Not a Moment Too Soon
Graham Platner is scheduled to get out of Dodge today. Not because he had to wait this long. In fact, he could have exited early last week by promptly submitting the necessary paperwork and giving his successor time to campaign in Maine. What we learned, if anything, in the Biden/Harris catastrophe is that every day carries monumental importance. His exit couldn’t come a moment too soon.
But the monumentally selfish Mr. Platner has never really put Maine voters first. Enchanted with his image as a working stiff battling the elites for the soul of the party, he has dragged his exit to the borderline of ruin. There will be no Democratic win in Maine. The indestructible Susan Collins, Master of Virtue Signaling and Strategic Ambiguity, will walk away with yet another win.
She is not, of course, the evil demon in this story. Dressed in her prim little tailored suits, ready to benefit from the sins of others, she is merely a bystander in this electoral melee. Platner benefitted from the Bernie-Bro machine, whose careless “professionals” did not bother with vetting and accepted his sketchy denials at face value. I personally gave him a pass on the tattoo (isn’t everyone a secret nazi?), especially when he covered it with an inked atonement image. Regrettably, it’s probably worse than the original, grafting the outline of a dog onto a Celtic Knot. But at least it doesn’t scream “drunken Reichsmarschall.”
The real problem here is Platner himself, a fraudulent teller of self-serving lies. He turns out to be not so much an oysterman, but a Maine-bred nepo baby with a family estate. He comes from wealth and privilege and prominence, and no amount of scruff can conceal his origins. He’s probably no Trump when it comes to inheritance, but let’s just say he started at second base, with all the advantages of old-ish money. The people who recruited him saw a manosphere influencer, with the right amount of facial hair and a competent dad-bod. Sorry to say he wasn’t the right stuff.
Especially so when it came to women. Americans turn out to be selectively forgiving. Scholars will be writing about Access Hollywood for a couple of generations, parsing Trump’s repellent misogyny and contempt, and how it cost him nothing in his electoral adventures. But that seems to apply to very few others. Platner knew that the truth would eventually come out, but he banked on his ability to tough his way through. Jennie Racicot was just too convincing to ignore. As of yesterday, Platner was still spitting and fuming, demanding a say in the person who will succeed him. For someone who just lost us the Senate, that is a noxious surplus of shameless nerve.
And what about the Jews, dear devoted readers? The latest conspiracy theory in the eternal history of such matters is that the Jews punished Platner for the sin of anti-Zionism. When he refused to toe the line of AIPAC orthodoxy, we gathered round and bled him dry. For the record, that’s not what happened. Graham Platner bled out all by himself, cut down by the demons of self-indulgence and entitlement, betraying every one of his supporters along the way.