like, there was a time where political parties in this country had offices that you could go to and like say, "I'm having problems," and there were there, there were people to help you. Not constituent services when you call your senator, but like an actual political party.

And unions still do that. Immigrant rights groups still do that. Community organizations still do that. That all still exists, but it isn't... It's been turned into this kind of like pseudo politics where we look at those things and we tend to think of them as almost separate from the political system. The

[00:20:32] David Sirota: political system is the campaigns, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, blah, blah, blah.

And then there's like this other

[00:20:37] Graham Platner: thing, like there's the movement stuff. Mm-hmm. And, and I think we need to, and I mean, that's what we're doing on this campaign, is rebuilding the, the old coalition. And the Democratic Party is going to have to come along if we build the power. We're not gonna convince anybody.

I'm not a reform candidate. I, I'm not-

[00:20:58] David Sirota: What does that mean?

[00:20:59] Graham Platner: It means I, I do not see myself as like entering the system and then just, like, working only within its confines to, like, convince people that they're doing the wrong thing. I believe in political revolution. I believe in the need for it, and I think a lot of Americans actually believe in the need for it.

Reform candidates, I think often they only think about power within the context of the institutions they're going to work in, and I think that power is far more expansive than that. I think that activism plays an intense role. I think mass mobilization plays an intense role. I think things like non-violent civil disobedience, withholding labor, these are things that are...

These are centers of power that we have essentially forgotten are part of the- The political landscape, and I think a lot, like, people that are, like, just like reform folks are like, "Well, we're just gonna go into it and then use the levers of power within it." And I think an accurate reading of American history shows that's never worked.

Uh, it, it only works when those people are working in a coordinated fashion with the outside power, with a broader coalition of groups.

[00:22:11] David Sirota: I spent two days with Obama in 2006. He was explicitly... I- in the way you've described it, he was explicitly reformist. Yeah. Like, there are these boundaries. We can maximize stuff within the boundaries, but I understand the boundaries.

[00:22:29] Graham Platner: If you simply believe that power is only inherent in the institutions, y- you're never gonna be able to actually do big things. And you need to fundamentally believe that power is far more expansive. It really does require tactics, strategies, and coalitions that we just haven't had.

[00:22:49] David Sirota: Okay, so the co-option system is incredibly powerful.

I feel like-

[00:22:55] Graham Platner: Oh, yeah ...

[00:22:55] David Sirota: I feel like you're still in the, like, they have to celebrate Janet Mills. They, they don't wanna offend her. At a certain point, if you win, I saw this happen to Jon Tester when I lived in Montana. I think he was the last candidate to defy the DSCC. The DSCC had picked another candidate.

Jon won. Jon was like, "I'm going to DC." I'm like, "I'm never gonna be Max Baucus," who was one of the worst senators. Jon became the biggest recipient of lobbyist money. Yeah. I mean, he's fine, but in other words, he was co-opted very quickly. That, that is, like, such a cliche thing- Yeah ... that happens. Like- So

[00:23:30] Graham Platner: Mr.

Smith Goes to Washington and just gets subsumed by-

[00:23:33] David Sirota: Right. They're nice about it, right? They're like, "Here are all the gifts." Right. They're not mean. They're not, like, twisting your... They're like- Right ... "Look at, eat at this table," and all these... What's the way you-

[00:23:42] Graham Platner: One, it's to follow the advice that Bernie Sanders gave me on the first time he and I spoke.

[00:23:46] David Sirota: Yeah. What'd he say?

[00:23:48] Graham Platner: Bernie said, "You come down here, they're gonna invite you to all the things, and they're gonna tell you that you have to go to them. They're gonna tell you that that's the way you're gonna make the relationships. It's gonna make all of this work." He's like, "I will tell you, you don't have to go to a single one."

He's like, "I don't..." He's like, "I've never worn a tuxedo." Jane was, joked out to my wife.

[00:24:10] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:24:10] Graham Platner: Anne was telling my wife pretty much the same thing.

[00:24:12] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:24:12] Graham Platner: And she was telling this great story. She goes, "Bernie went to one black tie event the whole time he's been in Washington."

[00:24:17] David Sirota: Oh, I know that.

[00:24:18] Graham Platner: And, and he was there, and he was the only guy there.

Well, there were two guys there who weren't wearing tuxedos. Bernie was one. The other one was for who the event was for, which was Nelson Mandela.

[00:24:29] David Sirota: So it's like, don't go to the things, but, like-

[00:24:33] Graham Platner: Well, it's, it's, I think it's, it's a little bit... I mean, the don't going to the things is actually just, like, a material move of a deeper thing- Yeah.

Yeah,

[00:24:38] David Sirota: yeah ...

[00:24:38] Graham Platner: which is that- Uh, I don't wanna be their friends Yeah And that doesn't mean that, like, I wanna, like, not do anything, right? It means that I'm not going to, like... Now, I will build, I hope, and continue to build very close relationships with the people I've already built relationships with, 'cause the Warrens, the Bernies- Yeah

the Van Hollen, like the- Yeah ... the, these are the people who I see as... 'Cause for me, in many ways, this is just a power building project. We just need more of them. Uh, hell, we get, we get 10 senators who can align on some very clear policy things- Yeah ... and act as a bloc.

[00:25:14] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:25:15] Graham Platner: Joe Manchin could keep poor kids from getting food by just being one asshole.

If we have 10 people who are doing it for good reasons- Yeah ... I mean, that's a substantial, that's a place of real structural power.

[00:25:27] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:25:27] Graham Platner: And to do that, like, I don't think I need to, I, I don't need to engage closely with the, all the other parts of it I, I don't want to engage with. But then there's also the element that, like, I don't wanna fucking do this.

Like, this is not some lifelong thing I wanna do. I would rather be an oyster farmer. I love my life. It's a good life. I worked real hard to build it, and if I'm gonna go down to Washington and lose that life, and have to go through all this bullshit, this is only worth doing if I can, like, engage in the project I want to engage in, and that is a project of quite literally restructuring the American economy, and restructuring the American political system.

And if I can't, like, just... That's the only reason I wanna do this. I know these are just words that I'm saying, but to me, it really does feel like there is no amount of cozying up or giving me things... My wife and I live off $60,000 a year. We're happy as shit.

[00:26:25] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:26:26] Graham Platner: Like, there's nothing that I, like materially, that I could ever want that would have me, like, not wanna continue in the project I've chosen.

[00:26:34] David Sirota: But I think there's also, like, are you, are you willing to, like,

embarrass the people who are on, quote unquote, "your team"? Like, I can ima- Like, I'll give you an example. I can't imagine this, but I want to imagine this. Like, you dealing with John Hickenlooper. Okay? Like, John Hickenlooper is, like, the worst, uh, like, Democrat. He's not as b- bad as a Republican, but he's, he's- You know, like he's been real bad.

Like I ju- uh, but he's like sort of a nice guy. Yeah,

[00:27:06] Graham Platner: yeah.

