Yves here. Not that yours truly has a say, but the timing of the politically-fatal accusation against Graham Platner stinks. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the successful campaign to force Platner to give up his Senate bid was not about his character but his politics.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;
And take upon’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out,
In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.
—King Lear, happy to exit the game and watch from the stands
God’s spies, observing packs of great ones like birds in a cage. That’s our approach to this piece. Not taking a stand on all the messy detail, the right or wrong, but simply watching what is.
L’Affair Graham Platner. Much can be said about it. The public focus, of course, is on his transgressions, which most people now think are real. The sincerity of his accuser is not in doubt, and though the timing of these accusations is highly suspicious — one week before the last day he can withdraw and allow the Party to choose someone else — no one now doubts his accuser. (If you want a more skeptical view, listen to this.)
That said, let’s look at the layers.
Personal Tragedies
The personal part of the story has several parts. First, the arc of Graham Platner’s life. As a human tale of flaws and horrible outcomes, this is worth novelizing all on its own. The pain he has managed, the pain he is said to have caused; the massive national stage on which this is played; the lies, the betrayals; the heights and the fall. Seen from inside, the story has arc and sweep, desire and pain, tragic intensity, with unspeakable pain to come. The tale of his next six months, at home and alone, would itself draw eyes if those eyes could be carefully distanced, like those at a play, safe from the trouble on stage.
We could say the same about his two chief accusers, Jenny Racicot, the ex-girlfriend, and Lyndsey Fifield, the Kavanaugh-defending operative who dated him. Two complex stories as well. Racicot especially: Had she the purest of motives, her life and peace will be awful for years to come. This story is bad for everyone trapped inside it.
Tragic tales, played in the press before millions — thank God for our own anonymity, I hear all of you say.
The Mode of Attack
Second, the method used for the attack is worth our thought, independent of its validity in Platner’s case. The attack took place during a high-stakes political campaign; the combat took place entirely in the press. And the mode of attack is common, used many times.
Ian Welsh has this to say about how the great bring down those they want gone, what works and what doesn’t when deployed by the self-described left. Note: Welsh was writing in June, before the recent reports.
Establishment Attacks On Platner Are Classic Woke Attacks On The Populist Left
I think everyone who’s observed American, indeed, Western politics is aware that whenever a strong economic left winger comes along the attacks on him are almost always primarily about violations of “woke”.
Corbyn was attacked for anti-semitism, when he might be the most anti-racist person on the Earth. The idea that he was anti-semitic was laughable on the face, he’d be the first person putting his body on the line if there were actual threats to Jews. …
Woke is used because it works, especially sexual harassment allegations. It doesn’t just work against the left. New York Governor Cuomo was taken down for sexual harassment, which I always found hilarious, because this is a guy whose policies killed thousands of people during Covid when he stuck Covid patients in old folks homes. That’s gross negligent manslaughter, in my books, and he should have gone to prison, not just lost his job, but it was the sex stuff that took him down.
That doesn’t mean the Democratic establishment wanted him gone. Oh no. They supported him to the hilt against Mamdani in the NYC elections. Anything can be forgiven if you serve corporate interests, nothing can be forgiven if you don’t.
Platner’s the latest target, and man is he ripe. …
Al Franken was taken down by not much of a sin, a careless, sexist joke caught on film. His fall was engineered by one of his colleagues, a Democratic senator. Again, the same mode of attack.
So, added to the striking arc of Platner’s own story, we can add this observation: Someone wanted him gone, and this was the route. Cuomo was taken down by his sexual harassment. A man who murdered hundreds in nursing homes, and this instead was his enemies’ weapon of choice.
Why is this true? Though the reason is clear to many, it’s a subject all to itself.
Someone Wanted Him Gone…
Now let’s consider the impersonal part of the story, the part not involving people so much as power and political structures. Someone wanted him gone, and they found a way. Someone who? And why? What will the outcome be?
Let’s take these one at a time. Someone who?
The perp, I think, is the Democratic establishment — the party in Maine, the Senate bigs in DC, the vast machine that composes the DNC, its well-paid consultant class and wide-ranging servicing groups like print and televised media. The pile-on, when the accusations were more smoke than fire, began early, were clearly political, and deployed in defense of Janet Mills, the establishment’s preferred choice. Platner’s anti-genocide, anti-AIPAC stance didn’t help with that group, and is likely a cause on its own of his strong opposition.
And chief among all the perps is Sen. Chuck Schumer, who clearly places seating compliant Democratics above beating Republicans. The late Howie Klein’s DownWithTyranny is full of these tales. Here’s one from 2016:
A publicity-hound and dogged careerist, Schumer is widely considered a modern-day version of Boss Tweed, especially in the Senate, where he routinely tells candidates that it’s his way or the highway.
Recently he had a run-in of this nature with Admiral Joe Sestak who he tried playing the my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours game with. Basically, he told Sestak that when he (Schumer) says “jump,” the only acceptable response is “how high, sir?” That’s an odd thing for some draft dodging chicken hawk to say to the highest ranking military officer ever elected to Congress. It didn’t end well and Schumer went out and helped recruit an unbelievably incompetent candidate for the primary, Katie McGinty, who has no chance of ever becoming a senator but will sop up Sestak’s cash so he can’t compete with [incumbent Republican Senator Pat] Toomey. That’s how Schumer plays the game. Toomey, of course, is over the moon.
Toomey beat McGinty in the general election, proof that Schumer would rather a Republican win than a Democrat who won’t obey. This kind of story is salted all through DWT. Klein went to school with Schumer at Brooklyn’s James Madison High, and according to Klein, he was “aggressively selfish and greedy,” even back then.
