Maybe his replacement will even win, who knows. I think still have a shot. But you know that distaste people express for the democratic party, how they are elitist, how they are fake, how they are out of touch, etc. It's stuff like building up and tearing down Platner that reinforces that reputation. The dem primary voters are happy to be led to the establishment-anointed candidates, but the general election voters are more turned off by it. The story now is how Platner himself was found and built-up by out-of-state operatives, so the reader may understand he was not a self-motivated political animal but a construct. And how now when the political operatives discovered the fatal flaw at the center of their robot, they pulled the plug and the robot has no agency at all to even try to finish the race. Instead, they will just do a quick oil job on another robot and push him out there. It really shines a spotlight on how inorganic and undemocratic opportunity within the Democratic party really is.
They told him that he was “the guy.” Last July, in a small town in coastal Maine, a couple of progressive, self-styled recruiters of economic populists showed up at the blue-shingled house of Graham Platner, a little-known oyster farmer and Marine veteran who lived largely off government benefits. They knew his name from local labor organizers and activists, and they had watched a video on the internet of him talking about oysters. Struck by his left-leaning ideology, his working-class affect and his gravelly voice, they became convinced that he could win a Senate seat in Maine — and quickly persuaded Mr. Platner of the same. The initial headhunters, Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan, and then a third out-of-state operative they called up to Maine — Morris Katz — told Mr. Platner he was “the one,” a “hero of the movement,” “a historical figure” who could be “leading a revolution,” according to half a dozen people with knowledge of their conversations. But a clutch of people who cared about Mr. Platner were telling him something else. They worried about his mental health, amid his ongoing efforts to heal from post-traumatic stress disorder after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. They feared this trio of out-of-state operatives was a dangerous combination of inexperienced and overconfident. The worst-case scenario, they thought, wasn’t running for Senate and losing — it was destroying the life he worked hard to build. Until recently, Mr. Platner had seemed to prove the worriers wrong. His campaign was pumping out viral videos and broadcasting scenes from crowded town halls. He easily pushed a sitting governorout of the Democratic primary as voters embraced his message of economic populism and overlooked his checkered past. Progressives across the country heralded him as a new left-wing hero and saw him as their best opportunity to defeat Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, in a race that could decide control of the Senate. But behind the scenes, his campaign was messy, disorganized and haphazardly run. Mr. Platner did not disclose explosive, politically damaging secrets to key members of his team. And he was guarded by an insular and zealously protective inner circle of advisers who did not always seem to grasp the seriousness — or strangeness — of what quickly became a steady drip of scandal, according to party strategists, Democratic officials and former staff members. Repeatedly, Mr. Platner promised there was nothing else damaging from his past to come. And each time, he was wrong. Mr. Platner, said Ronald Holmes III, his former national finance director, was “seriously flawed.” But he faulted Mr. Platner’s team for failing to “ask the right questions and get honest answers.” In a statement, the campaign disputed the idea that there was a lack of planning or infrastructure as “simply false,” and said that the team “built the operation, strategy, and organization needed to create one of the strongest grass-roots campaigns Maine has ever seen.” This report is based on interviews with more than 30 people who interacted with the campaign or Mr. Platner, many of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. In June, as rumors swirled about a damaging story coming from The New York Times featuring several of Mr. Platner’s ex-girlfriends, Mr. Katz called a top national Democratic strategist, insisting that there were no issues in Mr. Platner’s past concerning his treatment of women, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation. Mr. Katz said he had asked Mr. Platner directly and repeatedly whether anyone had made sexual assault allegations against him and the candidate had said no, according to two people familiar with the discussion who described it on the condition of anonymity. “It’s been a slow-rolling disaster instead of all happening at once — it’s been really drawn out and painful and difficult to watch,” added Mr. Holmes, who resigned last fall after raising concerns about the professionalism of the campaign’s senior leadership. “It’s like we’ve been watching a mile-long train derail at four miles an hour.” That train finally crashed this week, when a woman who had dated Mr. Platner accused him of rape. He denied the allegation, but released a video saying he was taking time to “reflect” on his path forward. Within roughly 24 hours, Democrats at every level had called for him to withdraw, and the Maine Democratic Party was on a war footing with its own nominee. Ambitious politicians were taking steps to try to succeed him on the ticket. And Democrats across the country wondered how one of their best chances to flip a Senate seat had imploded.