[00:27:06] David Sirota: And like- Yeah ... he's not the kind of person you're gonna be like, "I really want..." Like- Right ... interpersonally, I wanna embarrass him 'cause he's like a nice guy even though I... Right, and I'm not picking on him. I'm just like using him as a proxy. Yeah.

Like, that's also part of this. It's like, well, I don't really wanna embarrass-

[00:27:22] Graham Platner: Yeah, but I'm... Look, man, I'm, look, I'm going to war here. Like, this is a... Look, I think class war is a real thing.

[00:27:31] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:27:31] Graham Platner: And I think it's been being waged for a long time and being won by the very wrong side.

[00:27:35] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:27:35] Graham Platner: And this isn't like a, this isn't a hobby for me.

[00:27:41] David Sirota In Studio: We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, Graham Platner gives his definition of, quote, "the working class" and how he plans to help them. We'll be right back

Welcome back to Lever Time. I'm still on the road speaking with Graham Platner.

[00:27:58] Graham Platner: I do 100% believe that a political revolution is entirely necessary. Yeah. Um, Bernie does too.

[00:28:05] David Sirota: Yeah. And

[00:28:06] Graham Platner: it comes from the fact... But then, so there's all of that, and then there's the, like, my lived experience.

[00:28:12] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:28:12] Graham Platner: Which is obviously my military stuff- Yeah

which, you know, whatever, it's got its... That sort of opened me up, 'cause I'm pretty bitter-

[00:28:20] David Sirota: Yeah ...

[00:28:20] Graham Platner: about all of that. But then I moved back to Maine in '16, and, like, literally qui- like, people have always struggled in Eastern Maine. Like, Eastern Maine is a place that, especially over the past however many years, you know, we've lost fish processing 'cause the Canadians subsidized the industry 'cause they have this thing called industrial planning.

Turns out it works, so they took away that, you know. We saw a collapse of the groundfish industries. Now we just have shellfish, which is great, and that's what keeps a lot of our working waterfront going. But, but then I started to watch folks, like, who that kind of... Like, it used to be a struggle, but you still owned your house.

Like, it used to be a struggle, but, like, you could still go to the fucking hospital. And now, like, it's a struggle and it's worse, and people struggle harder, and the hospital's further away, or you don't have health insurance anymore, or y- the fucking school has been consolidated and, and is in some ways, like, further away or collapsing.

Like, the level of education for students is diminishing. Like, all this stuff's happening, and I'm, like, standing there being like, "What the fuck?" I'm, like, in my late 30s at that point, and looking around and being like, "Well, this just happened." I mean, it wasn't like this when I was a kid.

[00:29:41] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:29:41] Graham Platner: And that... So that, that lived experience combined, I think, with just the deeper critique, and you're like, "Yeah, here we are."

Not only is, like, the larger system flawed, but we're living in the reality of a very clear path that we set on in the '70s, for God's sake. It's not even... You don't even have to go back in time, and it's like-

[00:30:02] David Sirota: Yeah ...

[00:30:02] Graham Platner: it's just all the same things.

[00:30:04] David Sirota: What do you make of, uh, of this, like, do you have to be of the working class to represent working class?

Like, how do you think about that? No,

[00:30:11] Graham Platner: that's insane. I, a- a- and, and l- and let's be very clear. Throughout history, the number one attack that the systems of power uses against anyone that wants to, like, build or standing up for working people, it always begins with some attack on their credentials as being, "Are you really working class?"

[00:30:32] David Sirota: Yeah, yeah.

[00:30:32] Graham Platner: I was in this race against Mills, and now I'm in this race against Collins, and people were like, "These are really working class." I'm like, "Well, they're fucking not." You know, like, like, what... Uh, I'll tell you, like, like, I mean, I've literally worked with my hands my whole life. I don't know how you wanna qualify it.

[00:30:47] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:30:47] Graham Platner: But like they haven't.

[00:30:49] David Sirota: Right, right.

[00:30:49] Graham Platner: Uh, they came from like historically powerful families. Yes,

[00:30:53] David Sirota: yes.

[00:30:54] Graham Platner: Uh, yeah, my grandfather was a successful architect.

[00:30:57] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:30:58] Graham Platner: I also grew up in Sullivan fucking Maine, and my mom is still working because she has no money.

[00:31:04] David Sirota: Right.

[00:31:04] Graham Platner: And we're trying to figure out like, quite frankly, i- if she can't sell her restaurant-

[00:31:10] David Sirota: Yeah

[00:31:10] Graham Platner: she's got no retirement.

[00:31:12] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:31:12] Graham Platner: And my wife and I are like, like... And I'm sorry, like that's, that's not the thing that happens. Like, my wife and I are, we're not like broke-

[00:31:21] David Sirota: Right ...

[00:31:21] Graham Platner: but there's no money at the end of the month.

[00:31:23] David Sirota: No, it's like ridiculous. I mean, it's like, it's like a, a who's-

[00:31:25] Graham Platner: No, I know ... who's poorer, who's...

But y- I think the actual question here, and this is, I got into it with some New York Times reporters the other day. Yeah. Of course, of course, The New York Times- Of course, yeah, of course ... is very, very into this very important question. And I was like, look, I, the real question here is like, what is the definition of working class today?

And for me, it's essentially everybody who isn't just making all of their money on an immense amount of wealth. If you start a business and you get successful, but you still have to go in every single day and work your ass off, I'm sorry, you fucking work for a living.

[00:32:02] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:32:02] Graham Platner: And chances are when you go home, when you look at your tax bill as a small or medium-sized business, you probably have moments you're like, "Fuck."

Right. Like, we're gonna have to figure out how to make this work You could make $25 million a year in this country. You are way closer to somebody living in poverty than any of the billionaires.

[00:32:21] David Sirota: I mean, you're, you're kind of saying, that's actually, I never thought of it this way. If you're making more of your money or most of your money p- as passive income-

[00:32:28] Graham Platner: Yeah

[00:32:29] David Sirota: Then you're not working

[00:32:30] Graham Platner: You're not working

[00:32:31] David Sirota: class

'cause you're literally not working.

[00:32:31] Graham Platner: You're not working. You don't work. I don't count working as, like, being a fucking CEO. Right, right,

[00:32:36] David Sirota: right, right.

[00:32:36] Graham Platner: Like, I'm sorry, like, like showing up and just- Right ... and doing this whole-

[00:32:39] David Sirota: Right ...

[00:32:39] Graham Platner: they're like, "Oh, no, I... We'll, we'll... Oh, no, we'll... Dude, we'll cut that." "We'll do this."

I'm like, "Nah, dog." Like, you gotta, like, show up and, like, talk to people at the workplace.

[00:32:47] David Sirota: Yes.

[00:32:48] Graham Platner: And they can... These New York Times reports like, "Well, the... That's a really expansive vision of working class." I'm like, you know what else is expansive? Wealth inequality.

[00:32:55] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:32:55] Graham Platner: So, uh, you know, if now that we have essentially no middle class-

[00:33:00] David Sirota: Right

[00:33:01] Graham Platner: we've got es- we've got frankly rich people-

[00:33:05] David Sirota: Right ...