That answers the why. Control of the party comes before winning elections. And support for Israeli genocide is clearly a must, certainly for Schumer and other top Dems of his type. In case he hadn’t heard, total Israel-related contributions to Schumer total $1,727,974. That money buys something, happily given or not.
What’s Next?
The battle is shaping up now. As I write, I’m watching Rebecca Traister on MSNOW say Platner was always disliked by establishment Maine and national Democrats, largely because he brought people real hope for change. Yes, that what she said: real hope for real change. In my view, only the genuinely anti-establishment can do that.
There aren’t many Platner-like candidates ready to hand, but the name I’m hearing most is Troy Jackson. And Shenna Bellows is getting MSNOW support. I haven’t researched either.
Watch how the Party decides, and whom they nominate. Will Maine get a Harris-like coronation? A loyalist, solid pretender, or someone more real?
Then watch how Maine voters respond, especially those inspired by Platner’s rebellious stance. You’ll learn a lot.
But why has he withdrawn from the race? I know very little about this but that is what stroke me: why withdraw? Unless it was all postering to start with.
In his statement, he said that the party withdrew all funding for his campaign. Tens of millions for advertising. His campaign would have quickly been portrayed by the MSM as obscure and quixotic and they likely told him in so many words that they had more ammunition if he didn’t back out.
Why would Platner be worried about funding?
Clearly the powers that be gave him mobster style ‘offer you can’t refuse.’ Resignation to avoid absolute ruin, almost certainly financial and reputational- maybe more (loved ones’ well being)
Everyone has to worry about campaign cash in the post-Citizens United context. Despite having very strong grass roots funding, there are no billionaires lining up to fund Platner (nor would it have been “on brand” for him to take their support) and AIPAC and other outside groups would have been pouring in tens or possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Platner. The DSCC money and data (and Maine Dem Party data) was essential for him to have had any chance of beating Susan Collins.
Until last week (NRSC v FEC) it was illegal for DSCC to coordinate expenditures with the Platner campaign.
So if he is totally dependent on the Democratic Establishment how exactly would he change anything even if elected? It’s a honest question, it looks to me he was just serving the role of preventing a real left of the Democratic Party from establishing itself, went a bit too far in his performance, and got his mic cut off, which he submitted to.
Can any real change candidate come from within the Democratic Party?
My sense is that many would be politicians run for nomination of major parties inthe hope that they’ll have access to their vast resources (not just money ir material, but also legal and institutional–running as a third party candidate has a lot of obstacles built in) if they won the nomination fair and square. This is increasingly not the case: major party nominations, even if you win, come with more and more strings that trap you. But that means the only route open is a third party using truly “independent” resources run which most people can’t afford.
And who built and builds those obstacles?
The parties the vast majority of voters keep voting for.
“Can any real change candidate come from within the Democratic Party?”
This is an excellent question. I’ll point out that the establishment still perceives it as possible, hence the ultra-focus on culling them out. Maybe the question is “Can any real change benefiting society at large happen with our present form of democracy?”.
I think Platner should give the Democratic Party the finger and continue his campaign as an independent. Get in his pickup and go to town to town doing town halls. What does he have to lose? He’s going to be known forever as a rapist even though no charges were ever filed and all of it was based on a she-said campaign of innuendo. The Republicans will clink champaign glasses and with all of their cash will run no-stop ads bashing him but as Trump demonstrated in 2016, Platner will get tons of free publicity from the scummy corporate media thanks to the whole controversy. Meanwhile, I think the powers that be are misreading the anger out there in flyover country at the poisonous status quo. I’d send Platner a check in a second and I bet a bunch of other pissed off Americans would too. Then Platners own TV ads write themselves–Family-blog the Supreme Court and the Citizens United decision that allowed unlimited oligarch and massive corruption. Family-blog Susan Collins and her out of state billionaire funders. And, most of all, family-blog the slimy Democratic Party with its toxic identity politics.
I believe that they just didn’t withdraw funding, they withdrew the ability to fundraise because he was shut off from ActBlue.
…what stroke me…, I’m taking that as a clever Fetterman reference, thank you, being a stroked out zombie doesn’t disqualify a senate candidate while being against Zionism does.
I wish it was a clever something but it very likely is just the wrong verb conjugation? No idea, I just write as it sounds in my mind.
Works for me.
Cheers.
The only way a system based on voting and elected representatives can be permitted is if elites can control who can stand for election in the first place. In places like Germany and Iran, parties and candidates are disqualified officially. In the USA, the “Fourth Estate” (the one that isn’t elected and has no political accountability) is given this important job. Its like an immune system: co-opt or destroy external threats. If you have billions, how hard is it to engineer pay-offs to former girlfriends or find some colleague to claim someone is an antisemite? I’m not trying to cast an opinion on Platner’s accuser, I don’t know enough about the specifics, but in the absence of a credible allegation, its not hard to manufacture given the resources available to the Donor Class, and then magnify through the “Fourth Estate”. The other interesting thing is that the guard rails are clearly much higher for the Left than the Right–which tells you where the system perceives the real threat exists.
Not Platner, but MTG pulled out when she started receiving death threats against her children.
Perhaps he should run for president. The electorate twice voted in a felon who displayed disdain of women on camera.
If there’s one thing we can learn from “Teflon Don,” it’s that aspiring politicians need thick skin. Platner was likely unqualified from the start because he couldn’t brush off the criticism he received.
Biden was only elected once!
He is including Trump.
Biden Biden Biden. I’m spacing out on Biden’s Felony conviction: please refresh my memory.
(Biden and Trump aren’t the only ones with cognitive decline- my compassion builds)
He was accused of rape when he was in Congress. The accuser fled to Russia after he became president. She was harassed constantly. Just goes to demonstrate how the Metoo mechanism works.
