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The fallout from the controversy surrounding Graham Platner’s exit from the Senate race in Maine has intensified an internal battle within the Democratic Party between progressives and a more centrist establishment.
To many moderate Democrats, Platner’s withdrawal from the race underscored a point they have been trying to make in recent years: That in its attempts to find fresh faces and so-called outsiders, the party can’t turn its back on experience and the credentials needed to win.
At the same time, the party’s progressive wing has argued that its recent string of primary wins shows it has the energy in the party. They say Democrats are tired of the status quo and want a shake-up.
“It’s getting ugly,” one Democrat said of behind-the-scenes tensions that have bubbled up online around the Platner debacle. “For anyone who thought we had turned the page … it turns out we haven’t.”
Democrats have been trying to regain their footing after devastating 2024 losses in the presidential and congressional elections — when they lost not only the White House but the House and Senate majorities as well.
The party is widely expected to win back the House this fall, while the Senate has long been a tougher climb. If the party cannot claw back a seat from the GOP’s Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) in a state Democrats have repeatedly won in presidential contests, any hopes of winning the Senate majority may be over.
During Maine’s Democratic primary, some party members began sounding the alarm on Platner, saying he was a flawed candidate and quietly suggesting that progressives were closing their eyes simply to win the race against Collins.
Before Platner officially suspended his campaign on Wednesday, Democrats took to social media to call out the people responsible for recruiting and then holding up Platner while his campaign was falling apart.
Morris Katz, a strategist who worked on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s (D) successful campaign and helped recruit Platner to the Senate race, posted on social media that he was “deeply disappointed” in his candidate. Neera Tanden, the veteran Democratic operative, clapped back: “Frankenstein was also deeply disappointed in his monster.”
Moderate Democrats have been pointing the finger specifically at the Democratic Socialists of America as the cause of the problem.
“They don’t give a rat’s a– about the Democratic Party in its current form, and they’re trying to change it,” Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at moderate think tank Third Way, told The Hill. “We’re trying to stop them.”
The Platner controversy, Bennett said, “has exposed the enormous cracks in the foundation” of the progressive argument.
“You can’t choose candidates based on their flannel shirt and beard,” he said, alluding to Planter. “Candidates who have never been tested or vetted.”
The divisions exposed by the Platner controversy extend well beyond Maine.
It has also bled into other races including Michigan’s Senate primary, where moderates backing Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens have cast progressive rival Abdul El-Sayed as unvetted and untested.
Some Democrats who say the energy is on the left are equally frustrated by the fallout from the Platner episode. They are quick to point out that moderate Democrats have elevated the controversy to drive a narrative that progressive candidates are untested and unfit for public office.
“These are people who have all the money in the world and have tried to take [Platner] down and are happy they got a win,” said Nomiki Konst, a progressive strategist. “Now they want to use that as an opportunity to go after every other leftist. It’s not going to bode well.”
“I think they should be focused on Republicans rather than going after the next round of leftists,” Konst added.
Another strategist agreed.
“It’s fairly obvious what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks — especially in the Michigan Senate race — is a coordinated campaign by moderates to take down a high-profile progressive,” the other Democratic strategist said. “They’ve been overzealous. And frankly it’s shocking that this wing of the party has exerted much more energy to dunk on the left wing of their coalition than they ever have to defeat Donald Trump.”
The strategist, like other progressive voices, pointed to the recent primary victories as evidence that Democratic voters want change and want to move away from establishment-backed candidates.
An Economist/YouGov poll released last month also highlighted that among Democrats there’s not a clear desire to move to the center. The poll showed that 45 percent of Democrats want the party to stay where it is, while 31 percent want it to move to the left. At the same time, 10 percent want it to move to the right.
Democrats say the primary results coupled with the polling shows where the party is.
“They’re not listening to what voters are saying, which is that they aren’t happy with the way things are going, and they are desperate for change,” a second strategist said. “It’s the same s—.”
Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau, however, said that both sides have a legitimate argument to make.
“The party needs to focus on winning,” Mollineau said. “There are some places where there’s an ability to run with a progressive candidate and other places where we cannot. That is a reality.”
“At the end of the day both sides need to decide what’s important: ownership of the party or taking back the House and Senate so we can stop this administration from doing what they’re doing.”
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Donald Trump Haley Stevens Matt Bennett Neera Tanden Susan Collins Zohran MamdaniCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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