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- [00:00]
A
The thing about that, just trying to think about local media. There's the way you were talking, right when you did your old job and you were at NBC, you would. You're a reporter that parachutes into places. You're trying to get a feel for it just so you can add color and granularity to whatever story you're doing. And so you get this. That. Like, that kind of view. And then there's what I do, where I sort of. I do these focus groups where I pull lots of different people in for me, and we talk to them and we get a sense of, you know, how they're thinking about things. Because you said Janet Mills. And one of the funny things about doing focus groups in Maine was the voters liked Janet Mills. They all liked her. They did not want to vote for her. They did not want her to run for Senate, but they liked her just fine. Like, they could tell you. And so, like, I feel like I got that flavor. But then there's what you're doing now, which is a whole different thing, because even when you do focus groups, even when you parachute in, you can get more information than just, like, national political observers who look at everything through sort of a national lens. I see this happening, happening right now a little bit in Michigan, where I feel like the way that the national folks kind of look at Haley Stevens doesn't quite match what. How people on the ground feel about Haley Stevens. Not everybody. But, like, she does have lots of people there who find her, like, very authentic to Michigan. And the way that people in Maine, when I talk to them in focus groups, found Graham Platner to be quite authentic to. To Maine. But what is it about, like, living there in it? What kind of flavor do you get that's different from what any of us even who are trying our best from a way to understand things. What do you feel like you understand about what's happening right now in the politics in Maine that we can't understand?
- [01:51]
B
It's. It's so deep, so much deeper and richer of an understanding that it's. This whole experience has made me question a lot of my own reporting that I did when I was the one parachuting into a state and, you know, doing my best. And I'm not at all of the kind of person who leaves, you know, mainstream media and thinks they're all. Or tries to sell the idea that they're all phony, lying, corrupt people at all. I think these are smart people doing the best they can. But you can only do so much when you Spend, you know, a few days in a place and talk to people. And we all know that we are not the most reliable narrators of our own thoughts and feelings. And, you know, so you. The poll gets you one level deep. A focus group gets you another level deep. But I think living and talking and, you know, living and breathing this place gives you an even deeper level where you can understand things that maybe people won't vocalize or won't even be conscious to vocalize, but you can kind of pick up those. Those little threads. And it also feels so different. I mean, my part of Maine is different from another part of Maine, and it's. It not just made me question my coverage, but, like, what we can know, period. You know, not to get too, like, philosophical here, but it. It just. I'd like personally, going into the 2016 election, all the polls, all the data, everything looked like Hillary Clinton was going to win, and it was such a rug pull that not only she lost, but this whole apparatus of understanding the world failed. And since then, for me and living here, it's been like an experience of accepting the humility that we can't know everything all the time and just doing your best at any moment to, to try to understand by gathering as much facts and data as possible.
- [03:37]
A
Yeah, this sense making of the world. I also, I mean, right. I started doing focus groups after 2016 because I was so convinced that I understood nothing. Like, I was, like, I didn't. How is this possible? You know, And. And what was crazy was when I did start doing focus groups with Trump voters, and I was somebody who's, you know, lifelong Republican, and I was in all these Republican circles, and everybody hated Trump. Everyone I knew hated Trump, Every Republican I knew hated Trump. They were all voting for Hillary Clinton, even if they weren't sort of saying so out loud because they were, this is terrible. And like, well, I'll just deal with Hillary Clinton and then get back to normal. The second I started doing focus groups with vot, I was like, oh, my gosh. The extent to which people feel like they know him. The extent to which people in the Republican Party really hate the Republican Party and feel really disappointed by the Republican Party. But even doing focus groups, I can feel the limitations because it's people sort of. They are also can be unreliable narrators, first of all, when they're, like, explaining it to you from the outside. But the thing that I know I couldn't get my hands around with Graham Platner, and I guess I'll use this to sort of Transition us into the Senate race. Conversation is. In some ways, I wrote a piece after doing a couple focus groups about how the voters really described Grant Platner's authentically Maine. Right. They saw him and this. This question of authenticity is very much at the center of our politics right now. It's sort of a hangover from the analysis of Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris. People did not find her authentic. They didn't feel like they knew her, whatever. So, like, this authenticity has become the coin of the political realm. And when they plucked Graham Platner from obscurity, it was like, okay, we can. We can sort of sell this guy as authentically main. And the voters were buying it. But as his story began to sort of unravel, was he still authentic and just authentically bad in some, you know, like. Or authentically had. Had done bad things? Or was he like a simulacrum of authentic? Like, he was almost created to be authentic, but actually he just was sort of. He had actually gone to a prep school and his mom's restaurant, bought his oysters, and he was a story that they were trying to tell that's just like any other campaign. That wasn't the true thing. Does that. Am I hitting it? You tease that apart.
- [06:11]
B
All of his supporters, or most of them did continue to view him as authentic throughout that. And class politics are really complicated here, especially on the coast. And you have a lot of people. I've called it like, intentional downward mobility, where, you know, the first generation, like his grandfather was a famous architect, comes in summers, and then the second generation moves here full time, but retains professional identity. His dad was a lawyer. And then the third generation goes full townie. And as long as you're, you know, working with your hands, it kind of doesn't matter. You can. You can be accepted. You can be coded as from Maine and not from away. And so I don't think that necessarily counted against him as much as it seemed like from the outside. But it did start to wear away at the patience and chip away at the idea that he was exactly who he claimed to be, which, of course, he. He wasn't. And to create that sense of authenticity, I think it has to be something of a simulacrum. Right. Because it's all. Most people are not going to meet him and spend time with him personally, so it's going to be mediated through Instagram videos and speeches and social medias. And like, the guy who's replacing him now, Troy Jackson, is an authentically working class mayor from the interior of the state, which is far poorer, more conservative, fifth generation logger. Like, he's not from a fancy family, but he couldn't connect in that same way. He couldn't deliver that message in the same way, I think, because he didn't have the experience of moving through elite circles the way Graham Platner did. Like Platner because of his family, because he went to gw, because he bartended at the tune in on Capitol Hill. He could speak to reporters and donors and thought leaders and sell them. And a lot of people on the coast here are, you know, college educated, sophisticated urban expats. And it just went over perfectly with them. They, they loved it in a way that they, they struggled to, to connect with Troy Jackson. So I think to, to be authentic in politics, you do need a little bit of that, I don't want to say phoniness, but you need to, you know, it needs to be packaged just like a pop star or a movie star, because you're almost a content creator at this point. But it still needs to have that core, which he was revealed to not really have.
- [08:37]
A
So moving sort of forward from the platinum of it all, although we'll probably talk about it a little bit more.