Trump got away with it because he has a coherent narrative around sexual assault/harassment that his base shares. The Left’s narrative otoh is “nuanced” and shared by almost no one not terminally online. This puts Leftist candidates at the mercy of the Dem narrative, which is “believe women”.
Excellent essay. But before there was a Boss Schumer there was a Boss Tweed and so many others. In America we have a universal suffrage that should guarantee rule by the public. But the two party system creates the control point for our aristocracy of money. And re the Israel angle, while some of us in the past have thought the Repubs not the Dems should be the natural home of the settler colonialists, with two right wing parties (by the above design) it likely doesn’t make that much difference.
Given the givens the powerful will have to defeat themselves. And with Trump in the saddle they are romping toward that denouement.
Not to defend the system, but at least Tammany gave out turkeys and sewer inspection jobs: what has Schumer ever done for the rabble?
100% this right here. The DNC is primarily just a big money suck.
The entire Democrat operation is measured in dollars, not votes or anything that provides tangible material benefits to anyone but themselves. They are demonstrating that FDR was an aberration- their core values are those of Jackson, Franklin Pierce, and Stephen Douglas. They have moved heaven and earth over the decades to get away from FDR and revert to the mean.
Plus, when not busy with the graft, Tweed’s version of Tammany transformed NY into the social and economic leader of the Atlantic coast, passing the previous leaders Philadelphia and Boston.
I’m neither so certain nor so optimistic. I think what our elderly elites are groping towards is a way to preserve their authority regardless of electoral mandate.
Like what is happening with Israel right now. Don’t want to fund Israel? Fine. You can’t stop them getting money though, because they are part of our defense system and will be funded directly by acts of congress in the budget using appropriations that are immune and invisible to public scrutiny.
Similar to privacy issues. Don’t want to be surveilled? Sure! Just don’t use the internet, drive past a school, walk down the street, park in a town, use an app enabled vehicle, take a taxi, park in a parking garage, order food, attempt to access anything from our government services, reserve a library book, or file taxes. Oh, and don’t take a walk in your neighborhood. Or leave your phone around inside your house. Then you can claim to have an expectation of privacy.
There will be no revolution. There will be a system in place. You will not be given options because the system does not permit them. The people in control of the system, live outside of it. If you are someone who has to pay taxes or worry about whether you are being surveiled, then you are inside the system.
Schumer and McConnell and others will become irrelevant once Thiel and others complete their project to give their malevolent toys the tools they need to take over. AI and shops like Palantir now have brain and eyes and ears and mouthpieces. Once they get hands that can hold weapons, it is over.
Platner was a danger to all of that. Mass organization in a state that has strong and weird Republican leanings. Now Platner is the gift that keeps on giving because he will be used to paint all similar candidates as similarly flawed thereby discrediting the democratic process. As discussed in the article, Schumer and others will happily deal with Republicans rather than upity Democrats who want to change the system before it gets its hands.
As far as getting “Hands”, what do you think the Brownshirts of ICE Are?
They have been told they have “Total Immunity” and based on what did not happen to the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, they do.
Shoot a disarmed and restrained man 10 times in the back and it’s no problem.
Keep in mind that he was an ICU Nurse at the VA, a “Good Guy” by definition in the eyes of every American Veteran
They are 20,000 strong, well armed and have access the Fusion Centers, Total Information Awareness.
And they are and have explicitly recruited from White Nationalists…which provides them with a LOT of well armed allies.
That looks like a Hammer to me.
Ya think?
Ask Tom Massie what happens when you tell the AIPAC guy to take a hike.
If either party gave a damn about sexual harrassment there would be a lot of empty offices on Capitol Hill.
Thanks for the background on why Schumer, et al. went after Platner, but another important part of the story is how did Platner, who had never held office beyond a local planning board before, begins his political career by running for U.S. Senate. The answer is that a couple of consultants (ah yes, consultants) went looking for a “working class progressive,” and Platner was the result. The Democratic Party, which long ago “cleansed” itself of non-PMC people either in positions of party leadership or as members of a “next generation” of leaders under development, goes on a snipe hunt for some guy (must be a guy) who’s ex-military (must be ex-military) who might seem intimidating if you saw him in a bar (think Fetterman). This is a Democratic consultant’s idea of how you find a candidate when the voters’ mood just won’t tolerate another Harvard or Yale Law grad (who preferably did post-grad training at Langley).
The Democrat Party is a joke on America’s workers.
I think its a wonderful and important insight you have that consultants associate the working class with fear and the threat of violence. What else is important is that Graham Platner is not working class; he’s a business owner, which is the opposite. We find this over and over again among progressive candidates, including in my home state of Wisconsin, where Francesca Hong (a restauranteur) is running for governor. Actual working class people are too busy to have our own photo shoots, and no one with funding would fund the proliferation of our politics. Perhaps owning just one business is as far down the social ladder as some in the donor class can imagine, or perhaps it just makes structural sense that these would be the people who would ascend. Well before I read Marx I felt alien and uncomfortable around people as high up as them; I’m sure they wouldn’t drink with me, and I wouldn’t want to drink with them.
Anyhow, the rights of workers, the rights of the accused, and the rights of those accused of being workers all lose out here, which much mean it’s a day ending in “y” in America.
It’s ok to criticize Hong, but get your facts straight. She no longer owns a restaurant. It went bankrupt as I understood it. She rents where she lives – not a homeowner. Self proclaimed “only person in her family that didn’t graduate from college”. Single mother. Not exactly a proud list of accomplishments, but she puts them out there. Stop being the machine.
I was not and am not criticizing Hong, but your point is taken and I retract the present tense used to describe her past business ownership. However, I don’t think one is “being the machine” by pointing out a real gap in life experience. I have never owned a business because, like everyone else, I cannot access start-up capital in the form of a loan or from family. I do think being a single mother is something to be proud of.
