On the menu today: The critics of Graham Platner proved to be very, very right, and his fan base and defenders proved to be very, very wrong. With every revelation of past wrongdoing, he, his campaign, and his defenders doubled down and insisted they would be vindicated in the end. Now, with his campaign suspended and no one left to lie to, his contempt is well-earned. We know that Platner has a taste for things from Germany, so today’s edition is going to be a heaping serving of schadenfreude. Read on.
Berlin Falls
Graham Platner is no longer the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine.
Platner departed the race exactly as you might have predicted, insisting that every accusation against him was a damnable lie, bitterly insisting that his withdrawal from the race was everyone’s fault but his, and pointing the finger at vague, shadowy “large forces” rigging things against him. It may not have been a thundering tirade out of Downfall, but it was a first-ballot Hall of Fame masterpiece of refusing to take responsibility.
Platner claimed Wednesday that the allegations were timed to put pressure on him to drop out of the race before a July 13 deadline.
“It’s not the false allegations, though, that have brought us to where we are. It’s the fact that they’re being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us.”
“We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish. That if they begin to succeed, they can be crushed,” he said, later mentioning that there are “large forces working against” him to “personally accuse [him] of the worst thing that a person could do” and accusing the “corporate media and political establishment” of acting as “judge, jury and executioner.”
He’s the victim here, you see.
By all accounts, Platner was a troubled man and a heavy drinker for much of his adult life, including the time of his relationships with Lyndsey Fifield and Jenny Racicot. In past interviews, he described himself as “self-medicating and drinking heavily” and “just a wreck of a human being.” Since the accusations, however, he has insisted that he has a perfect memory of all his interactions with Fifield and Racicot, and that all their accusations are false. He has never offered a competing account of events, simply issuing a blanket denial.
“This is all false,” Platner began in his video last night. “The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real.”
One month ago, the New York Times ran its article emphasizing Fifield’s accusations of physical abuse and quoting Racicot only as saying she found Platner’s behavior “reckless” and “unsettling.” This week Racicot came forward, accusing Platner of raping her. Platner complained he hadn’t had enough time to respond to the accusations.
“I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations before a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner,” Platner said.
How much time does he need for a “true response”? What’s stopping him from giving that true response now? If he has some sort of exculpatory evidence, why not show it, rather than end his campaign?
After Racicot’s accusation this week, his campaign issued a statement: “For a year, opponents of this campaign have thrown everything they can at Graham — calling him a Nazi, a war criminal, and a communist. None of it has been true and this is no different.” Except the first person to call Graham Platner a “communist” was Platner himself, commenting on Reddit in 2021. He may have changed his views since then, but that doesn’t make the accusation entirely untrue. When one of your denials is provably false, it does not help the credibility of your other denials.
What’s more, Platner insisted, the rest of the Democratic Party was treating him unfairly in the face of these accusations of assault.
“Those in power, who have the ability to do so, are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign. We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function.”
Got that? Groups like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Maine Democratic Party, and Senate Majority PAC are using a little thing like accusations of rape and physical abuse “as an excuse” to no longer support him.
Platner says he understands the seriousness of the accusations against him, but he does not act like he does. The statute of limitations for sexual assault in Maine is 20 years, and Racicot said he attacked her five years ago.
If I write, “Platner contended he and his supporters were stabbed in the back,” you will think I’m making another Hitler joke, but . . . how else would you characterize these remarks?
We beat them on June 9th in overwhelming numbers. We did it the right way. We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change. And we won. And now they are not going to let us have it.
Strangely, Platner insisted that he had never really wanted to run for Senate in the first place. “Amy and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience. We were not looking to get into politics. We had no desire to run for office.”
Throughout his campaign, Platner claimed, falsely, that he had been an open book about his past, and that incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins was hiding and not doing town halls.
And now, in what may well be the last time we hear from Graham Platner about these accusations, his campaign ends with a prerecorded message from his bunker.
A man who had proven to be reckless and irresponsible in every other chapter of his life ended his campaign in the same manner.
It Turns Out He Was Never Really Much of an Oyster Farmer, Huh?
