The Mess in the Maine Senate Race Was Easily Foreseeable and Avoidable
Maya Angelou's famous warning is in serious danger of becoming stale: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." I risk adding to its overuse here because it so perfectly fits the big political story coming out of the State of Maine, where a man won the Democratic Party's nomination for US Senate in last month's statewide primary. His name is Graham Platner, and we should have believed him the first time.
Platner's cakewalk in the primary (taking 71.9 percent of the vote) set him up to face the incumbent Republican Susan Collins, who is infamously "concerned" at all times about her party's extremism -- but never quite so concerned that she does anything about it. Collins is an embarrassment, and the Democrats' extremely slim hopes of retaking control of the US Senate cannot possibly go anywhere without taking that seat. Maine is a blue state, and it should not be difficult for Democrats there to win a seat against a 30-year Washington insider whose track record is a joke.
As I write this column, here is the state of play in that race, according to The New York Times: "Abandoned by Allies, Platner Faces Pressure to End Senate Campaign." He is, in a word, toast. The forcing event is the revelation that one of Platner's ex-girlfriends has now credibly accused him of rape. (He denies it.) This followed a flurry of revelations that came out shortly before the primary regarding other women accusing him of sexual abuse, but those revelations were batted away by Platner's supporters as mere "oppo research," and Platner apparently told his most important backers that there would be no more shoes to drop. Count this as an LLBean 8" Duck Boot.
I would not be writing about this situation, however, if it were simply a politically unfortunate situation in which a guy turned out to be a creep and a liar -- oh, and an accused rapist, too. I say "simply" because at this stage the story is pretty clear-cut: guy lies, people believe him, his lies blow up at an unfortunate time, everyone feels betrayed and tries to figure out what to do next. It is not a yawn, but it kinda is. In any case, there is nothing new or interesting to say about these latest damning details.
What is interesting is not, however, new. One of my favorite YouTubers is a mostly science-based commentator named Rebecca Watson, who goes by the name Skepchick. She has moved into some overt political commentary over the years, mostly talking about how powerful men (especially in academia) get away with horrible treatment of women, especially younger women. Her interests have trended more toward the political of late.
Watson was on the Platner case last Fall, when he was dealing with a controversy about a tattoo on his chest that was a Nazi "totenkopf," an image that "resembled a specific symbol of Hitler's paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II." Platner had the tattoo for eighteen years before he very recently had it covered up with another tattoo.
Platner obviously survived that controversy, but the way he did so was disturbing and instructive. Watson posted a video on November 13 of last year -- that is, almost eight months ago. The title of the video: "Graham Platner is an Embarrassing Liar." She was right.
To this point, I have left out perhaps the most politically relevant part of the story. Platner is a political neophyte, a US military veteran who espouses views about Medicare for All, LGBTQ+ rights, and other issues that are solidly on the left side of the American political spectrum, not merely compared to Republicans but compared to the Democratic establishment embodied by the infuriating likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Given my own progressive views and my extensively documented contempt for my party's so-called centrists, people with Platner's views ought to appeal to me. The same is true for Watson, who identifies as a progressive.
Her video is 28-and-a-half minutes long, but she moves things along quickly, making the piece an easy watch. She ends the piece with this:
Do I think Platner is a Nazi? an antisemite? Honestly, I don't know. I don't think so. I do know that he is a walking PR disaster and platforming him removes prominent leftists' ability to rightfully call out antisemitic dog whistles and outright fascist bullhorns on the right, at a time when those things are only getting worse, and making life much more dangerous not just for Jews but, just like during the Holocaust, for all marginalized people. Which is probably why it's only been marginalized leftists I've seen speaking out against Platner.
That last point refers back to an earlier part of the video in which Watson calls out the relatively high profile progressives and leftists who jumped to Platner's defense, the mostly White commentators who believed and amplifed his claims that he was merely a military grunt who got drunk with his buddies and got what looked like a bad-ass tattoo. That defense of Platner was enough to pull in the progressives who are now jumping ship, including people I truly admire like Elizabeth Warren.
The idea among the terminally online left, it seems, was that Democrats need to stop having litmus tests and must start to accept Regular Guy™candidates who are real, flawed, and "exactly who we need to stop being seen as elitists." Platner's man of the people cred included a bunch of hateful social media posts over many years, which he later said was part of a dark time in his life. Having watched his videos, I found that explanation at least plausible, but not the bigger story.
Again, Watson is onto something important in pointing out that the lefty media types who wanted to welcome Platner were very much not joined by left media types who focus on marginalized people. The idea, it seems, is that "we" should not be too quick to judge people who have led tough lives. So far, so good. But where do they go with that? Watson nicely exposes the hypocrisy of the "Let's not be elitist" types by showing this social media post from a high-profile progressive woman:
How many people get tattoos that they thought looked cool, but didn't understand the meaning of?
How may vets took mercenary work for a period because the US doesn't support them?
How many young men have shitposted online?
Do we want an authentic working-class party or not?
Golly, I sure would hate to be against "an authentic working-class party"! No seriously, I am completely in favor of the Democrats becoming such a party. The problem is that the word "authentic" is doing something very bad here, and Watson's droll response captures it: "Hey, I thought we all agreed it was wrong to imply that the working class is stupid and racist. Whatever." She then runs through some bald-faced lying by Platner on other medium-sized issues, but she nails the case when she shows a clip from a famous-ish lefty podcaster saying this:
My own personal opinion is that he probably figured out what [the tattoo] was several years ago but was also like ... whuh ... you know ... it's not like ... "I can justify this to me!" you know, speaking to himself. "And anyone who knows me knows I'm not a Nazi, uh, so am I really gonna go and pay for this thing to get all screwed up?" Uh, that's my guess.
To be clear, Platner's story was that he went for eighteen years without ever knowing that he had a Nazi tattoo on his chest. This is beyond impossible to believe, for the reasons that Watson includes in her video and also in light of headlines like this from CNN: "Graham Platner can’t explain why ex-girlfriend knew tattoo’s Nazi link before he says he did." That article notes that there are now "on-record claims from [the ex] that he was aware of the tattoo’s meaning years ago." And Platner's evasions would put a gymnast to shame. (That CNN piece is much more recent than the Watson video, but the drip-drip-drip against Platner's "I had no idea" explanation has been out there all along.)
Again, however, Watson had exactly the right response to the lefty podcaster's explanation of Platner's possible thought process:
So you agree? You agree that Graham Platner is probably lying about not knowing he had a Nazi tattoo. [The podcaster] comes to the same conclusion I did, but he doesn't go the extra mile -- the extra twelve inches -- to wonder what it means to support a politician who lies that easily about a Nazi tattoo. He knew he had a Nazi tattoo. He knew he would face no consequences for it. And then he lied about it when he was finally facing consequences. That's your guy?
Anyone who has read my body of work over the years knows that I rarely spend time calling out the left, because there is so much going on that is so much worse from the right. But there are times when the political operatives on the left stop acting truly lefty and start being condescending to the "genuine" people they think they are helping. "We" had to stick with Platner because we need to stop being such purists? Watson: "[Platner's lefty defenders] were saying: 'It's fine. Stop being so weird about Nazi tattoos.'"
Honestly, anyone who thinks that there can be no genuine working-class party unless we just get over ourselves and stop rejecting people who lie about Nazi stuff has no respect for genuine working-class people. Again, Watson tried to warn everyone in mid-November, but the train had left the station, and everyone else held on in the hope that Platner would stop needing to be defended. The political mess that he leaves behind could have been avoided.
He showed us who he is. More people should have believed him.
- Neil H. Buchanan