[00:33:06] Graham Platner: who are still far closer and paying much more in any kind of, like, personal or tax burden-

[00:33:14] David Sirota: Yeah ...

[00:33:15] Graham Platner: uh, in, like, a- like, as, as people than all the corporate power and all the people that run the corporate power. Like, that's the delineation. It's... And it's, yeah, it's big, but that also...

It's fucking everybody.

[00:33:29] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:33:29] Graham Platner: And it is everybody. It is everybody. Because all of us don't own anything. And a couple people own damn near everything now. I mean, historically, this is, again, this is what... It, the, like, the system that begets that always protects itself by trying to drag us all into this whole deep argument about, like, well, who actually has the legitimacy- Right, right, right

to claim, like, get the fuck off.

[00:33:52] David Sirota: Right.

[00:33:52] Graham Platner: It's, uh-

[00:33:54] David Sirota: So the... I'm curious, the, the experience of being a candidate, um, I always recommend this, uh, to a bunch of friends who are running different ways. Uh, a- as a side note, you, have you watched, I, I, have you watched the movie The Candidate?

[00:34:07] Graham Platner: It's the first thing, like, so my wife had never seen

[00:34:09] David Sirota: it.

Okay.

[00:34:09] Graham Platner: But, but I, I've watched it a few times. And I hadn't really watched it since high school.

[00:34:12] David Sirota: Yeah, it's so good.

[00:34:14] Graham Platner: It's so good. It's so good. And, uh, I mean, I also love it because you almost don't even know what the point is.

[00:34:21] David Sirota: Right.

[00:34:21] Graham Platner: You're like, it gets to the end and you're like, "What?" Like, 'cause there is no distinct moment of, like, corruption.

There is no dis- like, there are only allusions- Right ... to the fact that he's, like, you know, being a philanderer.

[00:34:34] David Sirota: Yeah,

[00:34:34] Graham Platner: right. Like, like, there's all this kind of- Right, right ... all these things that you, you're kind of waiting for the moment.

[00:34:38] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:34:39] Graham Platner: And then the film just ends. Yeah. And you're like, do you know what?

Which I think is the point, actually. It's all

[00:34:44] David Sirota: bullshit. So I've seen that movie a bunch. Okay, I'm like, my hot take on that film, 'cause I think about it a lot every election cycle, is that it's like people think it's pessimistic, 'cause of the end where he says, you know, "What do we do now?" What do we do

[00:34:56] Graham Platner: now?

[00:34:56] David Sirota: Right.

[00:34:57] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:34:57] David Sirota: But I actually think it's optimistic by the filmmakers in that as he is more successful, as they hollow out his campaign, and he is more successful, he is more unhappy.

[00:35:12] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:35:13] David Sirota: Which is optimistic. In other words- Right ... most politicians would be happy. Right. Like, "I'm winning." Because, because- "I'm not d- I, I'm winning."

Right. "Who cares? I, like, this is great." Him being-

[00:35:22] Graham Platner: But he's losing himself.

[00:35:23] David Sirota: Right. And of course there's a scene in the back where he's like, he's saying the lines over and over again. Yeah. Does it, how does, how has this been for you?

[00:35:29] Graham Platner: It's a, it's an exhausting-

[00:35:31] David Sirota: Right ...

[00:35:32] Graham Platner: brutal fucking experience. Right. And to go through it as a regular person-

[00:35:37] David Sirota: Yeah

[00:35:37] Graham Platner: that was not preparing my life for this- Yeah ... uh, is, makes it so much worse, because, like, the, the apparatus that we're up against, the, the whole thing. Yeah,

[00:35:47] David Sirota: like, what's been the worst part? Oh. Or some of the worst parts.

[00:35:50] Graham Platner: Oh, uh, people insisting that I was a Nazi.

[00:35:54] David Sirota: Yeah. That

[00:35:54] Graham Platner: was fun. Yeah. That was, that was a real, a real special fucking moment- Right.

Yeah, yeah ... in my life.

[00:35:57] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:35:58] Graham Platner: And, and then also this kind of, this sort of conflation with, like, saying stupid shit on the internet as being, like, somehow, like, this irreparable thing that is gonna so obviously must mean exactly who you are. I'm like, what the fuck, man? I, like... And the thing is, I don't know any normal people that actually think like that.

You know? Like, it's, 'cause it's kinda nuts. Th- uh, so that part sucks. Honestly, it was really hard on my mom for a while. Uh, 'cause, 'cause she used to be really engaged and, like, local. She was, like, the Hancock County Dem... And she actually went as a delegate to the 2004 convention for Kerry. She was all psyched about it.

So, like, my mom, I think, has always had, like, a pretty positive vision of, like, the Democratic Party and Democratic politics. And then, like, this all happened, and she was like, "What are they doing to us?" She literally called me and she's like, "W- why are they, like... Why are these people, like, trying to destroy, like, our family?"

And I'm like, "'Cause we're not on their side, Mom." And, and, like, and so that, I think, was... That suck- it sucks to see, like, family members get dragged into this whole shit.

[00:37:08] David Sirota: How's your wife doing about it?

[00:37:09] Graham Platner: She's okay. She's, she's a fucking trooper, I'll say that.

[00:37:13] David Sirota: Is she, like, into it?

[00:37:15] Graham Platner: She's into it because she's into the...

I mean, she believes in what we're doing.

[00:37:18] David Sirota: Okay.

[00:37:18] Graham Platner: Um, it's hard.

[00:37:20] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:37:21] Graham Platner: Yeah. Yeah. I mean- Like, and to truly saint-like amount of patience and compassion to me in this whole thing, because she fucking does not like... I mean, she married a small-town oyster... The whole point of our life was that we were going to live in Sullivan, Maine with the dogs and the boats, and make a living on the sea, and have these small, uh...

And, and you just, like, put in time to our community. Like, that was the- I mean, do

[00:37:47] David Sirota: you ever regret it?

[00:37:49] Graham Platner: No.

[00:37:50] David Sirota: Don't, and- And, and I- There's no, there's no like, "I can't believe I f- I can't believe I did th-," like...

[00:37:54] Graham Platner: I mean, I have moments where I'm like, "Jesus fucking Christ," like, "my life would've been so much easier- Yeah, yeah

if I just said no." But throughout all of it, I mean, I just waited so goddamn long for this exact kind of politics. And I've listened to my friends and my neighbors, and all these people in my life who have also, like, for years, articulated the need for, like, this exact kind of thing. And then out of, literally out of nowhere, the opportunity to kind of make it happen knocked, literally knocked on my door.

And in the first-

[00:38:30] David Sirota: Who was it? Was it, was it Dan, or was it...? Yeah. It was Dan.

[00:38:33] Graham Platner: Yeah, it was Dan. Bro, Dan called me the night before. Uh, my wife and I, it was like 8:30 at night. We'd been shucking oysters at a party about an hour away from our house. We're driving home. I've got spotty reception. My phone rings.

