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Matt Stoller

@matthewstoller

Jul 8

Since lots of gossips are now gunning for me, I'm redoing this thread. It's clear something messed up happened in Platner's relationships, and he hasn't hidden that. But there's a big difference between 'normal people in bad relationships who hate each other' and 'crime.'

So let's be adults. This is a political attack.

Top Maine Democratic Party donors in recent years are Reid Hoffman, Haim Saban, and David Ellison. David Ellison! As in the Trump ally who fired Stephen Colbert and is taking over TikTok, CBS News, and CNN. These names should mean something. Saban may be the single most important AIPAC donor in the Democratic Party.

Another big donor to the Maine Democratic Party is the founder of Zynga, Marc Pincus, who said in 2024 that "an attack on Amazon is an attack on America." It goes beyond big tech and Wall Street. Crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s partner Nishad Singh at FTX gave $100k to the Maine Democratic Party in 2022.

The insiders running the party are the people funded through these streams of revenue, they are the ones dealing with the donors and currying favor with them. And while I will not speak out of school, the Maine Democratic establishment simply cannot be trusted and that is well-known.

Platner may be a fatally weakened candidate, that is for others to decide. It's a wave year in a blue state, but I get that Susan Collins is a strong incumbent. Winning this Senate seat matters, so I get why people might see value in ditching him. I generally think that polls and electoral guesses are mechanisms to get ordinary voters to focus on anything but policy. It's a disciplining mechanism, since no one can tell the future. But it's not crazy to see Platner as a poor candidate.

Let's be clear, the goal of pushing Platner aside is to destroy the agenda on which he was elected, which is about taming oligarchy and reorienting us from endless war. That is why the Maine Democrats aren't saying 'let's respect Platner voters and transition to someone else,' they are taking a sanctimonious 'he gets NO say in ANYTHING.' Those are not the actions of people who want to win a Senate seat, those are the actions of nasty insiders claiming factional power for themselves.

If Platner steps down, he will be characterized as a deviant, and that's just how it'll be forever. True or not. And everyone will be tarred as supportive of immoral behavior. It doesn't matter if you are a liberal, centrist, young, old, whatever. People are saying the Bulwark, a centrist outlet started by ex-Republicans who were skeptical of Platner, are tarred by this. Punchbowl is reporting that Senate progressives will never have credibility going forward. The ploy here is obvious.

That is, even though the actual immoral behavior at issue here is the genocide in Gaza, the corruption of DOGE and Musk, and the neoliberal turn in American politics for 40 years that has destroyed our faith in society and each other.

Platner has been consistent about his platform, and there's no reason to assume that will change. 70% of Maine Democrats picked him as their candidate, and he has the right to represent their views. So he should stay in the race or, if he feels he cannot win, leave on terms that will ensure his platform, and not that of Maine Dem Party oligarch donors, is the one on the ballot in November. The Maine Dem establishment cannot be trusted.

And frankly, this kind of ugly scenario is how power works. They make ordinary people pick among ugly scenarios, and then they make it seem like the obvious path is the one that accords more power and wealth to oligarchs. And if you don't choose that one, you're a bad person who deserves approbation and scorn. That's why I had to delete the original thread and rewrite it, because endless numbers of reporter gossips - who don't report on government policy - are using this extremely obvious ratfucking to try and destroy people like me telling you the truth.

https://x.com/CheyenneHuntCA/status/2074666136088481895?s=20

This person runs a dark money political group and is offering to pay accusers of Platner. Who are her funders?

https://x.com/CheyenneHuntCA/status/2074666136088481895?s=20

There are really two issues here, and they are distinct. One part of it is gray, the other is very black and white.

Let's start with the gray area. How does one handle allegations of heinous behavior against politicians running for office? Whether one believes the allegations against Platner clearly conditions one's approach, but I think it's reasonable to believe these allegations and reasonable not to believe allegations.

It would be problematic to have a standard for politicians that they must be proved guilty in a court of law for a claim to have an impact, since they are seeking power and you should have a higher standard.

That said, it is also pretty obvious that people associated with wealth and power (Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo, et al) get away with this shit, while Al Franken was clearly falsely accused by an operation organized by Roger Stone. So you can't believe everything. False allegations are real, and they tend to be orchestrated. What @ryangrim just reported adds some context here that makes the stories a tad harder to believe, but plenty will still see the allegations as credible.

So again, gray.

The second is black and white. Graham Platner won on a platform of populist economic and foreign policy, and 70% of Maine Democrats picked him. Those voters deserve to have their wishes honored.

I do not know exactly how to ensure that those wishes are honored, but I know how to make sure they are not. And that is, have a suspiciously timed set of misleading stories alleging wrongdoing, followed by bunch of crypto-funded Maine Dem insiders demanding in response that they get to cut out the Platner voters and volunteers from any role in choosing a successor. At the same time, argue that anyone who ever supported Platner should have their careers destroyed, or lose influence over policy goals that have zero to do with the alleged bad acts.

I think anyone who thinks these the assault allegations matter should have made it clear that the voters should have their wishes honored in whatever happens next. And that means they should have demanded that the nominee should have a populist economic and foreign policy platform, matching Platner's. They should also have made it clear that the responsibility for any bad personal actions belongs to Platner alone. If that were the path they were on, then it would be clear that the assault allegations are what matters. However, they did not do that. They made it clear that platform the voters picked would not be an important factor in what happens next.