And the Sconnie Dem machine does not like Fran at all, which in my book makes her the best of the bunch. There’s a Marquette poll coming out soon and we’ll see where we are. Not to get too provincial here, but I was very upset with David Crowley’s tweet that he wouldn’t have gone on Hassan Piker’s podcast like Hong did. Then he dropped out and endorsed Rodriguez. I had a good opinion of him as Milwaukee County Executive but now I’m thinking that either he was duped or I was.
Crowley got started with Chris Abele’s money and has been true to those politics. His signature achievement is the passage of a regressive sales tax. I agree with you about Hong, and if I vote, it will be for her. I was a part of networks of campaign workers who have endorsed her, but am too busy and crippled to go knock on doors these days. The WI Dems are hoping that one of their bland candidates can display enough charisma to justify tens of millions in out of state donations to wipe away a mild social democratic run from Hong.
I’m also a WI resident. Where did you read about the state Dems disliking Hong? I’m interested in more on that.
As a personal aside: I met Fran personally at the bar where she works part-time before my band played a gig and she was quite eager to talk to us. Her PR staff looked like it was her family. She seems legitimate in my eyes, but my cynicism tells me that if she get the governorship the opposition from mainline Dems and Repubs would grenade her agenda.
An oyster farmer with five acres isn’t – if he uses all of it – completely small time but still pretty much working class. That he doesn’t have a boss is immaterial.
That’s petty bourgeois. But the members of that class get crushed by capitalism, too. However, the petty bourgeois rarely makes common cause with a proletarian, even when they share a common enemy.
Or, taking the word farm literally, maybe a middle peasant.
indeed, that “working class progressive” (Platner ) went to Hotchkiss, an elite prep school
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/maine-oyster-farmer-s-dad-somehow-found-60-000-to-drop-on-democrats-despite-working-class-background/ar-AA1P3XHE
Ah, yes. That sinister “couple of consultants.” Lots of knives out for them, mostly wielded by people who seem to have no record of objections to consultants in any other context or from any other point on the ideological spectrum.
Might as well weaponize the defenestration of the candidate to also demonize the handful of consultants and operatives who provide any support for such candidates.
(And only that small subset.) I recall Lambert’s admonition that even the purest driven snowflake of a party needs it’s hacks and ward heelers to have any prospect of success. This also applies to factions.
The “couple of consultants” were not by any means the only ones involved in standing up Platner, and the idea that they were involved in some svengali-like process of fabricating his platform and personality from whole cloth rests purely on innuendo.
I recall them as also involved in Mamdani’s campaign, which isn’t really consistent with the idea of military background and an intimidating appearance being their criteria.
There’s a campaign out there to discredit anyone asssociated with Platner and anyone who says the new Democratic nominee should share the views of the candidate people voted for and this sudden dislike of consultants is part of that. And now the NYT is bringing back the Berniebrro slander.
I am waiting for the day when supporting the Gaza genocide is instantly disqualifyiing, but since that would mean the majority of Democratic officeholders resigning, it won’t happen soon.
“their” (consultant) criteria for working class authenticity or the stereotype expected by some part of the chronically underinformed electorate?
The political consultants were deploying the tools of brand management because that’s how propaganda works.
It is not exactly new to politics. Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer well-paid representing railroads, was marketed as the Railsplitter.
The root problem, imho, is that professionally produced propaganda is expensive and no organization to raise money from purpose-driven genuine grass-roots is permitted to survive unmolested and uncorrupted. So, the money spigot can be shut off completely, in coordinated fashion, whenever an accusation can be manufactured and broadcast to provide the excuse and the signal to close said spigot.
If one is trying to persuade others to take one view of matters rather than another, then one is ipso facto making propaganda. (and denying that because the word has taken on a pejorative connotation doesn’t alter the case at all.
It can be made well or it can be made badly, and is more likely to be made well if one acknowledges to themselves what they are doing.
The consultants in question here are, to my mind, among the least problematic of the bunch because they do seem to have ideological commitments, albeit of a more milquetoast wing of the movement than I prefer.
Verifyfirst links below to post by Mike Elk, a labor reporter whose work we’ve read here for years. He’s not a big fan of Moraff, one of the consultants (the other is his significant other). Like Moraff, he’s from Pittsburgh, and knows Moraff. This is what he says:
lyman alpha blob links below to an interview of Moraff and his partner. It isn’t pretty.
A lot of people relied on these two, and their big-time screw-up may have some major consequences. Their approach reminded me of Rove’s comment about Bush that he looked good in a cowboy hat and jeans. People who want candidates who will represent them rather than the donors are not served well by the people who dug up Fetterman and Platner.
My main issue with Platner was that he was running as a Democrat. I was very skeptical about him seemingly coming out of nowhere, and I’ve lived in Maine for decades now. Krystal Ball interviewed him pretty early on and asked him straight up how he came into the race and said he was approached by people within the party, but he didn’t name names and was sort of vague about it all. It was clear though that it wasn’t the Schumer wing who’d approached him. I was sort of hoping that it might have been a Troy Jackson type (now a possible Platner replacement) or at least someone from Maine who had recruited him. Then last night I watched this Daily Show clip which highlighted the two consultants. Highly edited to be sure, but FFS are they terrible. Exactly the type I was afraid might have been involved. Can’t remember where I saw it, but someone mentioned that Trump is a poor person’s idea of what a rich person is, and Platner is a rich person’s idea of what a poor person is. These consultants went looking for a specific type, and whether Platner was aware of that or not, I don’t know. But now his life is screwed and these consultants will likely continue to fail upward
That said, I do think Platner is sincere in his beliefs. It sure seems like he was taken advantage of by any number of people here. He got as far as he did because he did do town halls for thousands and thousands of people, and they were impressed by his policies, not because he fit some consultant-approved stereotype. Friends who went to one said that he gave a brief stump speech to start off and then handed the floor to a group of women in the health care industry and let them talk about how to improve things for the rest of the meeting. But nobody heard about any of that through the media – it was all just the horse race identity BS.