It's an out of state number, but I do a lot of tours- Yeah ... on the oyster farm- Yeah ... so I get a lot of out of state calls. So I answer and it's Dan, and he's just, he's like, "Oh, hey, Graham?" I'm like, "Yeah." And like, "I, I'm at your mom's restaurant. We're, I'm looking for you." I was like, "What?" He's like, "Your mom gave me your phone number," because my fucking mother does not respect my privacy at all.

And I'm like, "Okay." And he was like, "Do you know who Dan Osborne is?" And I'm like, "Yeah, of course." He's like, "Oh, good. This will be much easier." I'm like, "Who the fuck is

[00:39:18] David Sirota: Dan?" You're like, "What is what? What is this?" And,

[00:39:20] Graham Platner: uh, and he's just like, "Well, uh, we, we work with Dan Osborne, and we're in Maine looking for somebody to run for US Senate."

And I, and no bullshit, my wife and I were both like, "Oh, they must be calling 'cause we do a lot of community activism. They're looking for names." And, and he was like, "Can you stop by the restaurant?" I'm like, "Honestly, dude, it's, I've been on the water all day. We just shucked oysters. I wanna go to sleep." "Come over tomorrow morning before you go out on the boat, 5:30, 6:00."

Uh, and so they do, and they come over and they're, and they come in. They're like, they kind of explain the project and I'm just like, "Oh, well, you should call this person." And they're like, "No." They're like, "We think you're the guy." And both Amy and I are like, "Yeah, that's the dumbest fucking thing we have ever..."

And actually, a very good buddy of mine had come up to stay for the weekend. He's, like, standing there in the kitchen, like, in his boxers drinking coffee- ... listening to it. He's just like, "The fuck is go- what, what the fuck is going on?" I'm like, "Ah, what the fuck?" So they leave, but before they leave, they're like, "Was that a hard no?"

I'm like, "It's 5:30 in the morning. I'm getting ready to go on the boat. You just asked me to run for US Senate. My wife and I are poor. Like, uh, like I kinda know how this works, and I know that we don't have the resources to ever make it happen, so I don't fucking know, man." And they came back the next week with Morris Katz.

[00:40:34] David Sirota: Yeah,

[00:40:34] Graham Platner: right. And- Yeah ... then we sat down for about three hours, and they laid out, like, an actual plan. Yeah. And all of a sudden Amy and I are like- There

[00:40:43] David Sirota: it

[00:40:43] Graham Platner: is ...

[00:40:44] David Sirota: shit.

[00:40:45] Graham Platner: But I mean, it's still insane, but like- Yeah ... it, like, on Friday it just seemed like the dumbest thing I'd ever heard, and on Monday it was, like, the almost dumbest thing I'd ever heard.

[00:40:53] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:40:54] Graham Platner: But then we had that, like, they left, and we kinda sat there, like, dumbfounded. And we spent a couple days. One day we'd pretend we said yes, and then the next day we'd pretend we said no. And then there was a day, uh, I forget exactly, but we're just kinda sitting there, and Amy just looked at me and she's like, "I mean, you have to do it.

If we don't do this," like, like, "we'll never forgive ourselves." Which is how I had been feeling the whole time.

[00:41:23] David Sirota: Were there any moments early on where, like, you did your first, where you were like, "Oh, th- I'm not sure I'm cut out for this"?

[00:41:31] Graham Platner: And that's how I felt the entire time. Uh, to be honest, it's really weird because people tell me things.

They're like, "Oh my God, you're so good at it." And you're like, "Fucking people are always..." And, "Oh, it's like you're like a generational political..." And they shut the fuck up. I don't know. It just, it's, it's, it feels so weird the entire time. And like, and I recognize, I understand that there's something about my personality and something that is clearly, like, effective.

I get that. But, like, I also... I don't know. Like, I'm fully convinced there are a lot more of mes out there that just the resources didn't knock on their door. And one of the reasons that the organizing for me is so important is, like, that's how we find all those other people. And when we find them, we need to have the resour- Like, we gotta rebuild the, we gotta rebuild a party, because the Democratic Party's not gonna do it.

[00:42:25] David Sirota: I have this pet theory that, um, Bernie Sanders is, is the right historical analog is Barry Goldwater.

[00:42:34] Graham Platner: Oh, I love that.

[00:42:36] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:42:36] Graham Platner: I love that.

[00:42:37] David Sirota: Yeah. Yeah. It's only 16 years between, everyone forgets this, worst election loss to then Reagan was 16 years.

[00:42:45] Graham Platner: Yep.

[00:42:47] David Sirota: I feel like

[00:42:47] Graham Platner: s- The only, like, you know, Goldwater never really gets power.

Right. Goldwater never really gets to see the, the, the, the outcome of the thing.

[00:42:53] David Sirota: Well, he, he saw it.

[00:42:54] Graham Platner: Well, it's true,

[00:42:54] David Sirota: yeah. His guy, his celebrity spokesperson becomes president. Becomes president.

[00:42:59] Graham Platner: Yeah. I love that

[00:43:01] David Sirota: That's my operating theory

[00:43:02] Graham Platner: I mean, the difference being that their version was bound to always eventually fail

[00:43:07] David Sirota: Yeah, and the other difference is their version i- is aligned with money

[00:43:10] Graham Platner: Well, that, that's what I mean.

It's bound to, like, eventually it's just gonna fuck everybody so badly Yes,

[00:43:15] David Sirota: yes

[00:43:15] Graham Platner: Like, and our version is bound to just fuck the money Yes,

[00:43:18] David Sirota: yes

[00:43:18] Graham Platner: Which is, I think, a long-term more sustainable strategy Yes,

[00:43:22] David Sirota: yes

[00:43:23] Graham Platner: But, yeah. Uh, the- Also morally the right kind of politics Yes But yeah, so

[00:43:26] David Sirota: I'm wondering, have you thought through, like, are there any positions that you feel deeply about in your heart that you suspect may not be entirely popular in Maine?

Like, is there anything that-

[00:43:45] Graham Platner: Guns

[00:43:47] David Sirota: In Maine?

[00:43:48] Graham Platner: Yeah, in Maine. I mean, you gotta understand, we did, we just, we passed that red flag law-

[00:43:53] David Sirota: Right ...

[00:43:53] Graham Platner: with flying colors. I do think things have changed around guns in Maine. I mean, it's still, like, I think probably my opinions are still aligned with a lot of people in Maine- Yeah

so it's not, like, a real political third rail. But I gotta say, like, assault weapons ban stuff I mean, I know a lot of people, uh, including a lot of like re- even Republicans who are, who aren't like gun people who are like, "Ah, it seems pretty reasonable. Maybe we should do that." And honestly, I just disagree.

And I, if we can, we can talk about

[00:44:20] David Sirota: it. I mean, y- so your views, meaning they're not, you're not just trying to, you know, represent-

[00:44:25] Graham Platner: Right ...

[00:44:26] David Sirota: the gun position as your deeply held view.

[00:44:28] Graham Platner: I've spent a lot of time in the gun world, and I, you know, I just know that like things like safe storage, limiting access, training, I honestly think those things are so much more like legitimately materially impactful than like banning a type of gun.

