The ‘Working Class,’ According to Graham Platner

Carhartt communist affirms solidarity with Susan Collins, Chuck Schumer

Graham Platner, the Carhartt communist nepo-baby running for U.S. Senate in Maine, continues to identify as “working class” in the face of all evidence.

The grandson of a world-renowned architect, Platner attended private prep schools and has often relied on his attorney father for financial assistance. He runs an oyster farm with Robert Cushman III, the elite boarding school- and Dartmouth-educated grandson of a Canadian mining executive. Cushman’s family has owned the secluded island where the oyster farm is based; the farm’s top customer is the “fine dining restaurant” and “old world luxury” hotel owned by Platner’s mother.

Whereas most normal Americans would not regard this as a typical working-class background, Platner is fully committed to the bit. In a recent interview with the New York Times, the candidate laid out his “expansive definition” of what it means to be working class in America.

“In this day and age, you are working class if you make your money from work and wages,” Platner said. “The world of wealth disparity has become so intense that there are just so many people now who are sitting on so much money who do not work. They make money off their investments. They make money off their wealth.”

Platner disagreed when Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro suggested that defining America’s working class as “anyone who gets a W-2 and has to pay taxes off a salary” was a little ridiculous. “I spend a lot of time around labor unions,” he said. “These days everybody seems to subscribe to the same definition.”

This would certainly rule out Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy scion running for Congress who hasn’t worked a day in his life. Schlossberg recently expressed his solidarity with the striking Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) employees who are demanding higher salaries while refusing to back down on absurd labor rules that give engineers “double pay if they operate two different types of trains during the same shift.” Last year, 11 LIRR employees earned more than $300,000 in base salary plus alleged “overtime” after reportedly “working” more than 90 hours per week.

Here’s a look at some of the people who would qualify as working class, according to Graham Platner.

Susan Collins

The feminist pioneer has held the same public service job since 1997, which is probably why she can’t afford to retire at age 73. It would be cruel to force her to stop working.

Chuck Schumer

Proudly collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck since 1975. After spending so much time around labor unions, Platner will presumably have learned the importance of seniority and respect for one’s higher-ranking colleagues.

Hunter Biden

Bet on himself by trading his salaried gig at a boutique Ukrainian energy company for a career in the arts that suddenly became less lucrative in 2024. Intimately familiar with the working-class world of street-level vending.

Amy Coney Barrett

This working-class icon made history as the first mother of school-age children to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, a public service role with a salary equivalent to those of senior LIRR employees.

Jake Tapper

Goes to work every day with a smile on his face while repressing his working-class rage over the fact that Anderson Cooper earns nearly twice as much for the same job.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski

The working-class couple knows a thing or two about taking on The Man. They’ve been criticized for skipping work, and recently had their hours reduced. Many suspect that their new contract with MS NOW included a significant pay cut after fellow wage earner Rachel Maddow was forced to accept a mere $25 million to appear on television at least once a week.

Ryan Seacrest 

Constantly working for a paycheck despite having the same intellectual capacity as Jack Schlossberg.

Anna Wintour

This fashion icon has been earning an honest wage at Condé Nast for decades and has done more than her fair share to advance the interests of her fellow workers by raising millions of dollars for Democrats.

Frasier Crane

He once threw out a $200 belt and accidentally bought a Winnebago for $30,000, but he held down a steady gig at the local radio station, which gave him the confidence and dignity he needed to sleep with lots of women in his spare time.

The Washington Free Beacon

Wage earners unite! The working class scored a momentous victory over the pampered elites when the Free Beacon‘s stable of rugged laborers forced the New Yorker and its esteemed “fact checkers” to correct its erroneous report about Platner getting a “Department of Veterans Affairs low-interest mortgage” to buy his house, even though his dad provided the money.