The Senate race in Maine looks a lot different than it did 48 hours ago. Yesterday, Politics information credible allegations of sexual harassment against Democratic candidate Graham Platner. In a video posted after the story broke, Platner denied the allegation but said his campaign would find a better way, opening the door to what appears to be an inevitable exit from the race.
Now the voices that fiercely defended Platner during past scandals or affirmed the importance of his progressive movement have withdrawn their endorsements, one by one, and called for him to drop out. Among those voices are Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Representative Ro Khanna, and Pod Save AmericaJon Favreau. Of course, none of these Democratic politicians, party brokers, or podcasters were aware of the rape allegations when they offered and maintained their support. Almost everyone who once supported Platner seems to have changed course. Credible allegations of sexual harassment go a long way.
But the question remains: Why was this outrageous claim a threshold when Platner had clearly violated it so many times before? Probably Platner’s Coconut Tattoo it should have been a sufficient indicator that he lacked the qualifications to be a senator. Perhaps maintaining the SS insignia for two decades, covering it only when it experienced political disruption, showed that he lacked the judgment of the national office. Perhaps a long history of not only holding distasteful views about women and minorities, but feeling the need to publish them for the world to see, would tell us that he is not the person to be Maine’s voice in Washington. Perhaps a well-documented history of despicable behavior in his personal life should be enough, when taken with everything else, for Democrats to conclude that Platner was exactly the person he appeared to be.
When Platner emerged last year as the Democrats’ shiny new object—the DSA’s sentiments with an offensive tone and workers’ garb—many who favored his brand of left-wing stance offered to help him win the Democratic primary. He succeeded in doing so when his main opponent, Governor Janet Millshe suspended his campaign before the vote. Platner’s supporters hoped she could do the same against Susan Collins this season. But when the clear pattern of Platner’s bad behavior and bad judgment came to light, these Democrats stood their ground, using their positions of prominence to assure voters that what we could all see was not what it seemed. This latest allegation was not a black-swan event—a shocking and unexpected revelation from a powerful candidate. Instead, it was the latest in a steady stream of revelations of disqualification.
It’s good that those who have changed their minds about Platner are now telling the woman he spoke to PoliticsJenny Racicot, that they will not stand with the alleged victim. But why did the Jews who were targeted by the organization whose logo he had not deserve the same support? And it was Lyndsey Fifield, a conservative woman who it is owed that Platner had engaged in emotional and physical abuse (also disowned by Platner), disqualified because of his politics? What does it say about Platner’s patrons that his other outrageous behavior was within their range of acceptance?
Those who waited until this week to withdraw their consent had all the clues they needed to guess that Platner was the problem. And pretending otherwise required willfully denying that fact. For example, they claimed that he had not known the significance of his tattoo until recently, despite the fact that at least three people said they would have had conversations with Platner about the image before it was publicly revealed.
We’ve spent months listening to talk from Democrats arguing that what was clear about Platner’s character was somehow more ambiguous and explainable, all because progressives had found a candidate in Carhartt. The idea that a candidate can have a Nazi tattoo and stay in the race seems more like a piece of crap Veep than the fact that several famous democrats put their reputations.
As Platner’s campaign reaches its humiliating end, whether or not he withdraws, the value of conducting an autopsy will not be on Platner himself, a deeply flawed man who neither deserves the office he sought nor his support. It will concern those who gave him the help. Not only did they stand by Platner; they expressed their displeasure with those of us who said it was inappropriate. And in defiance, they attacked one of Platner’s accusers, Fifield. “Believe the women,” apparently, does not apply to victims who commit the unforgivable sin of voting Republican.
Maybe next time office bearers, lobbyists, lawyers, and corporations will think twice before throwing their full support behind someone they don’t really know or, at the very least, refuse to support those they clearly don’t approve of. They deceived voters, either by affirming the virtues of a candidate about whom they had no special knowledge, or by claiming that a person they knew to be an abomination was not. Maybe now voters will think twice before heeding the advice of Sanders, Warren, Khanna, Favreau, and others, or of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, the advocacy organization that endorsed Platner, who served in the Marinesand reiterated his support through past scandals.
Voters themselves should not be left on the hook; the survival of the republic requires the participation of an educated electorate. Although much of Platner’s behavior was widely reported before the June 9 primary, a large majority of Democratic voters in Maine chose Platner. They didn’t make any effort to educate themselves about the person they voted for, didn’t believe the well-documented allegations against him, or felt that the nazi image, alleged partner abuse, admitted drug abuse, and offensive Reddit posts were less important than defeating Mills. None of those justifications were ever enough.
It would be nice to believe that those who failed the test during Platner’s campaign will learn from their mistakes, but I doubt it, especially in today’s political climate. For those who seem to lack the integrity to denounce discredited candidates, the discernment to detect them, or the desire to do the right thing, I can offer a simple rule to help them—even for the practical purpose of choosing electable candidates. Before Platner’s campaign, I would have thought this rule was commonplace and easy to follow, but it seems it should be made clear: Maybe, at a minimum, don’t support a candidate with a Nazi tattoo.
