PORTLAND, Maine — Bernie Sanders drew 6,500 people to southern Maine on Labor Day Monday to discuss building a grassroots movement to fight the oligarchy, and to introduce them to Graham Platner, the oyster farmer and Marine veteran running for Senate with the Vermont independent’s early support.
At the “Fighting Oligarchy” rally, Sanders and Platner spoke about billionaire and corporate interests’ control over the rest of us, with Platner putting a particularly fine point on it: “I am not afraid to name the enemy, and the enemy is the oligarchy,” he said.
Speaking about the billionaires, Sanders said, “Their religion is greed, and they worship on the altar of money. They want more and more and more, and they could care less about the implications of their greed.”
Sanders, 83, and Platner, 40, both expressed support for universal health care, criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, and railed against an economic system that benefits the rich and grinds down everyone else. They presented a unified, aggressive left flank as the Senate primary gets underway, with Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) openly mulling a bid, too.
While Sanders is moving to back candidates in primaries in several states, he tells Rolling Stone in an interview that Platner’s candidacy is important — not just because he thinks the outspoken populist candidate can defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins, but because a win by Platner would make a statement.
“You’re seeing somebody who’s doing it differently,” Sanders says of the candidate he endorsed Saturday. “This is a guy who’s not been involved in politics, doesn’t go around to fundraisers with rich people. He’s a working class guy. He’s an intelligent guy, he’s a thoughtful, concerned guy who’s standing up and getting involved.”
The senator explains that “having a working class guy who has never run for office before take on Sen. Collins … sends a message.” The message? “Ordinary people can step up, you can take on the powers that be, [the] political establishment,” he says. “You can win.”
At the event Monday, held at Portland’s Cross Insurance Arena, Sanders and Platner spoke to a crowd disgusted with President Donald Trump as well as the Democratic Party establishment.
One of the biggest applause lines of the evening came when Platner said, “Support must be earned, and that will never happen as long as Democrats are part of the same corporate apparatus that the Republicans are.”
Speaking of Platner, Sanders tells Rolling Stone, “He’s not a conventional politician.”
That feels like an understatement. Platner isn’t only young or an oyster farmer or covered in tattoos — he is well-spoken and eager to use his voice to talk about the class war.
“We do not live in a system that is broken — we live in a system that is functioning exactly as it’s intended,” Platner said in his speech Monday. “We live in a system that has been built by the political class to enrich and support billionaires on the backs of working people.” He said he wants to see Americans “reap the profits of our hard work.”
Simply put, he is not the type of candidate that Democrats typically run in competitive Senate races.
But while he’s new to being a politician, Platner comes across as convincing, in part because he exudes authenticity. With Democratic voters increasingly furious at their party, one can imagine Platner’s message and vibe resonating in the primary.
Rory, 29, says he’s “intrigued” by Platner, despite his own cynicism. “I’m excited to see some politicians who are talking about labor issues, health care, inequality, and material conditions, that Bernie’s harped on for a while,” he says. “I’m interested to see what direction, if any, the left in the United States can go into electoral politics.”
Not everyone is optimistic about Platner’s chances. Sam, a 68-year-old attendee, says that “Susan Collins doesn’t have to worry about him, because the Democrats will squash him first. The Democrats hate progressives. They’re not going to let him get nominated.”
Platner tells Rolling Stone in an interview he got into the race because he hasn’t seen from Democrats “the energy and the commitment to big change that I think is necessary to protect us right now, to build the society that’s going to take care of everybody.”
He says that America right now is “fighting against fascist authoritarianism,” and Democratic leaders appear “emotionally and ideologically” incapable of beating it back. “We’ve got masked agents literally kidnapping people and putting them into concentration camps,” Platner says, arguing that the party’s leadership shouldn’t be waiting around “for the legal system to figure it all out.”
“They clearly don’t care,” he says.
Speaking of Collins, who has long cast herself as a moderate in a far-right Republican Party, Platner during the rally accused her of selling out to lobbyists, corporations, and Trump — who he said are “engineering the greatest redistribution of wealth from the working class to the ruling class in American history.”
“Symbolic opposition does not reopen hospitals. Weak condemnations do not bring back Roe v. Wade,” he continued, adding: “A performative politics that enables the destruction of our way of life is disqualifying for the role of United States Senator.”
Sanders and Platner both spoke with Rolling Stone about the need to build a grassroots movement to fight for workers and take power back from the oligarchs.
“We need to build a movement that clearly represents the material needs of working people in this country,” Platner says. “Until we do that, we’re going to remain divided and split up, and right-wing populism is going to continue to give people easy targets, to give people easy scapegoats. That only works when there is not a positive vision that addresses real, material problems. And so for me, that’s what we need to build. We need to build that positive vision. We can’t just run around telling everybody that we’re against Donald Trump or that we’re against the Republicans. We need to tell people what we are doing, what is the positive vision of the future we are fighting for. And I think if we do that, we can represent most working people in the United States, who I think all have pretty much the exact same material needs.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone, Sanders outlined his efforts to support more candidates across the country, noting he’s supporting Zohran Mamdani for mayor in New York City, Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race, and Troy Jackson for governor in Maine. (Jackson also spoke at the rally.)
“We’re supporting a number of candidates around the country running for Congress,” he says, adding that “we’re going to do more of that.”
As for how to build progressive political power, Sanders says, “It’s not a question of being nice. I think the Democratic leadership is way out of touch. They’re out of touch on what’s happening in Gaza. They’re out of touch economically.”
He says Democrats deserve some credit for “being a strong voice for women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights, [the] environment to some degree,” but he adds that’s not the case “in terms of the economic struggle.”
During his speech, Sanders pointed out that the RAND Corporation — “not exactly any socialist organization,” as he put it — this year published a study that found, thanks to rising inequality, there was a $79 trillion transfer of wealth upward from the bottom 90 percent of workers between 1975 and 2023.
“Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate for a couple of years,” he says. “And you tell me what we did. We didn’t do much.”
“I think we need a grassroots movement in this country which transforms the Democratic Party into a party of the working class that is prepared to fight for the issues relevant to the working class,” Sanders adds. “And that’s what Graham Platner is about.”
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