I agree with Camelotkidd above – Platner should start an independent campaign and go scorched earth on these Democrat clowns. If that leads to Collins winning, too damn bad. The Democrats have already shown time and time they’d rather lose to Republicans than win with a candidate who tries bucking the donor class. So let them wallow in it. Clearly elections aren’t going to change things in this country anyway as Emma Goldman noted a century ago – if they could, the elites would have already made them illegal. The closer we get to people picking up pitchforks at this point, the better.
If by some miracle Troy Jackson gets the nod, then I might reconsider the above. Jackson isn’t a Democrat diehard by any means, and has run for office previously as a Republican and an independent before recently settling in with the Ds. If it’s Jackson, I might actually go vote. Otherwise I’m staying home again as has been my practice for the last few elections. Really not interested in choosing between the lesser of two evil pro-Zionist candidates. Because all of this ratf**king of Platner is about Israel. Just ask Chuck Schumer, who thinks he can decide who Maine’s senator will be, and he’s likely to be proven correct.
Not sure there is a route to the general election ballot for Platner. As I read the law:
“2. Limited to one method. A person may file as a candidate for any federal, state or county office either by primary election or nomination petition, except as provided in subsection 3, but not by both methods. ”
Since Platner filed for the Democrat Party primary he is precluded from running as a petition candidate is how I read it.
How you got anything at all out of the minute fraction (and none of the substance) of their comments allowed into the Daily Show piece, except yet more confirmation of the show’s actual politics, is beyond me. Heavily edited is a huge understatement
That was quite an interview of the consultants. Here’s a spot cut right to the interview.
Yeah, HE looked to be taking command of his story, describing an old-fashioned redemption arc in which he came before the congregation–Mainers–to say that he’d been chewed up and spat out by the war machine, come home a beast. The many dead Iraqis? Props, in this story. NO ONE has tried to follow up that story. Instead, it became a ME TOO story, which confines it in the silo of angry first wave liberal white womanhood, where people–especially, young people, fostered on identity politics and with zero sense of class solidarity, are all to ready to confine it.
A tragedy, for the working people Plattner claimed to want to rep. Including that majority of white women over 65 who backed him. Another feature of the story, completelylost, that Maine was a huge, desperately poor white working class who–unlike in the rest of the country, where liberals demonizepoor whites, he was showing how to bring back into the fold.
At one time we figured out that young men bringing the wars home–violence, guns, a warrior culture–meant mass murders in fast food joints and battered women and children; we made the connection between the military-industrial complex and poor people’s misery. Not now, I guess, even though Plattner was MAKING it. (To have people now say, ‘I just KNEW he was awful!’ Honestly. . . he TOLD you. He even told you that he had committed crimes, WAR crimes; no one cared about that. . .)
Of course, he has to go now. But it’s a loss–for us, not him. Looks like his backers–all 15,000 of them (!)–may turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse, though. Because if they say we’re bigger than Graham Plattner, it’s about all of us,and assert more power, still–could all be to the good.
Thank you. This,
“ Another feature of the story, completelylost, that Maine was a huge, desperately poor white working class who–unlike in the rest of the country, where liberals demonizepoor whites, he was showing how to bring back into the fold.”
An excellent observation. I grew up in western Maine, downstream of the pulp and paper mills in Rumford and Berlin NH. Many of my friends’ fathers, uncles, and older brothers worked these mills or the tanneries that were built along the banks of the Androscoggin river. These were physically hard jobs performed in a stew of toxic emissions and byproducts, and this alma mater graduated burned out alcoholics with health issues at an alarming rate.
If not Platner, then who should represent these people?
Nobody. That’s the problem.
“Where else are they going to go?” -William J. Clinton.
*156,000 people voted for Platner
Mike Elk over at Payday Report provides some useful background about how Platner was chosen in the first place, as well as some deeper issues he says “we” have failed to confront.
https://paydayreport.com/platners-guru-daniel-moraff-asked-me-to-lie-for-him-i-didnt/
https://paydayreport.com/platners-daniel-moraff-barred-from-summer-lees-campaign-over-sexual-misconduct-complaints/
https://paydayreport.com/watching-when-we-were-bullies-vital-to-prevent-another-graham-platner/
WSWS claims that AFL-CIO initially recruited Platner. Doesnt discuss DSA or Moraff. “Platner has openly described how his campaign was initiated by the AFL-CIO bureaucracy.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/05/05/vjdl-m05.html
I don’t think DSA was a factor, but I wonder if Moraff was hired by the AFL-CIO.
Yves wrote> the successful campaign to force Platner to give up his Senate bid was not about his character but his politics.
100% We’ve been through this often enough before. Two, or was it three times with Clinton and also with Biden. If the party wants the candidate then he (or she in the 3rd Clinton run) is stoutly defended against the scurrilous attack.
A good essay, as an explanation taking into account broader factors. But don’t count on this:
I have dipped into the comments sections at some sites (yes, it is perilous but I am intrepid) like Breaking Points and The Young Turks, reliably liberalish. Let alone Jimmy Dore’s site, dirtbag leftist. There is significant skepticism.
The timing of the accusations is indeed highly suspicious, which means that the so-called sincerity is in play. Sincerity means consistency in how one presents oneself, which is not what I’m getting from this over-mediated affair with its many shifting scandals and personages.
