Someone like Platner, when I look at his candidacy, like one thing I truly believe is that grace comes to us when we're near the end of our tether.

Sort of like you have to bottom out to change.

And so I think like the people in our society who have experienced grace, whether you want to articulate that in theological terms or simply, you know,

realizing that we have to love our neighbors and, you know, community and solidarity, the importance of

those things, the people who understand that most viscerally and deeply will be people who have

fucked up. And to me, there's no rule. There's no like theory I can apply to it. It's more like case by case. Does the story that person tells, does the way they explain their behavior, why and how they've changed, does it seem real to you? And you've got to kind of go with your gut. And to me, Graham Platner, his story is very plausible and believable to me.

I find him compelling and his story compelling.

Well, Matt, I wonder if we should do a little gut check here because our very smart and rigorous listeners might be starting to feel a tickle of fear that we're John Federmaning.

Again, that we might be indulging

in some of the enthusiasm we felt for Fetterman who, look, the only reason that these things are

related is that he seemed like this candidate who represented the aesthetics of the working

class from the place that he's from. And that was a big appeal to us and that he was able to

work around the kind of institutional

norms and even niceties of the liberal mainstream in a way that made him very appealing.

You know, there's certainly a listener wondering whether we're being sold a Federman-esque

bill of goods here with Graham Platner, and I'd be interested

in what you think about that.

I mean, there's one thing that is just an obvious distinction from the jump, which is that

one thing we never talked about when we were excited about Fetterman was his position on

Israel and Palestine, which we didn't know he was going to become a fucking insane bloodthirsty

freakazoid about.

I think that was a shock to everyone that it became his kind of crazy making obsession.

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