Before Mr. Platner became the Democrats’ biggest headache, his most ardent supporters spoke about him in strikingly lofty terms. As his campaign was getting off the ground, Mr. Moraff likened him to Barack Obama in conversations with senior Democratic officials, according to two people with knowledge of the private conversations. But there were early signs that Mr. Platner had serious political liabilities. Less than two weeks after he announced his bid, his wife, Amy Gertner, approached a top campaign aide. She wanted to disclose that Mr. Platner had been exchanging sexual messages with multiple women. Mr. Platner was about to hold a campaign event with Senator Bernie Sanders, his first major endorser and a personal hero. Ms. Gertner told Genevieve McDonald, then the campaign’s political director, that she worried Mr. Sanders would think less of her husband if he later found out about the exchanges with other women, Ms. McDonald recalled. Was that the extent of the controversy in Mr. Platner’s personal life or was there more to worry about? Campaign officials appeared not to know. A top Platner adviser had promised a national Democratic strategist that they would not launch a campaign without completing a full investigation of Mr. Platner’s background. But, according to two people familiar with the campaign’s operations, no extensive effort was undertaken in one of the marquee races of the midterm cycle. Instead, they conducted an expedited review, resulting in a short risk-assessment memo. Mr. Platner’s campaign said that a research firm produced a vetting memo of nearly 50 pages that included searches of news reports, social media posts and public documents. They did not do exhaustive interviews with Mr. Platner. “I said, ‘None of this will or should stop him from becoming a U.S. senator,’” Mr. Moraff told The Wall Street Journal. But others had access to significantly more damaging information about Mr. Platner’s past. In Northern Virginia, Lyndsey Fifield, a former girlfriend of Mr. Platner’s, texted a private group chat of friends last summer about a tattoo on his chest widely recognized as a Nazi symbol. He had gotten it while serving in the military and referred to it, she has said, as “my Totenkopf.” The “Nazi tattoo on his chest,” Ms. Fifield suggested, was going to be a problem. The existence of the tattoo, however, did not immediately become public. In the meantime, Mr. Platner’s campaign began to find an audience. He drew bigger and bigger crowds, crisscrossing the state for events and spending hours gabbing on podcasts. Yet controversies kept arising. In October, CNN and other news outlets uncovered a trove of incendiary online posts that Mr. Platner had written between 2009 and 2021, which included dismissive comments about rape and sexual assault in the military. Mr. Platner apologized, and has urged the public not to judge him for his worst moments on the internet. The lack of disclosure about his past made Ms. McDonald, a former state legislator and lobbyist, uncomfortable. She quit the campaign in October. Around the same time, photos of Mr. Platner’s tattoo from his wife’s Facebook account began leaking to news organizations. The Platner team, hoping to defuse the potential damage, released video footage of a shirtless Mr. Platner with the tattoo visible to Pod Save America, a liberal podcast that supported his bid. In a friendly interview, Mr. Platner dismissed the issue as little more than pearl-clutching by his opponents. “I am not a secret Nazi,” he said. “Lifelong opponent.” At the time, Mr. Platner said in a statement that he did not know that his tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol until it became a campaign issue. More staffers, including Mr. Holmes, left the campaign.
