Jun
6
2026

Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Neoliberals

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Our Amazon Eye Candy is a recycled item from five years ago today, used to illustrate Elizabeth Nolan Brown's article on The Bipartisan Antitrust Crusade Against Big Tech.

But that was, and is, part of a larger war that "progressives" are fighting, as described at the Freeman: The Ghost of “Neoliberalism”.

In April 1997, at the remarkable gathering of the Mont Pélerin Society on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the great Spanish economist and intellectual Pedro Schwartz shared a telling view on the persisting systematic opposition to the liberal market order. The source, he argued, was threefold: a misunderstanding in popular discourse of open markets as a negative-sum social arrangement; vested special interests lobbying for protection from competition; and a failure on “our” part to communicate the fundamental ideas of a free economy.

This warning remains as relevant today as it was in the 1990s. In Latin America, “reform fatigue”—and the fear of living without what the celebrated Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz called the “philanthropic ogre”—led to a deliberate misreading of daily life in an open society. A repudiation of the so-called “neoliberal model” ensued, with a growing chorus of voices condemning this so-called ideology as the source of all social ills. Carlos Monsiváis, a prominent Mexican culture critic in the late 1990s, would notoriously lash out with rhetorical passion: “…neoliberalism, one of the most odious and oppressive realities of the planet.”

Unfortunately, most advocates of economic freedom remained relatively silent, oblivious to the semantic trap laid within popular discourse. As a result, a vast amount of drivel emerged to reinforce the onslaught against “neoliberalism”—from the predictable likes of Naomi Klein and Joe Stiglitz (who knows he knows better) to otherwise powerful thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama. Recently, Phil Magness wrote a detailed and brilliant etymology of the word, which analyzes a host of claims from all corners of the ideological continuum and rightly infers that the term has become a “catch-all word for almost every economic complaint, while lacking any semblance of a coherent definition.”

Gee, I wonder if Maine's favorite progressive has learned the word? Googling…

He sure has! Jacobin editor-at-large David Sirota managed to coax it out of him: Graham Platner On Why America Went From Obama To Trump.

How did America go from Obama to Trump - and how can Democrats avoid repeating that kind of cycle again?

In an exclusive interview with The Lever’s weekly podcast LEVER TIME, Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner says Trump’s rise wasn’t some great mystery: Democrats bailed out banks, abandoned working people, and let corporate power keep running the party — which ultimately created conditions for a backlash.

“We did not stop the neoliberal project, that’s why,” Platner told me. “When Obama comes in and so many people are looking for this significant change, and then materially, we kind of just continue with the same neoliberal policies (of) trickle down economics (and) bailing out the banks and not bailing out the homeowners…That engenders an intense amount of anger and frustration and I think total disillusionment with the system itself.”

Tsk! Obama was too neoliberal for Graham!

Not that I'm obsessed with the guy or anything, but… It's an all-Platner linkfest today:

  • In case you were wondering about his grassroots campaign… The WSJ is pretty diligent in recounting The Messy Rise of Graham Platner. (WSJ gifted link) This bit jumped out at me:

    SULLIVAN, Maine—One of this year’s biggest political gambles began at 5:30 a.m. one day last July, when liberal activists Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan showed up at the home of Graham Platner, a combat veteran and oyster farmer in this forested town.

    Moraff and Fan had no ties to Maine or to the Democratic Party’s election machinery, which made their mission all the more audacious: to recruit a working-class candidate to run for the U.S. Senate on a populist platform. The idea, Platner recalled telling his visitors, was “quite literally the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.”

    I.e., not exactly a groundswell from Platner's friends and neighbors impressed with his homespun wisdom born out of hardworking callused-hand experience. Who are Moraff and Fan?

  • As it turns out, there are more accurate labels than "liberal activists". The NYPost is more on target in its labelling, inviting us to Meet the champagne socialist duo who groomed rich kid Graham Platner into 'working-class' candidate.

    Graham Platner has done a better job of hiding his privileged roots than the Nazi tattoo on his chest — a move which is by design.

    The embattled Maine candidate for US Senate is vocal about his disabled-war-veteran, rugged-oyster-farmer, “working-class” persona — and less so about his attendance at an $80,000-a-year boarding school, his lawyer father, or his major architect grandfather.