How Platner arose (as if senatorial candidates pop up like mushrooms), the laments that his background is sketchy (the stereotypical screwed-up WASP boy), and the other inside-baseball stuff are just 20/20 hindsight. Recall that George McGovern was tut-tut a disaster as a candidate blah blah blah, except that he wasn’t.
As someone watching from outside the U S of A, someone watching a major cultural/political event (something that Racicot must have thought about, or maybe not), this is starting to look like Hillary Clinton’s “Deplorable” moment. I doubt that the Democrats will win the seat in the fall, unless maybe Obama, who spent so much time cultivating Susan Collins as a “moderate Republican” interested in health-care reform, can talk Collins out of running. At least one of his many houses is nearby for tea and a national conversation on good manners.
As with Sanders as the party’s realistic hope for the Presidency, actually winning the Senate seat isn’t the party’s priority. Shutting out the left is.
As a bonus, the Democrats can fundraise off of the angst and malcontent stemming from a Republican win despite never intending to do anything about it if and when a DNC candidate takes office.
Janta Ka Reporter was also pouring scorn on the accuser.
Could you please point me to the Janta Ka episode where Rifat discusses the Platner case? Thanks
It’s this one – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq2JkwqFs9c
They might take the seat with Troy Jackson, but I’m sure the party will do everything it can over the next few days to make sure Jackson doesn’t get the nod. My guess at this point they will try to shoehorn in Shah, a man of Indian descent, to show how not-racist they are. Shah was very popular in Maine during the pandemic. He’s also pledged not to take any AIPAC money. He should have pledged not to take any more AIPAC money, because he already took plenty during the gubernatorial primary.
I also doubt the accusations against him. If they are true, then why is he not being arrested? If they are not going to arrest him, and they aren’t going to put Troy Jackson up as a replacement, Platner should run as an independent and go scorched earth. He really doesn’t have much to lose at this point.
Here’s to hoping Tammy Duckworth is successfully able to kneecap Shah. She and a few others really do not like him based on his 2015 handling of Legionnaire’s Disease.
And Duckworth is of course another one who once held great promise as a “progressive” willing to buck the status quo and turned into an establishment shill as soon as she was elected. It’ rats fighting amongst themselves.
<"as if senatorial candidates pop up like mushrooms"
Actually, in Hawaii for the R ballot, candidates do "pop up like mushrooms". The bar to getting on the primary ballot is set low, so at least to me it seems a vanity project for most of these folks who no one active in the state party have heard of.
Though in Hawaii state representative (51 seats) is the entry point for politics so unless you were a sports or media star those 51 form the basic name recognition / vetting. We do have 4 non-partisan mayors that can be a stepping stone but winning the mayor's seat is much harder than state rep.
I knew this was a political assassination as soon as I realized there were no legal charges being brought. They said this took place 5 years ago. The statute of limitations is longer. Why no charges? Because none of this would stand up in a court of law. It’s BS to protect the political power structure. And that we fall for it is why we can’t have nice things in this country.
There’s also no room for someone to change over time. I’m not saying GP is that, but people can and do change based on experience and learning. The change can be for better or worse. But the assumption is that a person is fixed starting at age 16-18. This isn’t always true even though it can be.
Sheena Bellows: imagine becoming ill from eating too many marshmallows.
According to the website Track Aipac, federal career totals from pro-Israel PACS are:
Chuck Schumer: $411,980
Kirsten Gillibrand: $629,057
Hakeem Jeffries: $1,495,709
… while Ohio District 11 congresswoman Shontel Brown has raked in… wait for it: $5,090,445
***
“Figures listed on this page reflect federal career totals from all pro-Israel PACs & their large donors:
PACs: Direct and earmarked donations from pro-Israel PACs to candidates
IE: Independent Expenditures (spending for ads, mailers, organizing activities, etc.) by pro-Israel PACs on behalf of candidates
Data sourced via the United States Federal Election Commission.”
http://www.trackaipac.com
P.S. Shontel Brown is “my” congresscritter. She is “mine” even though I never have and never will vote for her. Like almost every other congress seat in Ohio, hers is gerrymandered to be “safe,” and even if it weren’t, I’m certainly not going to vote for a republican, so basically, I have no vote in the lower house of Congress. She will be in the House for the rest of my life and probably far beyond. AIPAC & friends purchase most of the African Americans in Congress, many of them undoubtedly better at their jobs than Shontel. Why they are paying quite so much for her, I just can’t figure out. She seems to have a competent staff who do their best to see that she never has an unscripted moment.
Because they used her as a cat’s paw to defeat the formidable Nina Turner.
I’m hoping against hope that Turner sees some of the NY and Colorado results this year and thinks about giving it another shot in 2028. I somehow think her comment about voting for Biden being like eating just half a bowl of shit instead of a full bowl may not be quite so damaging as it was before.
Thanks for that reminder. Ms Turner sure got memory-holed.
I voted for Nina Turner, of course, but must confess I did not think she ran a very strong campaign.
I loathe the Democratic Party for all the reasons above. I donated to Platner because he was the only candidate who in his pitch was against AIPAC & the Gaza genocide. Why was he chosen by the left leaning consultants? Well, I listened to some of his talks, he is very articulate and could comfortably talk his politics. Troy Jackson is pitching to be his replacement but his pitch is just the usual crap about beating Collins.
Political hit job.
No thought about due process.
No thought about the will of the people.
No thought about actual policy issues.
No thought about the corrupting influence of big money.
No thought about…………….
All about narrative.
All about subverting the will of the people.
All about excuses for Genocide.
All about siding with fascist ideology.
All about playing call of duty.
All about avoiding sworn oaths.
All about hypocrisy.
All about………..