For months, there was little indication that any of the controversy was seriously hurting his candidacy. As Mr. Platner’s star rose through the winter and early spring, Mr. Katz was privately promoting him as a future presidential candidate for as soon as 2028, if he won his Senate bid. When Janet Mills, his chief Democratic primary opponent, produced tough ads featuring his comments about women and rape, it did little to change the trajectory of the race. Poll after poll showed Mr. Platner leading Ms. Mills, a two-term governor who was supported by national Democratic leaders, by double-digits. Mr. Platner built a movement-like following, emerging as one of his party’s most powerful online fund-raisers. His campaign constructed an image of a working-class combat veteran who had returned to Maine to rebuild his life, who spoke movingly about the failings of American foreign policy and rallied voters with his promises to take on a political system dominated by corporations and billionaires. Democrats flocked to his town hall meetings. Publicly, at least, the candidate expressed nothing but bravado. In an April interview, he dismissed any jitters about going up against Ms. Mills — a former prosecutor — in a series of planned public debates. Mr. Platner had debated before, he said, in college classes. His preparations, he said, were “standard run-of-the mill debate prep.” “Honestly, I’ve seen enough and read enough about politics that it looks and sounds very much like what debate prep usually looks like,” he said. He added: “Standing up and talking about the things you believe in, it’s not that complicated.” Mr. Platner’s theory about debating would never be tested. The next morning, Ms. Mills dropped out the race, saying she lacked the funds to compete. But by June, Mr. Platner was trailing far behind Ms. Collins in campaign funds. Mr. Platner’s campaign had just $1.3 million in the bank when he exited the race, a fraction of Ms. Collins’s $9.7 million war chest as of late May. A person familiar with the campaign’s finances said the amount of cash available to spend was even lower — under $100,000. The campaign raised nearly $9 million last quarter, said a campaign official, more than doubling the previous quarter’s haul. While the campaign successfully focused on attracting small-dollar donations, it struggled to recruit and retain big-dollar donors. Campaign aides told top Democratic strategists that donors kept raising concerns about the tattoo and his other controversies. Their requests for help assuaging donors’ concerns were met with silence from the national committee, according to three people familiar with discussions. Last week, Mr. Platner kicked off a call with a new national finance committee — a first, if belated, step to bundle checks from wealthy donors, according to an invitation seen by The Times. And the campaign took its worries about money public, warning on a call with reporters that he was being swamped on the airwaves. Estimates showed they were set to be outspent by 2 to 1 on advertising by Ms. Collins and her allies through Election Day, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact. “I was training with my jujitsu buddies at my kids’ class yesterday,” Ben Chin, Mr. Platner’s campaign manager, told reporters. “There were these radio ads that were coming on as we were listening, and people were starting to give me a hard time, like, ‘Oh, where are your radio ads?’”
The campaign’s money troubles were exacerbated by a series of even more damaging revelations about his personal conduct and treatment of women. In May, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times published stories detailing sexual text exchanges with women that had worried Ms. McDonald and Ms. Gertner nearly 10 months earlier. In early June, Mr. Platner found himself in a private meeting in Washington facing questions from senators about whether more damaging revelations were yet to come. He promised that there was nothing else, according to a person familiar with the discussion. But it became clear that Mr. Platner and his team were in crisis mode. He flew home to Maine, and frantically dialed ex-girlfriends to find people who would testify to his good character. He called Representative Ro Khanna, an early supporter from California, to warn him that The Times was going to publish a story that would detail his “toxic relationships.” He was a “terrible boyfriend” and made misogynistic comments, he said, according to someone familiar with the discussion, but nothing worse. Days later, The Times published accountsfrom three women who had been in romantic relationships with Mr. Platner for years. They said he could be demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. In the immediate aftermath, many activists and politicians went to their partisan corners. “There are no saints in the United States Senate,” Mr. Sanders said. But other prominent Democrats started speaking out more bluntly. In private meetings, even strong supporters began raising concerns. “I look forward to the day where I am not answering every single week a question about bad behavior by another dude,” said an exasperated Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, in an interview on MS Now. By late June, Mr. Platner found what he hoped would be a powerful answer to critics: an endorsement by Planned Parenthood Action Fund at a splashy rally, portraying him as a champion of abortion rights. Planned Parenthood officials knew their endorsement was a political risk, according to someone familiar with internal discussions. But they desperately wanted to defeat Ms. Collins. Before they offered their endorsement, Alexis McGill Johnson, the chief executive of the group’s political arm, had posed to Mr. Platner the question that so many others had asked: Was there anything else that would come out about him? Again, he said no. She responded with an ultimatum. If anything worse were to come out about him, he should not expect the women’s groups to clean up after him. On Monday evening, as news that he had been accused of rape ricocheted across the country, the group quickly withdrew its support. By midweek, as Democratic officials pushed for Mr. Platner to rapidly exit the race, the besieged candidate and a handful of aides, including Mr. Katz, hunkered down in his blue-shingled house and tried to challenge establishment politics one last time. Journalists trailed them to the local convenience store, where “The Graham,” a roast beef and pepper-jack sub, has been a popular deli counter order. On Wednesday night, his campaign released a video in which Mr. Platner suspended his campaign and blamed his loss on the “corporate media system” and “political establishment.” “We did it the right way,” he said. “And we won and now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me.”