    That’s because he’s been coached on how to present himself, molded to present a specific image — and, in a sense, manufactured.

    The truth is he was discovered and coached by a pair of Ivy League-educated radical Democratic socialists, replicating a playbook they’ve used in Nebraska and Iowa. That revelation could be more damaging than the tattoo, sexting women other than his wife, blasting fellow veterans and admitting to masturbating in a port-a-potty, as it strikes at the heart of Platner’s alleged authenticity.

    Moraff and Fan are longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America. And somehow have the funding to wander around to states (like Maine) and recruit candidates (like Platner) who might have appeal to the "working class." At least the ones whose parents sent them to $80K/yr boarding schools.

  • Is there worse to come? Erick Erickson seems to think so. And the results won't be pretty.

    The man has a Nazi tattoo. He said soldiers in combat deserved to die. He blamed Susan Collins for sending him to war, despite volunteering repeatedly, even going back with Blackwater. He bragged about killing people. He fantasized about rape and said rape victims deserved some blame. He bragged about taking leave to have sex with prostitutes in Southeast Asia. And he claimed he can’t get in a porta-potty without masturbating and fantasizing.

    Soon we’ll get the even worse allegations against him and what he did to women beyond fantasy.

    Just remember that the Democrats have stuck with him. Eventually, the PodBros, Bulwark, and the rest will abandon Graham Platner. Once they’re done blaming the Jews, the victims, the women around Platner, the Republicans, and others — they’ll abandon him. What’s coming will force them to abandon him.

    And when they finally flee, remember they were comfortable with him through all of these things — things that all point to where the next accusations will be.

  • Making a pun I wish I'd thought of… is the always-reliable Jeffrey Blehar, with his headline: Graham Platner, the Mainechurian Candidate. (archive.today link)

    A mere five days ago — after the latest round of scandals facing presumptive Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who hopes to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins in Maine — I posed a simple question: “What Other Skeletons Are Lurking in Graham Platner’s Closet?” Now we know quite a bit more about a man whose public profile seems to have been assembled around the overturned building blocks of a failed and profoundly selfishly lived life.

    Yes, we’d already discussed so very much, primarily the fact that every single biographical point in Platner’s political narrative — as sold to Mainers — was an upper-class, downwardly mobile fraud, as phony as Jasmine Crockett ever was. The man is a privileged failson of Maine Democratic elites with a biography nearly entirely fraudulent. (He claimed to be a reluctant Marine war veteran; he in fact volunteered out of a frankly stated desire to “kill people.” He claimed to be a hardscrabble oysterman; he in fact claims a 100 percent disability status in order to live on a government pension while selling his hobbyist haul to his restaurant-owning mother.)

    Speaking of mom, her restaurant's website is here. On US Route 1, a mere 3 hour and 21 minute drive from Pun Salad Manor. Featuring (yes): "The area’s only oyster bar serving Maine’s Waukeag Neck Oysters harvested locally from Frenchman Bay." $22 will get you six of the ocean boogers.

  • But what does Jeff Maurer think? He notes that it's not just Democrats nominating phony slimeballs: The Platner/Paxton Symmetry/Asymmetry. Just a sample:

    Am I downplaying Platner’s flaws? Boy I don’t think so — just how hard am I supposed to roast this clown? Platner’s mistakes — all 105 of them — paint a clear picture of a guy with terrible judgement who is also an edgelord asshole. Recent news that he either cheated on his wife or tried hard to cheat on his wife but failed (which is worse?) didn’t faze me, because my take on Platner was already “He’s an unstable shithead”. Platner also continues to talk like a total dummy: Here he is complaining about “collapsing housing markets” even though the problem with housing is that prices are too high! Literally the only thing Platner has going for him — besides the piercing blue eyes of a Yeti — is that he might serve as a check against a guy who has all his same flaws times 100.

    That last bit deserves a footnote:

    The similarities between Trump’s defects and Platner’s are pretty striking (if not identical in scale). A history of philandering and being shitty towards women? Check. Uncomfortable proximity to extremist views? Check. Gobsmacking economic ignorance? Check. Odd affinity for the bad guy in a foreign conflict? Check. Obvious liar? Check. Asshole? Check.

    Maybe more tomorrow. Unless something comes along even more amusing between now and then.