Less than two years after the debacle of the Joe Biden reelection campaign, Democrats find themselves with another high-profile candidate who proved to be spectacularly unworthy of public office. Like Biden, Platner became another sure loser in a key race who will be replaced after the voters already had their say in a primary. Maine Democrats will select Platner’s replacement at a 600-person convention sometime before the July 27 deadline.
This morning’s Politico Playbook newsletter declares that Platner’s withdrawal “brings a broader reckoning on the left over how so many progressive politicians, influencers and campaign groups got this one so wrong.” Eh, I’ll believe in that reckoning when I see it.
The shortest version is that human beings are inclined to see what they want to see, and once they start seeing what they want to see, it is exceptionally difficult to get them to change their minds. Progressives might be a little more inclined to this fault than average, but it’s not like people on the right are immune from this temptation.
The New York Times reports this morning:
In June, as rumors swirled about a damaging story coming from The New York Times featuring several of Mr. Platner’s ex-girlfriends, [Platner adviser Morris] 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.
“No issues in Mr. Platner’s past concerning his treatment of women”!
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning:
Platner repeatedly told staffers that he hadn’t been aware of the tattoo’s meaning, according to former staffers.
Some aides, however, remained unconvinced and spoke to a friend of Platner’s from his time in Washington, D.C., who told them the candidate knew what the skull-and-crossbones signified, some of the former staffers said. In recent months, women who were romantically involved with Platner have also said publicly he had known about the tattoo’s history for years before the campaign.
The warning signs were there from the start. I’ve pointed to far-too-credulous, generous, and laudatory early coverage of Platner from the New York Times, the New Yorker, and even Bon Appetit.
Yesterday Axios’s Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein offered up an almost hilarious, “Oh, hey, it turns out he was never really an oysterman, at least not in terms of making a living from it” correction: “Starting with their launch video last August, Platner and his team billed him as an oyster farmer — a title most of the media, including Axios at times, repeated without scrutiny. But as early as August, he told ideologically friendly outlets that he makes little money from selling oysters and it’s not how he makes a living.”
In a June 5 Fox News appearance, Maine Wire editor in chief Steven Robinson told Laura Ingraham that Platner’s business is “a campaign prop. . . . The oyster business, totally fake.”
Now, calling Platner’s oyster business “totally fake” is hyperbolic; he does sell oysters to a restaurant his mother owns. But Platner had told the New Republic that he hadn’t paid himself a salary from his oyster business for the past five years. It would be interesting to see if Platner’s business has ever generated any profits after expenses, and whether the Internal Revenue Service would classify it as a hobby or a business for the question of deducting business expenses. (“The IRS safe harbor rule is typically that if you have turned a profit in at least three of five consecutive years, the IRS will presume that you are engaged in it for profit.”)
PolitiFact rated Robinson’s statement “false,” based on his company’s having filed the proper paperwork with the state. Well, that’s one way to measure the legitimacy of a business, but the “no salary for five years,” “not making a living at it,” and “just one customer that is his mom” facts complicate the picture.
Almost everybody, including the self-anointed fact-checkers, has a bad habit of seeing what they want to see.
Living Down to the Worst Stereotypes of Progressive Men
Ryan Grim, formerly of The Intercept and now with Drop Site News — the first word describes what you should do with it — seems to think it’s really important that everyone know that Jenny Racicot, the woman who accused Graham Platner of raping her, had on the night in question been “texting [Platner] about needing her glute massaged.”
I can’t believe I have to write this: that does not make a subsequent rape okay. At no point does a message like that mean that no does not mean no.
We give our progressive friends some grief for seeming to be obsessed with the concept of “toxic masculinity” and a reflexive perception of all men as creepy predators. But maybe their worldview is shaped by the men they interact with the most?
ADDENDUM: Thanks to everyone who came out to hear my remarks at Americans for Prosperity Pennsylvania’s America 250 celebration at the Union League of Philadelphia last night. For those who couldn’t join, my remarks drew heavily on my 2018 essay pointing out the diversity of America from its very start; my friend Derek Baxter’s new book about America’s key allies during the Revolutionary War; and my sense that we are stewards of America, not its owners, and that we are obligated to attempt to pass along a functioning Constitution and thriving culture of ordered liberty to our children.