Democrat Graham Platner's abrupt exit from Maine's US Senate race has left Collins' campaign scrambling after he suspended his campaign while facing multiple credible allegations of sexual misconduct and assault—eliminating what insiders viewed as Collins' most valuable asset: an opponent so flawed that voters might overlook her own vulnerabilities. According to Politico, Platner was supposed to be the perfect foil. Collins' team had spent months stockpiling opposition research, betting his personal scandals would dominate news coverage and allow the senator to reposition herself as the more trustworthy choice. That calculation is now worthless because the election focus can now return to the unpopularity of Donald Trump who is casting a cloud over all Republicans who will be on the ballot in November. "She can certainly win, but they didn't want to change candidates," one GOP operative told Politico. "The stuff we already knew about Platner was going to propel Collins to overcome the Trump anchor. Now it's going to be a Democrat with a cleaner record, presumably." According to the report, the GOP hope was to use a damaged opponent to distract from the central issue Collins has been desperately trying to avoid—her status as a Republican candidate in a state that has grown increasingly hostile to Trump and his party. Internal polling confirmed how dependent Collins was on this strategy, Politico's Sophia Cai wrote. Platner trailed her in his own campaign's flash poll, but three alternative Democratic candidates who lost the gubernatorial primary last month either led Collins or ran neck-and-neck with her. Collins' team will scramble to rebuild opposition research from scratch, but the senator's advisers insist she can still win but the specter of Trump will once again loom large.
Agreed The Democrats have more infighting that anything They HATRED of the DSA and any one not towing the status quo is insane They hate them FAR FAR More than the Furthest of Right Wing Republicans The Democrats and Republicans has been a dog and pony show for so long They are more playing with each other to game the system and give the ILLUSION OF CHOICE the ILLUSION of difference So when new blood shows up . . .. they freak out and stamp it out Republicans use a Loyalty Test and Democrats use a purity test I'm not Pro Platner but that was the horse they bet on . . .. ride it out but they fold on the SLIGHTEST Pressure. They are slaves to polls and the comment section You may hate a wall but you get disgusted by a door won't open. Same Results but different methods Rocket River
I am fully aware of the encoded duopoly and how it creates a race to the bottom that we're all sucked into. You should know I am one of the most vocal people on this BBS about that problem. However, I am not so ignorant or nihilistic that I will pretend Democrats and Republicans are operating on the same ethical standard right now. The Republican party ceded the moral highground a decade ago. Nothing you say will move me off that rock right now, but Trump's time will fade and that shoe can find its way onto the other foot eventually.
Unfortunately . .. . . . When ever the system dips and gets worse that is the new normal . . the new bar and people act like getting back to better is a violation Rocket River
I think Platner was going to lose before the credible rape allegation (see my previous posts from last month on why). At the time, I was already thinking he wouldn't just lose, he'd drag down the blue wave with him. And here we are. If he'd stayed in, that drag wouldn't have lasted weeks, it would've lasted through the whole midterm cycle. Republicans are great at seizing a hot potato and putting it on display over and over, in every variation. Democrats want this election to be about affordability and the damage from Trump and a Congress unwilling to do anything about it, not a 24/7 scandal cycle, which is exactly what Republicans would rather talk about. (And no, "but Republicans have their own scandals" doesn't neutralize the cost of this one. Whataboutism doesn't make the drag on Democrats go away.) So this isn't operatives pulling the plug on a robot. It's that a real, serious allegation surfaced, the same as it would for any candidate, party-picked or grassroots. The "constructed candidate discarded by his handlers" framing gives the party too much credit for control it didn't actually have here. Whoever replaces him is going to face a version of the Bernie Sanders effect. I'd give the seat maybe 50/50 at best. To be clear, that's a different mechanism than what you're describing. I don't think general-election or independent voters are turned off by how a candidate got picked. They respond to character and competence and mostly don't care about nomination mechanics at all. That's specifically a progressive-wing sensitivity (the Sanders faction has carried this grievance hardest since 2016, and it's cost Democrats before). The risk with the replacement isn't that swing voters recoil from an "inorganic" process. It's that a deflated progressive base shows up less, and that's a turnout problem, not a persuasion problem. (FWIW, Republican voters wouldn't blink at this if the shoe were on the other foot. They just line up. Two party, very different breed) Maine Democrats had no mechanism to remove Platner from the ballot. He had to withdraw himself by the July 13 deadline before the party could name a replacement. Same pattern nationally: the RNC had no way to force Trump off the 2016 ticket either, only rules for filling a vacancy once one exists. So the honest version of the "party control" point isn't that parties can override a winner, it's that they can make staying in nearly impossible through pulled funding, rescinded endorsements, and public pressure, without ever having the formal power to remove someone directly. That's still worth criticizing if you want to, but it's a narrower and more accurate claim than "the party can replace a winner." Party process was never a democratic or populist process to begin with, at least not in the sense of being open to the general public. State law sets the outer scaffolding, things like filing deadlines and vacancy timing, but courts have consistently ruled that how a party actually picks its nominees, including the internal convention or committee process, is the party's own business under its 1A. That's the same doctrine that lets a party close its primary to outsiders or run its convention however it wants. People tend to assume the two-party system is baked into the Constitution and has to run democratically all the way down. It isn't, and courts have upheld that distinction repeatedly. Parties are private organizations that get to set their own internal rules, like a private club, as long as they stay within whatever timing and filing requirements state law imposes around the edges. One side (important) point: the "let the voters decide, keep it organic" instinct you're describing is the same logic that put Donald Trump in the WH. Party elites get it wrong plenty, but gatekeeping is also what stands between a party and its own worst instincts. If Republican elites had been willing to say "no, you're out" when all of Trump's disqualifying conduct was already public, we wouldn't be here. Sometimes the "inorganic" move is the system working as intended, not failing.
