How Graham Platner's Self-Immolation May Be A Blessing In Disguise for the Democrats

 

 

I think it's fitting for me to begin this article with something I wrote three months ago about Graham Platner:

Platner is a problematic candidate for Senate the same way that Jeffrey Dahmer had a very specific dietary restrictions. He is the exact kind of candidate that I associate Republicans nominating in my lifetime well before the era of Trump and that they've never quite gotten away from. It has constantly cost them races that they absolutely should have won from nominating Christine O'Donnell for the Senate in Delaware, a woman whose biggest claim to fame was claiming she had once been a with, to Roy Moore's to fill Jeff Sessions' Senate seat in Alabama and losing to Doug Jones to the last midterms when Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker's candidacies in Pennsylvania and Georgia cost the GOP senate seats they most likely could have won with less eccentric (to use a euphemism) candidates.  But I've never seen a candidate for public office, much less a Democrat, who is running for a Senate seat whose essentially done the opposition research for his opponents before the primaries were even over.

Platner has no qualifications for public office. He may be combat veteran who has served his country with distinction but his most recent career is that of an oyster farmer. Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked that his main adviser worked for Mamdani – and considering we've just seen the limits of that in New York, I can't imagine how it'll play in Maine. He calls himself Maine's Mamdani because he has openly opposed Israel's war in Gaza.

In the lead up to last November several high level staffers included his political director, his campaign manager, and his campaign treasurer resigned. Several Reddit posts have made it clear that he is a 'communist, called cops bastards and said rural white Americans are stupid." The fact that he has a Nazi tattoo – and that somehow he wasn't aware of it until recently – is the least of his problems.

I wrote all of this to be very clear in May just after Janet Mills had dropped out of the race leaving an open field to Platner for the nomination. Those of you who read my columns and those that have followed on the subject know that by comparison I was being mild in this one about my feelings about what a horrendous mistake it was for Platner to be my party's candidate to try and unseat Susan Collins in Maine.

What I left out at the time and still troubles me now is how so many people I've respected as intelligent for a long time, along with so many publications, seemed to be willing to completely buy into the narrative that Platner was setting and basically disregard all of his negatives any one of which would have been a major disqualification had they been for a Republican. Why did all of these people, who have spent much of the past decade unable to understand why the vast majority of the Republican Party and the electorate at large, have blindly followed Donald Trump for so much similar bad behavior in his past, were willing to just buy into the myth of Platner upon talking to him attending his rallies? Why did they choose to take his word rather then so many of the people on his campaign who resigned after these problems became obvious?  Nothing in his campaign rhetoric or for that matter his platform was any different than anyone of the many left-wing candidates who have run in the Bernie Sanders type mold since 2016 for Senate and were rejected by the electorate? And why did they realistically believe that they would not be taken advantage of by a Republican establishment that has been able to do so much more when the candidate was and I quote myself "writing his own opposition research for them?"

Now I don't want to take a victory lap and I don't particularly think I deserve credit for not having to wait for an accusation of sexual assault to think that Platner was going to be a bad candidate. In fact I want to give credit where its due to mainstream media especially The New York Times who after months of favorable stories ended up running a week before the primary the article about three separate woman who claimed Platner had sexually assaulted them.

Much of the media behaved with honor, including Politico, The Atlantic and The Washington Post who ran an op-ed by Platner's former campaign manager making it very clear how bad a candidate the Democrats were embracing. Many within the Party did behave with honor in urging Platner to drop out, among them Josh Gottheimer and John Fetterman. Multiple organizations withdrew their endorsement and Cheyenne Hunt, who had led the charge for Eric Swalwell to resign from Congress after similar allegation emerged, publicly rescinded her endorsement of Platner.

I was disappointed but not truly surprised that almost to an elected official every single left-wing senator and Congressman who'd endorsed Platner chose to stand by him, whether it was Bernie Sanders or Ro Khanna. Ever since the 2020 election at the absolute latest the far left wing of the party has been more than willing to excuse the bad behavior of its members even when it mirrors that of the Republicans they've been arguing are perverting the values of America. In that sense the way that AOC and Warren were willing to go on TV and defend the accusations against Platner in the immediate aftermath of him becoming the official nominee was instructive for any impartial observer to make it clear of the utter hypocrisy of the Justice Democrats and the left-wing of the party in general.

What made it far more troubling was the obvious comparison between the accusations against Platner and the Access Hollywood tape being released in October of 2016. During that period many of the same people who were more than willing to argue that the GOP had a moral obligation to demand Trump resign from the ticket were absolutely willing to advocate that the party had to be unified behind Platner. Considering that Trump's election was the main impetus for MeToo and Time's Up, among countless other movements, the fact that so many people were choosing to argue that Platner was 'clearly being framed' by his accusers is the strongest example I've seen yet that the left is only giving lip service to anything regarding social justice. For ten years the slogan had been 'believe women' and now it was 'believe Graham Platner'.

And the fact that everyone was willing to bend over backwards to defend Platner for the sole purpose of defeating Susan Collins was the clearest demonstration of not just how skewed the priorities of the left were but their own hypocrisy there. That so many people were choosing to argue that Collins' vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh was a reason to elect Graham Platner is by far the clearest illustration as to how the left could no longer follow its own narrative thread.

And that it took a second story told by a second woman who'd been assaulted for Khanna, Sanders and all the remaining left-wing officials to finally do the right thing and withdraw their endorsements and argue for Platner to step down should be the biggest sign yet as to the left being as immoral and lacking any principles as we've seen to this point in the post-Trump era.  And it is for that reason that there is a clear lesson to be learned here about the Justice Democrats and everything that has followed since 2016 about the left-wing side of the Democrats.