Because I'm so comfortable with firearms, I mean, people, people often make judgment calls around guns that are purely based off of like aesthetics that they see in movies. And I'm like, that has fucking nothing to do with... If you ma-

[00:44:58] David Sirota: Well, I mean, what about the argument that like anything that can fire that, that many rounds that fast Is like- Well,

[00:45:08] Graham Platner: the thing is like that's just a semi-automatic weapon.

[00:45:11] David Sirota: Right.

[00:45:12] Graham Platner: Which, like, can look a lot not like an assault rifle.

[00:45:15] David Sirota: Right.

[00:45:16] Graham Platner: I know that it's always unpopular when I point this out, but, uh, most gun deaths in America are either suicide- Well, yeah ... or take place with handguns- Right ... in g- in communities that have been historically under-resourced, exploited, and neglected.

Yeah. And if we really gave a shit about gun deaths, like gun deaths, gun deaths, not just like the gun deaths that suburban white keep people can picture themselves as being victims of- Yeah ... then we would be dealing with this in a much more holistic fashion. I mean, there's a part of it where I'm like, look, I own AR-15s, and I think it's entirely hypocritical for me to be like, nobody...

Like, I get to have them 'cause I bought them earlier. Right, right, right. And nobody else, but we c- like, I, I'm not a hypocrite.

[00:45:59] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:46:00] Graham Platner: So there's that, but then there's just, like, this kind of deeper thing where I'm like, ah, man, if we're looking at this through a much more broad and systemic lens, getting people out of poverty, getting people access to real mental healthcare, and then combining that with robust ways of restricting access to firearms, so universal background checks and red flag laws, I'm fully convinced that if we did those things, we would see a significant reduction in gun violence in this country.

The problem is you might not see a significant reduction in things like mass shootings in some ways because a lot of the guns that are used for those things are just, they're already out there. Mm. And people just had access to them already. Mm-hmm. So it's, so there's that one, and then, and then there's also, I, I...

The other issue on this is, like, protecting LGBTQ people.

[00:46:50] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:46:51] Graham Platner: I know that there's the whole discussion around trans students in sports, and I, quite frankly, personally think it's just such fucking nonsense. And, and I'm just... Like, we, we absolutely should, we sell out nobody. I have no patience for that shit.

[00:47:09] David Sirota: They're gonna engineer votes- Oh, yeah ... here in the Senate to- Yep ... to, to... In really nefarious ways they do it.

[00:47:16] Graham Platner: Yep. And that's also why, like, I am unequivocal about it now.

[00:47:21] David Sirota: Right.

[00:47:22] Graham Platner: And like, and just- And but, but the thing is you can be unequivocal about it and then just move the fuck on with the conversation.

[00:47:31] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:47:31] Graham Platner: And, like, getting dragged into it is literally what they want.

[00:47:36] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:47:36] Graham Platner: I mean, that's the... And then you got a lot of media outlets who, like, they don't wanna talk about taxes on billionaires. Right. But man, they always wanna ask you about, like, the real serious issue of the three kids who play sports in Maine who are tran- Like, you're like, just...

Primarily they ask me that question so we don't have to talk about the taxing billionaires part. Right. So I, I, I have a lot of... But like I- Trying to think if there's any, like, really kind of-

[00:48:07] David Sirota: I mean, like, if, you know, like immigration sometimes and jobs and, you know.

[00:48:11] Graham Platner: Yeah, but I have found that when you frame fixing immigration through the lens of the reason immigration is the way it is, is because it has on purpose created an underclass of workers- Yes

who can be abused by employers, yeah, yeah, a lot of people who are anti-immigrant, they, like, agree with that. The other thing I've noticed, which is fascinating, is a lot of people, a lot of people actually do seem to just want people to do it legally, and that's why we need more immigration courts, more immigration judges, and people don't have to wait, like, 12 years to get citizenship.

And a lot of folks will- Yeah. Seems re- I g- like it's, like it's- It's

[00:48:50] David Sirota: like have a process.

[00:48:52] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:48:52] David Sirota: Yeah. Have a functioning process. Yeah, '

[00:48:53] Graham Platner: cause we don't have a functioning process.

[00:48:55] David Sirota: Right.

[00:48:55] Graham Platner: And on, again, I think on purpose, 'cause it's people who don't get labor protections- That's right ... exploited and threatened and all.

And I have found that that, like that will never appease the racists, of which there are some in our society, but it's not most people. Right. At all, actually. And it's a... And I'm not going for their votes. I do think there are a lot of people who do, a lot of their feelings on immigration come from like these material factors of employment, of services, feeling like somebody else is getting something you deserve.

And when you start to speak to those things in like cogent and practical ways, a lot of folks very quickly are like, "Yeah, I mean, that seems like a good answer too." And then you can move on to the fact that everybody knows the political system's been paid for, which is really what we all wanna talk about, I think, in these days.

[00:49:50] David Sirota: What do you make of the whole, is it corporate power populism or is it like abundance, all the, like what, just your thoughts on-

[00:50:01] Graham Platner: Yeah ...

[00:50:01] David Sirota: that.

[00:50:02] Graham Platner: Look, uh, there is no question that we have to deal with the absurd bureaucratic oversteps that have been created over certainly the last like 40 years, that have impeded building things, have impeded that.

But that, that's one sentence. You can generally be like, "Yeah." We should do that and do it in the service of building more homes with public money, or building public housing, or putting money into expanding our infrastructure in a way that's going to not simply prioritize, like, corporate ownership and power.

The thing that frustrates me often is that there's, like, this idea that getting rid of the bureaucratic, like, idiocy is, like, the foundational ideology. I'm like, "Yeah, man, it's just, like, one part of a very broader conversation." Because it... 'Cause what I tend to say, by that big oyster farm right there, if you guys haven't seen an oyster farm.

[00:51:07] David Sirota: Oh, yeah. Look at that. Huh.

[00:51:10] Graham Platner: That's cool. It's cool. But the... You know, we can talk about the future of industrial planning around it, aquacultural planning. And by the- I, I would, I would love that. The, um, me and Sheldon Whitehouse, we're gonna cook up real big things. Some really cool stuff, uh, in row. So, but the...

My frustration with it is it very often just becomes a conversation about deregulation, and I have no patience for that. It's the... 'Cause the answer to shitty regulation isn't no regulation, it's good regulation.

[00:51:41] David Sirota: Yeah. Do you think that what is being cooked up is a, is like a stalking horse-

[00:51:46] Graham Platner: Yeah ...

[00:51:47] David Sirota: for that?

[00:51:47] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[00:51:48] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:51:48] Graham Platner: Total. 100%.

[00:51:49] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:51:50] Graham Platner: I think it's just neoliberalism. Like, if you really wanna- Boil it all down.

[00:51:55] David Sirota: Right.

[00:51:55] Graham Platner: It's this thing like, "Oh no, like government just shouldn't get involved," and, "We should use like the power of creating money to get it out to those who are gonna use it the most effectively, and we shouldn't let like..."

