Know Your Enemy - The Platner Ordeal (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry) [Teaser]

KYE favorite Dorothy Fortenberry joins Matt and Sam to sort through Graham Platner's rise and fall.

Duration: 4m
Broadcast on: 28 Jul 2026
Audio Format: other

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

Matt and Sam are joined by their great friend Dorothy Fortenberry to discuss the debacle of Graham Platner: the Maine Democratic Senate nominee who was forced to drop out amid allegations of rape. We compare notes about our evolving estimations of Platner, his appeal, and his scandals; uncover the gendered fantasies involved in his rise and fall; and game out what lessons can be learned from this experience — for the left and for the Democratic Party.

Dorothy is an essayist, playwright, and TV writer/producer, including four seasons on “The Handmaid’s Tale.” In previous appearances, she's discussed #Resistance moms, art and climate change, and Trump's women-hating cabinet. A new show she worked on, “Nocturne,” is coming out on Apple TV in October.

This episode was edited and produced by Colin Wambsgans (Jesse is on vacation).

Further reading:

Jessica Piper & Adam Wren, "Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her," Politico, July 6, 2026.

Katie Gluck & Lisa Lerer, "Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall 'Unsettling' Behavior," NYTimes, June 4, 2026.

Lisa Lerer, Katie Gluck, & Michael Kruse, "‘A Slow-Rolling Disaster’: Inside the Implosion of the Platner Campaign," NYTimes, Jul 8, 2026.

Will Steakin & Chris Sommerfeldt, "‘Professional malpractice’: The Platner fallout engulfs the operatives who made him," Politico, July 7, 2026.

Dorothy Fortenberry, "Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore," Commonweal, Nov 5, 2020.

— "One of Those Serious Women," Commonweal, Apr 29, 2019.

Moira Donegan, "Why was the pundit class so quick do defend Graham Platner," The Guardian, Jul 10, 2026.

Rebecca Traister, "What Women Saw in Graham Platner," New York Magazine, July 9, 2026.

The other thing with class is like, in that sort of last gasp, dead-end or defending moment, the thing where people were like, "Well, working class men love sexual assault." And I was like, "Jesus, what did you say? This is so gross and offensive." "Oh, he's more authentic because he's using derogatory terms about women." I was like, "Way to say what you actually think about the people you're allegedly trying to represent." And the notion that the way to connect with people on a class basis is to abuse women as they do is so hideous and also so disconnected from the fact like Donald Trump, who has sexually assaulted tons of women, is super rich and grew up in a mansion. And super fey and not particularly masculine in his presentation. Yeah, assaulting women is not at all linked to your class position. Rich guys are real jerks to ladies and it is not helpful to anyone to imply the opposite and it just made me furious. Yeah, the class stuff, the kind of aesthetic markers of class identity, that stuff almost never works on me because I kind of don't carry their way and it often does feel a little fake. For me, the great tell is when you see a television ad for a politician and they're shooting duck hunting or clay pigeons or Joe Manchin's case, shooting Obamacare, the legislation, whatever that was, I can instantly tell. I hate to admit that Tim Walz falls into this category of a guy who just didn't know how to handle a gun. Like I can spot it in my way, it's just not natural. But that's not how you make your political decisions because you're an adult and not a child? Yes, yes, but also I would say the way I metabolize these things, for me being gay too, like the masculinity thing, it doesn't really appeal to me in a certain way. I think sometimes it allows me to see the performance of it as being a little comical as it's kind of getting at. But I also worry, Dorothy, and this goes back to what you were just saying a few moments ago, there are certain kinds of bad guys. You kind of know the type of Dorothy. You're kind of basically saying something like that. Like you know this guy or this kind of situation, this isn't your first rodeo. And I do kind of think sometimes my perception of specifically men who end up like Plattner treating women that terribly. Like I'm not sure I have a certain alarm bell in my mind because I'm a gay guy who's not around. People like that that often now. It's not like I am naive about it. It's more like there's a certain kind of bad guy that doesn't always clock to me right away. But for Plattner, yeah, the working class aesthetic, to me it was like I don't care either way. I care about his platform and it seems to be working in Maine. He'd beat Janet Mills by 50 points. He'd be the same with Federman. It wasn't the fact that he wore shorts that made you want to vote for him. No, no. Federman's a little differently but after the stroke, I was like there's probably a lot of guys who grew up where I did. Who like have had heart attacks in their fifties because they never saw the doctor, didn't take medical advice. So there are sometimes I'm like, yeah, I can see why people grew up where I did. Some of these guys might identify with better men or why someone might identify with Plattner in Maine. But the working class thing, it seems like, especially with men, this is a kind of political identity that Democrats, at least some, think is the answer. I think I'm more ambivalent about that than people might expect because the performance of being working class doesn't work on me. And it's not clear to me it works electorally either, frankly. Well, that's something I wanted to say, just as a reality check, Plattner cleaned up in the primary and he was, for a time, pulling well against Susan Collins. But he was not generating a constituency that looked more downwardly mobile white male. No, he was resist moms. He was fully resist moms. He was 52% with women versus 45% with men.

Transcription truncated.

KYE favorite Dorothy Fortenberry joins Matt and Sam to sort through Graham Platner's rise and fall.