politics

The core problem with the Working Families Party is not that it is “too left" as its mainstream apponents like to paint it, it is that it often uses left energy to discipline people back into the Democratic Party, then calls the cleanup “movement-building.” That can win some seats, but it can also teach leftists to accept candidates who later betray the movement.

WFP treated John Fetterman as a major 2022 battleground project. In its own 2022 memo, WFP called Pennsylvania “the best opportunity for a Democratic Senate pickup” and said it had built one of its largest voter-contact programs in the state for Fetterman against Dr. Oz.

But Fetterman’s later record exposed the danger of endorsing “vibes” over political discipline. Once in office, he moved sharply away from the left, especially on Palestine. The New Yorker described him as once being “a beacon for progressives” who then moved beyond even many centrist Democrats in his “unconditional support” for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Then WFP turned around and announced a future primary effort against him. In 2025, Pennsylvania WFP said Fetterman had “sold out working Pennsylvanians” and accused him of being the deciding vote for a Republican budget bill that would strip health care from millions, including more than 400,000 Pennsylvanians.

That is the problem: WFP helped manufacture Fetterman’s progressive legitimacy, then asked the movement to spend years undoing the consequences. For left movements, this is exhausting. It turns organizing into a cycle of laundering candidates, being betrayed, then fundraising off the betrayal.

WFP endorsed Platner in March 2026 for the Maine Senate Democratic nomination, calling him a champion for working people who would fight billionaires, lobbyists, and corporate interests.

But Platner came with serious baggage. There's his Nazi tattoo that he got to commemorate the great time he had murdering brown people, there's the fact that he constantly reminisces about his time in the army and how much he enjoyed his war crimes, so much so that he decided a promotion that put him away from the action was not worth it and joined blackwater to do more war crimes instead. And his old online comments include dismissive remarks about military sexual assault, Black patrons, police officers, rural Americans, and anti-LGBTQ jokes. He's an unapologetic racist war criminal, and is being pushed as a progressive anti-imperialist.

The left should absolutely believe in transformation, accountability, and people becoming better. But electoral organizations often convert that principle into something thinner: “ignore the contradictions because he has the right class aesthetic.” That is dangerous. A left movement cannot build durable solidarity if it asks women, Black people, queer people, Jews, or antifascists to subordinate their concerns to a candidate’s “working-class” branding.

Platner may be better than establishment Democrats on economic policy. But WFP’s endorsement illustrates a recurring weakness: the party often treats populist anti-billionaire language as enough, even when the candidate’s record raises questions about political judgment, accountability, and who gets asked to absorb harm for the sake of “the bigger fight.”

In 2014, WFP endorsed Cuomo after he promised progressive concessions, even though Zephyr Teachout represented a clearer anti-Cuomo left challenge.

WFP endorsed Elizabeth Warren over Bernie Sanders, after having backed Sanders in 2016, which intensified divisions on the left.

In 2021, WFP ranked Scott Stringer first, then rescinded the endorsement after sexual misconduct allegations, then shifted to Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales. The result was a fractured left and Eric Adams as NY mayor.

That's what they do.