It's, I mean, when you boil it down, it's all the same stupid fucking arguments we've heard time and time again. Yeah. But, but now that being said, like I do think there are a lot of people in the abundance world who are like they do believe that these core regulatory structures are a huge problem, and I do think they're right.

Like, I think there's no question about it. Um, but like it's one bullet point in what needs to be a long line of bullet points. It isn't like the whole thing.

[00:52:40] David Sirota: Yeah, and I, I mean, I think what I hear you saying is like pretending it's the one bullet point is designed to make you not see the other bullet points.

[00:52:49] Graham Platner: That's right. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:52:51] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:52:51] Graham Platner: Yeah. I mean, look, I wanna build high-speed rail up and down- Yeah ... the East and West Coast. Yeah. Uh, and I wanna do it with union labor. Yeah. And I wanna do it with a shitload of public money.

[00:52:59] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:53:00] Graham Platner: And to do that, we're probably gonna have to like blow past an environmental impact study or two.

You know? Yeah. That's o- Morocco just built high-speed transit.

[00:53:12] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:53:13] Graham Platner: Fucking Morocco.

[00:53:14] David Sirota: Yeah, right.

[00:53:14] Graham Platner: Just a couple years. They're like, "You know what? We should probably have high-speed trains from Tangiers to Casablanca and-"

[00:53:20] David Sirota: Yeah ...

[00:53:20] Graham Platner: maybe down to Marrakesh. Yeah.

[00:53:21] David Sirota: And

[00:53:21] Graham Platner: then they just did that. They built it. They, the...

And so it turns out you can do that- Yeah ... when you, I don't know, set your mind to it. There's like a... There is a slight tinge of legitimacy to it. But when the conversation stops there- Yeah ... I take it as very much so we never have the rest of the conversation- Right, right ... which is the actual- Right ... thing.

[00:53:39] David Sirota In Studio: We're gonna take one more quick break. Before we continue, I just wanna remind you, everything we do here at The Lever is listener supported and listener funded. If you'd like to help us keep doing this kind of work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber right now. In the coming days, our paid subscribers will receive my exclusive interview with Morris Katz, the 26-year-old who led New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's political strategy and who is now working with Graham Platner.

To hear that interview, get ad-free episodes of Lever Time and more, visit levernews.com/upgrade. Stick around. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Lever Time. One of the most interesting things about Graham Platner as a candidate is his stance on US foreign policy. He's been a vocal critic of forever wars and the military industrial complex, but he's also an Army and Marine veteran, having served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. His critics have honed in on that seeming contradiction So I asked him why he decided to enlist.

[00:54:52] Graham Platner: I wanted to be a soldier since I was two, and I don't know why. One of the first, first things I ever played with were toy soldiers.

[00:55:01] David Sirota: Yeah, it's like G.I. Joes stuff. G.I.

[00:55:02] Graham Platner: Joes. I then got, like, really into military history. I was a huge Civil War buff for a long time, did Civil War reenacting, then got really into the Band of- Saving Private Ryan happened, so then I, and then Stephen Ambrose, so I read, like, all the Stephen Ambrose books.

I got really into World War II, and I just, for some very distinct reason that I honestly don't have really great answers on, it was just that I was drawn to that since I was a kid. I don't know why. I wanted to go to war, and, you know, it's before 9/11, like in the late '90s, I was really, like, I got really into war photography, so I was like, like, bought all of James Nachtwey's books, and there's a guy who's got a great one called Blood and Honey, The Balkan Wars.

Yeah. Um, and I got real- I was like, "Really, I wanna be a war correspondent," because I want... I had this fantasy that I was like, "Ooh, I'm gonna go, like, do that. I'm gonna take pictures in wars." Um, but then 9/11 happened, and the reason I wanted to do that is that, like, America was at peace, and I was like, "Well, I'm not gonna...

I won't have the experience." This, and I think a lot of it just has to do with the fact there is this, like, deep story that, like, war is so singular. Combat is such a unique human experience that it cannot be mimicked in any way, shape, or form. There is something about that that, like, is attractive, right?

Like, this idea that you're like, "I wanna go have this thing that people who have been through it all tell me is awful and terrible and don't go do it," but also, if you've never done it, you'll never actually understand anything about it. And like, you know. Yeah. You know? So 9/11 happens, and, and at that point, I was like, "Okay, well, America's gonna go to war."

And I thought it was, like, I protested the war in Iraq. Thought it was a deeply stupid idea. But I'd also at that point read a lot of, like, Vietnam accounts and stuff, and, like, the amount of, like, guys who were against the war in Vietnam but, like, still went and volunteered. Like, I was against it, and I did everything I could.

I protested. I got thrown out of a George W. Bush rally. Like, I did, like, I was, I was fundamentally against it. But I still also had this deep, deep sense of patriotism and sort of like, "I did my best within my rights to stop this thing from happening, and now that it has come, it's better that I should go than somebody else should."

And I also, like, want to have the experience. And then also, you know, I was an angry young man. The Marine Corps infantry is the repository for angry young men.

[00:57:45] David Sirota: Were there times where you were like, "This is great. This is what I wanted out of the experience"? Yeah. And then there were times of like-

[00:57:51] Graham Platner: Oh, I'll be very upfront.

Like, I liked being an infantryman. I- What'd you like

[00:57:55] David Sirota: about

[00:57:56] Graham Platner: it? It was intensely challenging intellectually and physically. Like, to... 'Cause people often think of it as this kind of like, oh, just run around carrying guns. But, like, I was a machine gunner, and machine gunnery in the Marine Corps is treated like an art.

You, like, you go to advanced schools for it. There's a book this thick about how machine gunnery is supposed to work, about how the weapons systems work, how you implement them. There's, like, doctrine around it. There's all kinds of conversations between units about, like- what you think is the best way to implement the guns, implement, like integrate them into the platoons.

I mean, there's all this stuff. It's a... So, like, for me, there was, like, an intellectual stimulus. And then you add on top of that doing it in, you know, like, wildly high-stress environments. Obviously, the camaraderie. I mean, I'm- Sure ... still very close with a lot of the guys that, like, I fought with. And then there's, like, this other element that I've actually talked to my therapist about a lot, which I literally can't describe, which was just something, like, I never liked the uniforms.

I never liked the, I don't know, the dog and pony show bullshit of it, but I loved the infantry. There was just something about the way that function as a team, the way that, like, you gotta... You are far more, you're far more effective if you can figure out how to stay mellow when everything is going to shit.

Like, when everybody else is freaking out and people are getting amped up, you sit there and you, like, focus on your breathing and chill yourself out for a second. And you look around and you're like, "All right, we gotta fix that. We gotta do that." And, like, there's just something incredibly satisfying about it.

I never liked the killing.

[00:59:41] David Sirota: Yeah, I was gonna ask about that.

[00:59:42] Graham Platner: I don't know. It's very... But I liked the fighting. I, if it's a... I don't know how to explain this.

[00:59:47] David Sirota: Did you ever kill anybody up fr- up close?

