Adrian Cole is a writer and author living on Chebeague Island.

One doesn’t expect to see a candidate for the U.S. Senate onstage with a Celtic punk band. But that’s exactly what happened earlier this month when Graham Platner, now running in Maine, arose from the mosh pit onto the stage with the Dropkick Murphys at the Maine State Theatre.

He joined front man Ken Casey for a roaring rendition of “Bury the Bones,” then hurled himself back into the crowd to surf away.

It is hard to imagine a more unconventional campaign moment. Words like insurgent and disruptive come to mind. The following day, five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins announced her candidacy. Whether she saw footage of her potential rival flinging himself into a crowd—wearing a Palestine Bank T-shirt—is unknown. What is certain is that Collins, or almost any other senator, would never attempt such a thing. 

It wasn’t his mosh pit christening, either: At an Irish music festival in Boston last fall, Casey introduced Platner to the crowd with a blunt endorsement: “This guy is ready to fucking shape things up for the better!” The crowd roared approval.

It hard to overstate how unusual this is. You had see it to believe it. A candidate for US Senate crowd surfing at a punk concert. But in many ways it makes sense when you consider Platner’s platform and political persona, which both align with the Murphys.  What does this alignment reveal—about him, the race, and the broader moment?

Celtic punk channels a strain of progressive politics rooted in labor solidarity and resistance to entrenched power. The Murphys’ “Who’ll Stand With Us?”—lamenting stolen labor and bosses who never shed “blood, sweat, or tears”—echoes Platner’s own critique of oligarchy. The themes of exploitation and solidarity double as campaign message.

The Pogues, another of Platner’s favorites, evoke Irish republican defiance and old-country memory. Shane MacGowan embraced nationalist struggle in songs like “Young Ned of the Hill.” There’s a strong parallel in Platner’s embrace of working-class aesthetics and anti-colonialism. 

Ken Casey used the stage to defend unions and mock grievance politics long before Trump. In a recent exchange with podcaster Michael Fanone, he scoffed at the claim that conservatism is the new punk: “Bullshit.” Punk, he implied, is not reflexive contrarianism. It is antagonism toward concentrated power and solidarity among outsiders. 

One of the Democratic Party’s challenges is its uneasy relationship with masculinity and the white working class. Too often these voters are analyzed rather than addressed. Masculinity is treated as a pathology to correct, not a force to mobilize, and the right has filled that vacuum with theatrical bravado. Platner has marched directly onto this terrain, even recording a “fireside chat” on masculinity.

Casey offered his own take last year in an appearance on the Daily Show: “What I don’t find masculine is someone who talks all the time about masculinity and tries so hard to be masculine.” The jab landed because it reframed strength as authenticity rather than performance.

Platner and Casey both channel an older Democratic vocabulary—one that targets bosses, scabs, and authoritarians rather than immigrants or cultural minorities. Some commentators have dubbed this approach “Dark Woke”—a somewhat clumsy but useful term for a style that is less conciliatory and more combative. It rejects the idea that progressives must always be soothing or above the fray. Conflict, in this view, is sometimes necessary.

Historically, that posture is not new. Pre-centrist Democratic politics, rooted in unions and working-class movements, was often rough-edged. The open question is whether Democrats—and Platner—can forge these impulses into a coherent style. A progressive politics willing to be loud, rooted in labor pride, and openly antagonistic toward concentrated wealth may be better suited to the moment than one perpetually anxious about tone. What remains to be seen is whether crowd surfing and the punk aesthetic will amount to a winning recipe, or the opposite.