Maine’s Graham Platner Has Discovered a Secret: Poor Whites Exist!

And contrary to the widespread liberal complaint, these voters do know, in increasing numbers, that the Trump administration is strafing their Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and rural hospitals. In 2022, scholars Kristin Lunz Trujillo and Zack Crowley discovered that, while some rural voters had symbolic concerns about their “way of life” or threats from elites, others had material concerns—namely, that their communities needed more resources—and that group voted for Democrats. This may explain why, as Ealy explains, Kamala Harris in 2024 made headway among poor whites in Eastern Kentucky, where voters had gotten sick of the Republican con.

But poor white voters must be engaged. This begins by using unminced words: low-income, unlivable, poverty, homeless. We also need more models of Americans who are neither spoiled heirs nor self-made libertarians, but taxpayers who work hard and also need a hand up to cover food, health, and housing costs. Politicians shouldn’t have to look far. That’s fully 53 percent of us. As a freelancer, I’m in that number, and I’m extremely grateful for Medicaid.

Graham Platner knows this territory, too, as Ana Marie Cox reported for TNR last month. Though he has a small oyster-farming business and pays his wife and his business partner for their labor, he himself doesn’t take a salary from it. As a disabled veteran, he makes ends meet with benefits from the Veterans Administration.