[00:59:49] Graham Platner: I mean-

[00:59:51] David Sirota: Meaning, like-

[00:59:51] Graham Platner: Not, like, not, like, spitting distance, but-

[00:59:53] David Sirota: Meaning that it didn't feel

[00:59:54] Graham Platner: like a video game

you know, probably fif- 50 yards kinda stuff, yeah.

[00:59:56] David Sirota: Yeah.

[00:59:57] Graham Platner: Yeah. There's also just the, there is the part, too, where, like, you're in the fucking Marine Corps. I mean, all you do day in, day out is train to win fights.

[01:00:06] David Sirota: Right.

[01:00:07] Graham Platner: And so, like, you start to take on this whole thing, like, this is my fucking purpose in life, is winning fights.

And so in combat, to win fights requires killing. And so when it's all done, you know, there is a feeling of, of accomplishment and, like, we're good at our jobs.

[01:00:25] David Sirota: Right. When does it, does it ever bleed in? Like, wait a minute, why are we fighting?

[01:00:33] Graham Platner: You know, and yeah. I mean, we definitely, like, you have those con- and fuck you, we have those conversations.

[01:00:36] David Sirota: You're like, maybe that guy over there is, like, a nice guy who, like, we should just, like- I

[01:00:39] Graham Platner: mean, I always felt that way. This is something that I think a lot of people have a hard time grasping. I never, ever actually, like, held any, like, hatred or animosity, ever. I mean, there are moments, like, when friends get killed and die where you, like, get, like, angry at the thing, at the world, at the war, at the whole thing.

But I probably did this to protect myself emotionally, but I always looked at it as like a purely professional relationship. Yeah. I'm like, these people, you know... Hey man, somebody invaded my country. Right. Right.

[01:01:11] David Sirota: It's weirdly

[01:01:12] Graham Platner: abstract. It's like not even, not even a question. Like I would, I would totally- Right

yeah, so I could say-

[01:01:17] David Sirota: Right. You mean you're doing a job, you're not like mad.

[01:01:20] Graham Platner: Right. Exactly. I always took almost a, yeah, like a professional feeling about the work. Yeah. You know, but I think for people who have never been professional, like soldiers-

[01:01:32] David Sirota: Yeah ...

[01:01:32] Graham Platner: that is a very hard thing to comprehend because it does seem so like to engage in that kind of violence, you must be like, there must be some deep emotional well, and I'm like, honestly, it was kind of the

[01:01:42] David Sirota: opposite.

Well, that, that, that I have seen throughout, like why would this guy be anti-war if he was like doing war?

[01:01:50] Graham Platner: Right. I don't have a great answer because I'm not sure why I wanted to like,

[01:01:56] David Sirota: to do it. I've- And you said you liked, I mean, I don't know if you used the word enjoy, but like the fighting part was like-

[01:02:01] Graham Platner: No, I took a lot of personal satisfaction in my competence as a, as a Marine, and then later on as a soldier.

Yeah. I mean, it really was a thing that I was good at and took pride in being good at. And then in the fighting itself, combat is exhilarating. It, there's no question about it. It's not a, it, it's an insane high. And

I'll give you an example. I go back to Afghanistan in 2010 into 2011 with the Army, uh, attached to a National Guard company, former rifle squad leader, and none of these guys have seen intense combat. I'd come out of the Marine Corps, and I had my Iraq experience. First number of months of the deployment, real chill.

Not, like- Mm ... very, very little violence, very little contact. Spring comes, fighting season starts picking up, and there was one day where we were going up into a valley, infantry company, Afghan troops supervised by a French Foreign Legion training team. And we were there kinda to act to, like, we were the partner unit with the Afghan troops.

And we're going up, and yeah, we're at the back of the column 'cause it's 2011, so the Afghans are leading the war, and we're just there for emotional support and all that. And, uh, front of the column gets, hits into, hits contact, start hearing rounds snapping overhead. At this point, I have not, it's 2011, so I haven't been in a fight since 2006, and I just had this immediate positive reaction.

I was just like, "Fucking thank God." Like, I'm back. Like, I'm, 'cause I had gotten out of the Corps, I went to college, I felt super fucking lost. I re-enlisted in the Army. I go to reconnaissance school. I do all this, like, great training. I took my job, like it was everything. I didn't have hobbies. My hobbies were running, weightlifting, land navigation, and shooting, which is also just like in military history.

I didn't do anything else. All I, I like, this was the, my whole thing. And so I, uh- Yeah. Like, the shooting starts, and I just had this moment of like, "

[01:04:22] Graham Platner: Thank God."

[01:04:23] Graham Platner: Then so I just grabbed my s- my guys and, you know, everybody else, 'cause it's the first real combat any of these people have seen. And so we just run up to the front of the column, French Foreign Legion teams on the other side.

They push forward into the fire. I take my squad, we flank and go up a little hill and start... And then we spend the next few hours leapfrogging with the legionnaires up and down this valley. And everybody else stayed back, so it's, like, my squad and the legionnaires, and, 'cause they were also professional soldiers.

And, but I just remember there was this moment, like the moment it kicked off, and I was like, "Oh, thank..." Like, I almost had this, like, relief that, like, I got to, I was back. I was back in the thing that I, like, took value from after really, you know, not really feeling like I was doing what I was supposed to do.

And it's also very strange, 'cause that happened at around the exact same time where I became utterly convinced that we were gonna lose the war in Afghanistan, and there was no fucking point to any of it. And I will never be able to reconcile these things.

[01:05:21] David Sirota: Right. Reconcile the,

[01:05:22] Graham Platner: these, these competing feelings.

[01:05:25] David Sirota: Like, I don't think we should be going to war-

[01:05:26] Graham Platner: I don't think we should do it ... but war

[01:05:27] David Sirota: is exciting.

[01:05:28] Graham Platner: I think, and I, like, I hate war. Yeah. I hate the way that we wage war. I think America is a militarized nation that romanticizes violence and combat, and I think it's a deep rot within our entire, like, not just our system, but our culture.

And at the exact same time, there was, it remains to be like the state, but I can always take some kind of- Yeah, I mean, it's- It's, it's, I, I just don't know how to explain it.

[01:05:50] David Sirota: I mean, I- I

[01:05:50] Graham Platner: talk to my therapist about this a lot. I w- It's real weird.

[01:05:52] David Sirota: Did your therapist say it's like reptilian brain versus like- That's

[01:05:57] Graham Platner: exactly what he says.

[01:05:58] David Sirota: Right?

[01:05:58] Graham Platner: Yeah.

[01:05:59] David Sirota: Reptilian brain is like- It's like why boys like to play with G.I. Joe. I mean, some people hear that and w- will, will, will, will say, "Well, how can you really be against war if you think... I- if you enjoy the actual-"

[01:06:13] Graham Platner: The thing that I get, that I always get a chuckle out of, though, with that critique is that if you look back through history, like, some of the most dedicated anti-war activists- Yeah

some of the most dedicated, like, anti-colonial and anti-imperial, like, people- Yeah ... often had extensive military backgrounds.

[01:06:34] David Sirota: Yes.