It is so absurd to me that this 90% political hit job is just twisted so far….
all the energy to say something ain’t so when it was done in front of your eyes.
It’s like someone drowns a puppy in front of you and says to you that the puppy shouldn’t have trusted him and it’s the puppy’s own damned fault.
Prosecute folks who are against fascism as terrorists??? when are they going to round-up the multitudes still alive who fought against fascism in WW2?
Prosecute some people who dared touch a chunk of loose pool paint? letting the incompetent no-bid contractor walk away with his ill-gotten gain?…..why are they not calling him back to fix it on his dime?
Let enabled fascist ICE ‘officers’ kill innocent people on the streets and fabricating reasons and false reporting while not prosecuting on the grounds of qualified immunity.
Pushing AI on everyone without any outline or guardrail that would, at minimum, proscribe what this tool is to be used for and what is it’s prohibited use…… Like, for instance, it can’t be used to drown puppies.
Sing it!
Reading the King Lear intro that Neuburber uses I am reminded of this by Dylan ( but it’s Jimi’s voice in my ear),
…let us not talk falsely now
The hour’s getting late…
Thanks for the strait shooting.
Oops, sorry TN on hashing up your name. I plead old eyes and this dang little phone.
Two parties, two sides of the same alloy-laden coin.
Money.
Montana has a couple interesting things going on on both fronts: A US Senate candidate with an impressive on paper CV, running as an Independent, and a work-around barring of Citizen’s United undisclosed unlimited campaign donations.
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=NewsBank&t=pubname%3ABZMB%21Bozeman%2BDaily%2BChronicle%2B%2528MT%2529/year%3A2026%212026/mody%3A0709%21July%2B09&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/1A93D95B04A42028
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=NewsBank&t=pubname%3ABZMB%21Bozeman%2BDaily%2BChronicle%2B%2528MT%2529/year%3A2026%212026/mody%3A0710%21July%2B10&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/1A940A546A9BD258
From what I can tell, the Montana initiative takes the same approach as Hawaii’s Act 11 passed this year but slated to take effect in 2027. Currently has been taken to US District Court by a local non-profit. The state AG (appointed by Dem Gov) already states it’s unconstitutional.
Having read the majority opinion in NRSC v FEC it seems clear to me there is no way that initiative will survive challenge. Note that in the taking points in favor, it’s always about (evil) corporations but the reality is it touches all associations including unincorporated nonprofit associations, 501(c)(4)s, etc.
So your garden club would be precluded from making expenditures on speech (like printing and handing out flyers or door hangers) to support a city councilman who wanted community gardens for example.
They slimed Bernie for being racist and misogynist when he ran against Hillary. Whatever you think about Bernie now, he isn’t those things. What do you think is going to happen if you run against the establishment and you’ve got actual problems like a Nazi tattoo and history of being terrible to women?
Wait, wait! The NYT tells us the problem here IS Sanders and the misogynist Bernie Bro followers:
Platner’s Rise and Fall Revives Old Questions About ‘Bernie Bros’ and Women Archive.ph
We need AIPAC endorsed me-too wokesters.
Democrats’ version of democracy: Suppress primary challenges as much as possible. For open seats, select a reliable hack from the sclerotic old guard. If a grass roots candidate manages to win a primary, find a flaw (real or not,) take advantage of the flaw only after there is no possibility of a new primary, and then have “the party” select a suitable hack for the general election. I suggest that the process be called “getting Biden-ed.” He suppressed the primary and then got deselected in favor of a hack (Kamala,) when new primaries were no longer possible.
Effective? Absolutely! How many progressive Senators are there? Bernie? Merkley?
If perchance an unacceptable wins a seat in the House, offer them “a career” or ostracize them . Think about how Ocasio-Cortez has mellowed.
In the worst case, there’s always the fate of Paul Wellstone…
There was no such thing as “primary” until around 1900. You claim the right to tell a private association whom they should run as a candidate.
There is democracy. It’s called a party convention. Don’t like it? Form your own party.
And that brilliant attitude is a decent fraction of what brought us to this pass.
I’ve attended party conventions in 3 states without encountering substantive democracy.
Great piece.
And then there’s Eliot Spitzer, briefly governor of NY, once my preferred presidential prospect.
Because he appeared fearless as the “Sheriff of Wall Street”.
Until a Fed wiretap revealed him spending a fortune on the Emperors Club VIP. Emperors indeed.
Dumb and dumber, and no little arrogance.
But hard for me to imagine Wall Street minions weren’t watching his every move, ready to clue authorities on the big fish, if bank secrecy act reports weren’t sufficient to put gears in motion.
All it took to speed the demise of Howard Dean’s innovative campaign was the Dean Scream, and compliant media stripping away crowd noise and broadcasting hundreds of replays to give his hoarse shout an unhinged feel.
If successful, Dean would have sold out soon enough. It didn’t take him long to reconfigure buttering his bread with PhRMA and BIO, and opposing Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Tehran. And in 2016 flipping on single-payer healthcare, criticizing Bernie. All the while claiming he wasn’t a lobbyist.
Was Dean ever authentic, or was he a stalking horse?
Years ago, I heard through a rich person grapevine that it was Ken Langone who dropped the dime on Spitzer. If I remember right, Spitzer was “Client #9” before being outed. I suspect that whoever it was that knifed Spitzer, they were either one of Clients # 1-8, or a close associate. Funny we never found out who any of the other well-heeled visitors to this high rent madame were…..
Never let an opportunity go to waste to attack the “left” in the United States, either:
Platner’s Rise and Fall Revives Old Questions About ‘Bernie Bros’ and Women (NY Times; paywalled)
The Bernie Bros trope returns!