By and large since the 2018 election of AOC and the Squad the Justice Democrats have managed to get a relative free ride from the media. The attacks of Fox News and the far right have been dismissed as racist and bigoted which is true but it has also given the Squad and its members almost complete immunity from any real attack both in the media and the Democratic Party. It has given them cover from the fact they have no real policy triumphs after a decade in existence, have not been able to help the Democrats increase their majorities in Congress in any real way and have failed to win at a statewide level since they were founded.  They have to this point been able to let their controversies and bad acting – which at times have been as chaotic and demagogic as anything MAGA has done – get a pass in large part because of everything that MAGA has done. The media has covered the failings of the Justice Democrats and various left-wing Senators to win elected office but never with the same fervor they've covered their successes as well.

This combination has given so much of the left-wing of the party a sense of power that is vastly disproportionate to their numbers. In the aftermath of the 2024 elections there have clearly been a struggle for power among the left wing of the party and the leadership led by Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. And despite almost no real victories the media has been more than willing to take the decisions to either primary Hakeem Jeffries or challenge Schumer's leadership of the Senate Caucus by Chris Van Hollen or other members as if they must be considered legitimate. Indeed the decision of Schumer to back Janet Mills in the Maine primary instead of Platner was seen as a reason for him to step down as recently as a month ago.

The left to be clear has suffered quite a few defeats in this election cycle to their endorsement power. One of the clearest ones came in the Iowa primary where Elizabeth Warren backed Zach Wahls, a man who said he wouldn't vote for Schumer as majority leader if they won, versus Josh Turek who Schumer quietly backed. Turek won by nearly two to one and there is a decent chance the Democrats might flip that seat.  Jasmine Crockett suffered a similar defeat to James Talarico in the Texas Democratic primary last March and now Talarico has a better than 50-50 chance to defeat Ken Paxton this fall.

Graham Platner was by far the biggest standard bearer the Justice Democrats and Sanders had going into the midterms and they have been very public as to standing by him even after the initial reports of the assault were revealed. The DNC by and large had not sent nearly as many emails for fundraising for Platner even after Mills dropped out and they'd sent comparative few in relation to other major progressive Senate candidates such as Jamie Davis in Louisiana who have no really chance of victory.  Some traditional Democrats were willing to pay lip service to Platner after he won the primary but basically they were holding him at arms' length compared to AOC and others who were willing to go to the media and defend him.

This means that whatever happens in Maine this cycle now can only and entirely be left at the feet of the wing of the party. They chose to put a considerable amount of time and energy supporting a deeply flawed candidate even after allegations of sexual assault came to light for the sole reason that he endorsed their platform.  It will be extremely difficult for them not to shoulder the blame for whatever happens even if (as is increasingly likely) Platner chooses to step down.

By contrast this is clearly a victory for the establishment wing of the party such as Schumer.  The left has so clearly framed Platner as their candidate that no matter what happens in Maine it is a loss for them and a win for the establishment. If Collins wins reelection Platner will be hung around the left's neck like an albatross for the foreseeable future, certainly until at least 2028. If the Democrats manage to win back the majority with Collins winning reelection, it will be the clearest sign that America wants centrist Democrats not the left wing such as Platner or Davis or Annie Andrews in South Carolina.

And if by some miracle the Democrats can find a candidate to replace Platner and they manage to unseat Collins it will be the biggest middle finger to those such as Sanders and Warren in the last decade by the establishment of the party and to the Justice Democrats across the board.  This is the most unlikely scenario but if the million to one shot comes through it will be a signal that not even AOC and Mamdani will be able to ignore. They were handing a shit sandwich by the left and they managed to turn it around despite everything they were given.

And the thing is no matter how this plays out this is the most notable and public loss of the left in the last decade and one that is going to follow them however the Democrats choose their candidates in elections for the foreseeable future. As I've said in most of my articles the Democratic Party was looking to do very well in the midterms this cycle in swing districts and with centrist Democrats but the left had wanted to make it all about them and the media had been willing to give them cover to do so.  Platner's very public immolation is a story that everyone (maybe not MSNOW) is not going to be able to ignore and all of the sparks are going to fall entirely on the left-wing of the party. For a Democratic establishment who no doubt has wanted them to shut up but never had leverage to hold over them, this is going to be a gift that keeps on giving for this cycle and probably the next one as well.

As for myself I don't want applause. I don't take real pleasure in the misfortunes of others and I don't think I deserve credit for realizing what should have been obvious to anyone with a brain and access to Platner's social media thread. But as someone who has spent the last several years arguing that the left was leading the Democratic Party off a cliff and that it was absolutely going to come back to bite us down the road, I'm grateful for L'affaire Platner for demonstrating that there is value in taking the moderate path and behaving like a grownup.

I'll end this column by quoting myself again:

…as much as Platner and his supporters want to pretend otherwise it's impossible to argue that had they listened to Schumer and backed Mills their chances of taking the Senate back would be much easier.

Now the Democratic Party has proof of that statement. Even if the Justice Democrats choose to deny it (which they invariably will) the party has the receipts and they all know it. If this gives the grownups the upper hand, it's worth it if Susan Collins wins reelection this November. The left might want to ignore this. The Party won't and they deserve what they get.

That I'll admit to taking a certain pleasure in.