‘I want people to follow them around,’ the Democrat says
WINDHAM, Maine—Senate candidate Graham Platner (D.) urged his supporters to publicly harass members of Maine’s congressional delegation who oppose Medicare for All.
“In the future, when we’re trying to vote on something like Medicare for All, if there are other members of the Maine delegation that don’t want to come along, we need to be able to impose costs,” he said during a Saturday town hall in the southern Maine town of Windham. “We need to be able to turn people out to flood their offices. Frankly, I want people to follow them around and don’t let them have a public dinner without getting yelled at. Because that’s power. That’s real power.”
Platner justified those tactics as a way of building “secondary power.” He said they’re a proven form of political pressure and that “American history tells us that that’s exactly the power that we have.”
“We also have to build secondary power. Real power of organization, the power to turn people out, the power to shut things down, frankly, the power to impose costs,” Platner said. “If we can’t impose costs, then they’ll never listen to us, because they won’t care.”
Platner has made Medicare for All a centerpiece of his campaign. His economic platform also calls for a major expansion of Social Security benefits—including the elimination of the payroll tax cap—a “billionaire minimum tax,” and steep increases in capital gains and corporate taxes. He’s said he wants to use “the tax code to get the money back that was stolen from the working people of this country.”
Platner’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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