Siobhán Brett is the opinion editor at the Maine Trust for Local News.

Volunteers were at pains to hand out disposable rain ponchos on the approach to Bunker Brewing in Portland on Thursday night, the “nano-brewery” where Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for Senate, was holding a very damp rally.

The audience gathered just off outer Congress Street — some 1,400, according to his campaign — was not a polyethylene poncho crowd. This was a duck boot crowd, a work boot crowd. There was an unsurprising volume of what the local artist Ryan Adams pricelessly calls “brunch boots” (Blundstones).

Many of those in attendance were in secure, high-end technical jackets; those who weren’t wore cotton sweatshirts, plaid shirts, denim jackets and wouldn’t have accepted the ponchos anyway. It rained, at times very heavily, for the hour.

Earlier that day, Platner was the subject of a 3,300-word write-up published by The New Yorker, headlined: “Can a Maine oyster farmer defeat a five-term Republican senator?”.

The publication, like the New York Times and many other similarly dazzled national outlets, took great pleasure in flirting with the answer Platner’s supporters desperately want to believe — that he can.

At once gravelly and tender, Platner — who could find ready work voicing movie trailers if politics doesn’t pan out — delivered remarks that skillfully blended the macro with the micro. He railed against the federal military budget, drawing cheers, before bringing his opposition to involvement in “stupid foreign wars” to life with a chummy, well-received aside: “I had to fight in two of ’em, which was a waste of everybody’s time, by the way.”

Despite the vaguely managerial, moneyed hue to some of the crowd at Bunker, pro-union and pro-worker cries were loud, at least initially. This is, already, a big conundrum of Platner’s. He, in his hoody, on his fishing boat, with his gruff, rural flavor; his most enthusiastic supporters, with their tote bags and their magazine subscriptions and their ideals.

Flanked, at one point, by a vented PGA Masters golf umbrella and another bearing the name of a California-based cybersecurity company, I reflected on this strange, sudden balancing act.

It’s not that people who come into Boston Marathon windbreakers and own very nice bikes can’t wish for the same for everybody else. The question of Platner’s legibility as a candidate where it matters most, however — the length and breadth of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District — is an open one.

How does Platner talk to Trump voters? The question was handed up to the stage on a flashcard. “I live in Sullivan,” was his rejoinder, which drew laughter from the audience that was doomed, in the setting, to sound a bit derisive.

When the remarks turned to the importance of local organizing and organizing mechanisms, I felt the response to be a bit weak. Platner’s sincere invitation to embark on work to “rebuild power,” in this way, was met with just a smattering of joined hands.

Chalk it down to unfamiliarity with this line of work? Maybe. Chalk it down, more likely, to the fact that people everywhere are jaded, time-poor and they lead atomized existences that can make appeals for sleeves-up involvement feel threatening.

“Defeat the opponent,” though, is an easy message to get behind. Platner also trades a lot in the term “oligarchy,” something nobody’s supposed to like. Our contemporary political reality is miserable, he doesn’t need to persuade most of us of that.

Platner, however, is vying to gain admission to a system in order to change it. He’s trying to strike the right notes, he’s getting the right attention. And, as a result, he hopped off the stage on Thursday night without asking for money. Five minutes later, he was back up, cap — almost apologetically — in hand.

At the close, people filed out carrying branded yard signs. With a dedicated program of care, perhaps these signs can last 400-plus days. Fortunately, Platner has the same amount of time to refine his orientation, to see if talking to every voter the same way can succeed in bringing enough of them around to the same idea.

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