Never get in a room with Elizabeth alone:
A not disinterested player
The rest is about Platner and a recap;
The only evidence that Bernie Bros are real is Watts being “castrated” online or whatever.
“the potential for allegations against the candidate and what she described as a dismissive attitude toward women”
A deconstructionist could spend hours parsing the meanings there.
An ex-girlfriend named Emily Suttle-Braun mentioned Sanders when she popped up speaking about him yesterday or the day before. An excerpt from an interview with her showed up on my Youtube feed yesterday and the whole thing struck me as interesting, but not in a good way. It became even more interesting in a not good way when I googled her this morning : she’s all over the place.
It was weird in a lot of ways. She’s a political consultant of some sort, which made me wonder how many political consultants Platner dated.
At first I thought, wow she must have been one of the exes who said good things about him, and now she has to do a full recantation to remain in good standing. She wasn’t named in the NYT piece, so that wouldn’t really add up.
However, the interview was less about Platner than sexist men (including Sanders) and believing women. Somehow, because she went out with Platner years ago and was never abused by him, she should now have a platform to say idpol over economic issues and stopping support for genocide.
It’s all a little too much to accept at face value.
The interesting thing is why did the NY Times even set out to write an article about Platner’s ex-girlfriends (which kicked the whole narrative off months ago). It’s a pretty labor/time intensive piece to do. And, despite coming up with a few things to write, the story fell flat in the sense that it did not affect his campaign at all. Oddly they interviewed Racicot for the piece but she did not provide the dirt at the time. Did they not ask her the right questions (I’d be a little embarrassed today if I were that reporter and I’m sure the editor is giving a talking to) or did she not think it important enough to elaborate at the time? I’ve worked as a reporter and it is astounding sometimes that people you ask questions to don’t have the same sense of what is newsworthy.
Well Racicot’s story improved after she got some coaching from Cheyenne Hunt in the aftermath of the NYT article. Hunt has now offered jobs to any Platner campaign staff who quit, but not for the ones at the top who recruited him. With this kind of money and influence to throw around, one does wonder whether Racicot might have received more than just coaching from Hunt.
On Wednesday evening, Platner suspended his campaign. On Thursday afternoon, I received a text from the Troy Jackson campaign requesting not just support, but for me to rush a contribution today. I impolitely declined.
I don’t think I have made a political contribution since Sanders in 2016. I was a registered democrat in my county up until about 3 years ago, when I switched to independent / unregistered (forget what they call it here). I strongly suspect that Sanders sold or was forced to share his donor list. The Jackson ask was not the first out-of-state democratic candidate seeking cash. None of them received any support. But Platner’s political corpse wasn’t even cold yet. The whole thing just looks bad on so many levels.
In Jackson’s defense, the millions Platner raised is blocked from being used by any other candidate so he’s in a desperate money crunch. FWIW I don’t give money to campaigns either and block all texts.
If you donated through Act Blue, as I foolishly did, they have your contact information. No need for Sanders to share his list.
I suspect maybe it was my misguided donation to Obama that ensnared me into Democrat Party fundraising, but who knows anymore; I block with ProtonMail, with a filter script, all Democrat fundraising spam. They basically use all the same company to send the emails; easy. Text messages are confounding. I always reply with F U, but I doubt it makes any difference.
These days you can buy from data brokers the data you need to determine who your likely D voters are. Sure ActBlue/WinRed are an excellent determination of ability to donate, but also from a committee standpoint capture the donor info needed for state/FEC donation reporting.
I sent Sanders a couple of money orders with bogus addresses attached to them. He could have cashed the money orders, used the money and then added my bogus address to his punishment list, or he could have waited to first see if my address was valid before cashing the money orders. So, he has an address. He has the cash. What does he do?
Democracy without (real) alternatives, and/or with some of these systematically suppressed. How Yves called this regime? I cannot recall. Controlled democracy?
There are two things in this affair which puzzle me:
1. If Platner’s a rapist, then why did Racicot go to Politico, and not to the police?
2. If Racicot’s a liar, then why isn’t Platner suing for libel?
It depresses me, that in all the discussion, the notion of justice barely gets mentioned, as if it were either something irrelevant, or something obviously impossible.
I think it’s worth pointing out that the death blow was struck by Politico. Who or what owns Politico? The answer is Axel Springer SE, based in Berlin. And to which country are new employees of Axel Springer SE required to sign an oath of loyalty? Israel. Everybody in the profession will already know this. We should know it, too.
Thanks
As somebody had often said:
“News you can use.”
Sheesh…
Two tweets that say it all-
‘Stop the Forever Wars
@DoctorFishbones
It’s telling that Graham Platners’ victims are willing to talk to the media at length but not give testimony to a court where they would face the threat of perjury’
https://xcancel.com/DoctorFishbones/status/2075949435343736834#m
‘Stand With Graham
@standwithgraham
It’s astonishing to me that NO ONE calls into to question the First and most vocal accuser of Graham Platner is a Republican operative who worked for the Heritage Foundation and co-founded “Ladies for Kavanaugh”
You literally cannot make this shit up.’
https://xcancel.com/standwithgraham/status/2075613880332529740#m
Mamdani won and the Zionists are trying to take over the US Department of War, there are a lot of chips on the table and to me, this move on Platner looks desperate.
No Dem candidate that does not proclaim fealty to Israel can be allowed to win.
We are seeing quite a few “All or Nothing” moves, many of the TechBro’s are Zionists and those who want “The Technate” are allied with them, for the moment.
AI bubble, Pretty much everything bubble, Iran War which is heating back up…
Oh, and weather.
And the Oil Cliff.
Then take a look at the Congress, followed by a look at Trump and his triumphant administration ( Don’t puke in the reflecting pool!).
It’s going to be a lively summer, followed by an even livelier Fall and Winter.