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I have been completely loving the soap opera that is the 2026 United States Senate race in Maine.

For the first half of the season, we had the A plot: the supposed powerhouse of Gov. Janet Mills taking on the supposed powerhouse of Sen. Susan Collins. Then, we had the B plot: the “oysterman” Graham Platner, who had to have his Nazi tattoo covered up, taking on Mills.

Then, Mills dropped out, and now we have an inexperienced, exponentially flawed candidate with a fanatical following (I know, because these followers have been constantly complaining about me) taking on an experienced incumbent.

Still, by far my favorite subplot of this soap opera thus far is the emerging feud between Graham Platner and John Fetterman, the Democratic U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. Fetterman — who, like Platner, has a blue-collar image and was initially embraced by the progressive wing of the party — has had no problem whatsoever calling out Platner’s various controversies along the way. 

Unlike Sen. Collins, John Fetterman has not spent decades serving in the U.S. Senate as a moderate willing to cut deals with both parties. Rather, Fetterman — who initially made a name for himself by insisting on wearing a hoodie on the floor of the U.S. Senate — is a fairly loyal Democrat who votes with his party 93% of the time.

That’s why he’s insisted he’ll never switch parties, despite drawing ire from some of his supporters over a few issues where he has: namely, supporting Israel, President Trump’s war against Iran and a few of Trump’s nominees. He even made it very clear that he would never consider endorsing Collins — in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, of all places.

Despite the fact that both men portray the image of working-class, roughshod, tattooed independent thinkers, Fetterman has been insistently and repeatedly condemning Platner for his controversies.

Why the tension? Apart from the issue disagreements, I suspect that Fetterman resents that Platner is essentially trying to copy his playbook when he hasn’t really earned the right to do so.

Let’s take a moment or two to compare notes, shall we?

Fetterman went to public school, winning election as mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, by exactly one vote against the incumbent Democrat. To repeat: He won the election by exactly one vote. That’s rare anywhere, but especially so in Pennsylvania, where they have severely entrenched machine politics. If Fetterman had not won that election, he would likely have never been considered in his run for the U.S. Senate in 2016, a race that Republican Pat Toomey won, or have been selected as lieutenant governor or gone on to narrowly win the Senate seat six years later, after Toomey retired. 

Meanwhile, Graham Platner has never so much as run for school board, or any other form of elected office. In fact, Jon Fishman, the drummer for Phish, has a lengthier history of elected office than Platner, having served as selectman in Lincolnville (like Platner, he supported, and was supported by, Bernie Sanders).

Platner’s working-class bona fides are suspect compared to Fetterman’s — or compared to those of Paul LePage. Platner’s grandfather was a famous architect who designed a chair that Donald Trump reportedly loves. If you want to get one, they retail for over $4,000. While that fits right in with Trump, it doesn’t with a working-class insurgent candidate.

Platner, unlike Fetterman, also went to private high school — two, in fact: Hotchkiss, down in Connecticut, from which he was expelled, and John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor.

Perhaps the issue is not just that Graham Platner and John Fetterman disagree on a few issues here and there, but that the two genuinely dislike each other personally — even if they’ve never met.

In the comics and sci-fi/fantasy world, people call what Platner is doing — copying Fetterman’s shtick — cosplaying. Platner is portraying himself as a rough-edged straight shooter, when a quick glance at his background makes that portrayal seem … somewhat dubious.

Platner, for all of his campaigning as an outsider, may wish that he’d built up the sort of real political resume that Fetterman or LePage have: not so much involvement that they were insiders, but enough that they had real experience and credibility. Whether that matters any more is a decision that voters will have to answer in November.