Multiple stakeholder groups and leaders, from AIPAC to Neera Tanden to crypto lobbyists, explicitly said this is their moment to win an internal factional dispute over policy. And that is wrong. It is disrespectful to voters, to assault victims and the wrongly accused, and to the political process.

And that point is not a gray area, it is black and white. x.com/ryangrim/statu…

Read 4 tweets

Matt Stoller

@matthewstoller

Jul 8

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/2074661654206296326

Platner is offering to step down and Maine insiders are demanding he let them pick an Israel supporter. That’s playing with fire and deeply evil.

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/2074661654206296326

Say what you want about Platner but he won the Maine primary on a platform and it is perfectly reasonable for him to demand a replacement candidate adhere to the wishes of his voters.

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2074519198013739317?s=20

This interview indicates the Politico story with new allegations is thin. And frankly the fact that Maine insiders want to pick a replacement without Platner ensuring his voters’ wishes are honored even though he won the primary suggests ratfucking.

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2074519198013739317?s=20

Read 8 tweets

Matt Stoller

@matthewstoller

May 26

1. Pope Leo XIV wrote a long policy statement on AI. I'm reading it, it's pretty interesting. I'll pull relevant quotes. vatican.va/content/leo-xi…

2. "Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments."

Very similar to statements from many politicians about the power of big tech.

3. He's hostile to efficiency as a moral lodestar.

"Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing."

Read 6 tweets

Matt Stoller

@matthewstoller

May 22

Xavier Becerra is likely to become the California governor. He’s dumb, arrogant, incompetent and tolerates criminal behavior by staff. He’ll likely be recalled fairly soon.

“Becerra out-polls all of his rivals when it comes to Black and Latino voters.”

I’m a broken record, but corporate power in the Democratic Party flows through black boomer voters.

yahoo.com/news/articles/…

Becerra go large sums of money from Chevron, Meta, and PG&E. He’ll raise costs and harm California residents. At some point we have to be honest about older black voters choosing these awful leaders to bring ruin.

Read 9 tweets

Matt Stoller

@matthewstoller

Apr 1

The reason Democrats have no position on the war is because no one has a coherent view on what to do. It’s not on them.

The U.S. is basically the bank account and army for global oligarchs. This positioning is not good for Americans and it’s not good for the world. But it’s also impossible to imagine an alternative.

The foreign policy establishment sees their work as a hobby. The U.S. is so endlessly rich and heroic that it’s all a game. They don’t think that the realm of foreign affairs should be good for ordinary people; that’s a rhetorical afterthought. To them the deindustrialization and erosion of the middle class at the heart of the destabilization of the world is sad but necessary, if they bother to notice it at all.

The left foreign policy world is not actually that different. They are libertarian and hostile to Americans, and they don’t care about economics. Foreign policy to them is a hobby of the rich, it’s just the U.S. is the central villain instead of central hero. They do not understand or care about deindustrialization as a result of Chinese overcapacity, which is a central and fundamental foreign policy challenge. To them that’s handwaving away as ‘economics’ and boring. Let’s just do ‘care’ work, they imagine, as if a nation that makes nothing and imports food can afford to have its young people do nothing but wipe the asses of the old.

What does a non-oligarch driven America actually do? What does it look like? Well for starters we pull back dramatically from the rest of the world. No troops in Europe, maybe offer some defense weapons to East Asian nations. No presence in the Middle East. Cut Israel loose entirely. Total revamp of our bloated and incompetent military and its corrupt establishment. Fire most admirals and generals and put in a new generation capable of actually thinking.

This change will require us to be a LOT more protectionist. We put up huge trade barriers so that we can rebuild our industries. We also impose capital controls and confiscate or tax assets held by foreigners. No foreign ownership of land. We are not your bank account, Mr. Saudi Prince or Chinese money launderer.

Finally, we crush capitalism. Rebuild our farms and factories. No more driving our corporations for shareholders. Lots of public utility regulation or nationalization of assets. No more private equity. No more crypto or corporate gambling. If you want to make money, you do something useful. Otherwise it’s poverty or handcuffs.

America needs to be run for its people, not for the Epstein Class or for weirdos who can’t go over the Iranian overthrow of the shah or for lefty hobbyists funded by Koch industries to deindustrialize what’s left of what we have.

I was a China hawk because the U.S. was a possible balance to their power. No longer. We are too weak and must go into an emergency posture to protect ourselves.

Americans do not feel sovereign in their communities or as workers, so they do not see value in US sovereignty. It’s critical to crush Wall Street to regain American independence.

Read 4 tweets

Matt Stoller

@matthewstoller

Dec 11, 2025

1/3. A good day for antitrust. The Ninth Circuit mostly upheld the injunction against Apple for screwing app developers in the lawsuit vs Epic Games. Apple can charge, but only for its actual costs. fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/…

2/3. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued medical health care records monopolist Epic Systems. texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/…

3. Senator Blumenthal asked for an update on the FTC's dialysis investigation. blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

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