The ultimate irony of the GOP/Republican propaganda machine/MAGA cultists/‘conservatives’/clutchfans sheep throwing mud at this guy is the definition of delusion.
All good points, but also missing the crux of what I'm saying. You're talking about elections and I'm talking about vibes. Forcing Platner to step out probably gives Democrats the best shot at winning in these midterms. But it is also evidence that the accusations of elitism are true. Feels like the mask slipped off for a moment. What I would have preferred would be for the national party to pull their money, for the Sanders organization to pull their endorsement, and everyone basically leave Platner to try to go it alone. If he stays in and convinces the electorate that a rapist is better than Collins, so be it and you have another Dem in the Senate. If he loses (or even if he wins) resolve to do more homework before you endorse the next candidate. If he decides to drop out, then you get another shot at this race. But they didn't stop at just pulling support. Nor did they just privately encourage him to drop out. They publicly pressured him to leave and behaved like it was fait accompli before he even acceded. Then they scolded him for not self-flagellating during his departure. The overweening confidence and the public exile were the ugliest part of this whole thing.
"Neener neener, your candidate has a shred of shame/dignity!" All said while playing "look over there, a trans immigrant!" to excuse Trump & Co crime #201947857610273465012437560891426980 version a.1
If the GOP wanted to really play 3D chess, they would somehow get our very own poster, DaDak, to start a thread praising any promising Dem politician. LOL. V-Span, this Maine guy, and whomever else would all end up in the same, accursed scrap heap. I get I'm not the only one who cringed on behalf of the poor guy when this thread first started.
Out of touch. It was the DSA that refused to vote for kamla in the general election in 2024. It was the dsa that told people to vote third party cuz they couldn't reward "Gaza." The dsa was attacking Biden for supporting Ukraine claiming we provoked Russia into invading The dsa is the most out of touch group in the country. It's a bunch of rich college grads who think they know what working class voters want. The DSA wins in a safe democratic seats and then think they know what everyone wants. Nobody hates liberals/moderates more than the DSA. They will side with MAGA over liberals every day of the week
political operatives aren't the reason the public discovered he assaulted women. Multiple women came out and testified to their time with him and provided text messages and other evidence. The "establishment" isn't responsible for him being a rapist. You are discounting the bravery of the women who came out with their stories
This debacle has echos of the Biden withdraw and Kamala replacement. While hindsight shows that the Dems would have almost certainly been better off with a contested convention and some nominee other than Harris, it was still a net gain that Biden was pushed out. He would have lost by at least 5 percentage points, especially after that brain dead performance at the debate. Kamala reduced the bleeding to 1.5 percentage points, and probably saved 3 Senate seats for the Dems in the process. Similarly, Platner had a negative WAR, and the replacement player will almost certainty fare better than doubling down on Platner after the rape allegation.
I just want somebody that can beat MAGA and will actually fight to hold all these criminals accountable if that person was Janet Mills, then whatever, but she was doing even worse than Platner his message was selling in Maine…great message, wrong messenger with all the scandals I can’t take the Bernie Bro voter faction seriously at all tho…they will gladly sell out this country to fascism if they don’t 100% like their candidate then go and cry about Trump all day online they’re clout activists