[01:06:35] Graham Platner: And often were good at it. Dude,

[01:06:37] David Sirota: you know, I worked with Bernie when he was in the House. You know, I used to, I used to drive him to town halls like this. Oh, really? In, in Vermont.

Yeah, I worked r- with him. This is, this is very- Does

[01:06:47] Graham Platner: it look, it looks similar?

[01:06:48] David Sirota: Yeah, it looks, it looks... Yes. I feel like I'm in the car with Bernie One of my funniest Bernie stories is we got, we... He made me drive his Saturn, so I was driving his Saturn. Uh. By the way, I got a Saturn when I worked for him, 'cause we were only allowed to have American-made cars.

[01:07:04] Graham Platner: Of course.

[01:07:05] David Sirota: So I got a Saturn. Uh, and we got pulled over by a cop, 'cause Bernie was, like, telling me to go. We were gonna be late. And the cop, like, leans in and is about to give me a ticket, and then Bern- he sees Bernie, and it's like every, literally everybody in Vermont had met Bernie- Yeah ... like, by that point.

He was like, "You should tell your driver to not drive this fast." To not drive that speed.

[01:07:27] Graham Platner: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay.

[01:07:29] David Sirota: Yes.

[01:07:29] Graham Platner: How, how- I'm the opposite, actually. I'm, I'm often being like, "All right, everybody, don't look at your phones." Yeah. "Slow it down."

[01:07:34] David Sirota: Yeah. That's actually a question. Um, when you first... How did you first meet Bernie?

[01:07:40] Graham Platner: I would say, well, the first time I ever interacted with Bernie, I love this story, was last spring.

[01:07:46] David Sirota: Yeah.

[01:07:46] Graham Platner: I went down. I was Maine People's Alliance.

[01:07:48] David Sirota: Yeah.

[01:07:48] Graham Platner: It's a large progressive organizing group in the state. There was-

[01:07:51] David Sirota: This is before your campaign.

[01:07:52] Graham Platner: Oh, right, long before.

[01:07:53] David Sirota: Yeah.

[01:07:53] Graham Platner: Yeah, yeah. This is in March.

[01:07:55] David Sirota: Yeah.

[01:07:57] Graham Platner: There was a... So the Medicaid and Medicare cuts-

[01:07:59] David Sirota: Yep ...

[01:07:59] Graham Platner: are in the Senate. Big beautiful bill. There was a large pro- like, action, uh, that was going to be, you know, go down, get on the Mall, have a march. You know, activists from all over the country were coming, and MPA put out the call. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, it's March."

I was still off the water, so we don't really put the boats back in until right now, so I had some time. And, and I'm like, "I can go to DC for a day." So fly down, go to the march. Bernie's one of the speakers. I was helping push a woman from, I think, North Carolina, who was in a wheelchair,

[01:08:33] David Sirota: who of course the whole time was telling me, like, about all of her fucking hardcore Civil Rights era, like, act- Like, I'm like, "This is the coolest thing ever."

Yeah, yeah.

[01:08:42] Graham Platner: But she had to leave before Bernie started speaking, and so I, like... I had to move her out to the road so that the van, uh, could come and pick her up. And I, like, m- missed Bernie's speech, and I was, "God, that's bull," because I know I really wanted to see Bernie speak. And Bernie, like, came charging down the hill.

Gets up on stage. Everybody starts cheering, and he goes, "I don't have time for that." No. Uh, gives his, like, two minutes, and then just starts charging back up the hill. And I'm walking back down, and so Bernie walks right past me. And I was like, "Senator Sanders, I just want to say thank you." And he was just like, "Rah."

And just stormed up. And I was like, "Bernie Sanders acknowledged my existence." I'm like, "Oh, oh, my heart is full." Fast-forward a few months, and, uh- Oh, that's amazing ... I talk to Bernie on the phone very early. It's probably like a, oh, Jesus, now like 6:00 or 7:00-

[01:09:32] David Sirota: Yeah ...

[01:09:33] Graham Platner: s- after we launched the campaign. Talked for, uh, 20, 30 minutes.

Have a very nice conversation. He invites me to come speak with him on stage at the Labor Day rally in Portland. Yes. And- Which is also my 41st birthday. Happy birthday. Best birthday of my life. Yeah, that's right. I- we get off the phone. I'm all, like, amped up.

[01:09:53] Graham Platner: Uh, and then Amy and I go, uh, like the weekend

[01:09:55] Graham Platner: of later and meet Bernie backstage, and he is just, like, incredibly just supportive.

Yeah. And was like, you know, proud of us. That he, anything he can do to be of help and all of that. And, you know, obviously, and both Amy and I are like... And I told him this story. I'm like, "We met once." And he didn't even laugh. We, we don't speak often, but-

[01:10:19] David Sirota: He doesn't speak to anyone often.

[01:10:20] Graham Platner: No. But we, but he, every, I will say every single time there has been, like, a moment of intense challenge in this thing-

[01:10:27] David Sirota: Yeah

[01:10:27] Graham Platner: Bernie calls. And will just kind of be like, "Hey, it's okay."

[01:10:32] David Sirota: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:10:33] Graham Platner: Like, he's like, "I was called a child molester for, like, six months on, from my television when I, like, when..." He's like, "I couldn't even turn on the TV."

Yeah.

[01:10:42] Graham Platner: He's like, "It's awful. These people are awful."

[01:10:45] David Sirota: Yeah. "

[01:10:45] Graham Platner: They're bad people."

[01:10:47] David Sirota: Yeah.

[01:10:47] Graham Platner: He's like, "And they will do awful things."

[01:10:49] David Sirota: Yeah. "

[01:10:50] Graham Platner: And that's just how it is."

[01:10:51] David Sirota: Yeah.

[01:10:51] Graham Platner: But, like, "But we're also going to beat them." He's like, "And just keep at it. You're doing it right." And it's been, yeah, honestly, pretty fucking helpful.

[01:11:00] David Sirota: Yeah, yeah.

[01:11:00] Graham Platner: Emotionally for both me and Amy.

[01:11:03] David Sirota: Yeah. I mean, he, he really has been through it. I mean, at th- at this point, at this point, he's ins- essentially untouchable.

Like, he's been through it, you know. W- what can anybody do to him now? It's incredible.

[01:11:16] Graham Platner: There is going to be a day in the future where we live in a much better society and we all look back and we thank the fucking stars that Bernie like stayed in the fight and just never gave up faith in this whole thing.

I firmly believe that.

[01:11:29] David Sirota: Yeah, I do too. Yeah. Wow.

[01:11:33] Matt the Driver: We're four minutes out.

[01:11:34] David Sirota: All right. We'll, we'll turn off this.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Lever Time. Lever Time is a production of The Lever. This episode was produced by Natalie Bettendorf. Our theme music is by Nick Byron Campbell. Marketing support from the Podglomerate. Our director of podcast production is Ron Doyle. You can subscribe to Lever Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Head over to levernews.com to learn more about becoming a paid subscriber or click the link in this episode's show notes. I'm David Sirota. We'll be back next week with another episode of Lever Time.