If only there had been some indication, even just a hint, that Graham Platner was not the sort of wise, experienced, serious man of accomplishment and moral substance who would fit into the United States Senate.
The Democrat Party might have avoided yet another in a growing list of major political embarrassments that make that outfit look like a driver-less car full of circus clowns, drunk ones.
Their – gee, what’s the right word? – insane obsessions with gaining and grasping power for power’s sake and with the living nightmare of Donald J. Trump during these past 11 years has made them willing to try anything and for now become the exact opposite of a viable, realistic political alternative to govern America.
It's like a Roadrunner cartoon – Meep! Meep! – with hapless Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries playing Wile E. Coyote and failing every single time they try something from the Acme Politics Factory.
This year, in what is their best chance to flip a Senate seat, aged Democrat powers and reluctant donors forced their two-term governor, Janet Mills, to give up her Maine Senate primary race to face five-term Sen. Susan Collins, the GOP's Harry Houdini in deep blue New England.
You see, Mills is old (78), like pretty much everyone else atop the Democrat Party. Remember, Joe Biden was 82 when they said he was tack-sharp. Nancy Pelosi is 86. Hypocrisy is not a problem if media are on your side.
Instead, Democrat leaders, including an eager Bernie Sanders (84) and 156,054 party primary voters, anointed the professed progressive Graham Platner.
He’s a 41-year-old veteran whom media identified as an oyster fisherman because his campaign video said that last year. Since then, he’s admitted his oyster involvement is selling them to his mother’s restaurant.
On June 9, hopeful Maine Democrats and independent voters overwhelmingly chose Platner as their nominee to join the allegedly august Senate with almost three-quarters of the statewide vote despite:
- His lack of a substantial career,
- Relentless publicity about his offensive Nazi tattoo and professed ignorance of its evil symbolism from World War Eleven,
- A long record of mistreatment of the women he was seeing,
- Ugly posts on Reddit,
- And serial sexting of women not his wife.
See, Platner espouses progressive views; that's the hot thing now since nothing else is working for them. And polls show Dems deeply unsatisfied with their own party.
Platner was thought to represent the kind of working-class citizen that has largely abandoned Democrats since Trump’s arrival. And seizing Senate control is of such paramount import to that party that looking past a Nazi tattoo, crude behavior, a blank resume, and zero qualifications for a legislator becomes rather easy, if that helps.
Collins’ GOP seat is a tempting turnover as the only one on this fall’s midterm agenda in a state won by Kamala Harris in 2024 with 52 percent of the vote. Current GOP Senate control is slim.
Platner had assured his party, as he had before, that there was nothing else unsavory to seep out of his closet. But wait! There was more!
On July 6, after the excitement and fireworks smoke had cleared from the nation’s historic 250th birthday celebration that nine Dem governors boycotted, Politico published a blockbuster interview with a woman who said a drunken Platner had forcibly had sex with her in late 2021 despite her resistance and protests.
Immediately, the Maine party, Sanders, Rep. Ro Khanna, and other party bigs demanded Platner forfeit his nomination. That came literally within minutes of Politico’s online posting. Platner eventually did quit, of course, as a Democrat instinctively claiming that he was the real victim in the incident.
Now, a Democrat abandoning a political campaign over accusations of sexual misconduct is not all that new. Of course, Bill Clinton got away with his in the 1990s.
But in April, five such charges caused Rep. Eric Swalwell to give up his 13-year House career and leading bid to become the Democrat nominee for California governor.
Two things stick out about throwing Platner overboard now. One is the failed attempt to convince voters their eyes were lying. With media help, it did work for a while, even with a lost Joe Biden.
Second is the timing. Damaging opposition research is usually handed out close to an election for maximum impact.
In 2000, the revelation of George W Bush’s old DUI arrest in Maine was leaked to Fox News five days before the election. It produced only three Maine electoral votes for Democrat Al Gore.
But that was enough to set up the lengthy, heavily contested Florida recount that eventually led the Supreme Court to decide the national outcome in Bush’s favor.
It makes no political sense for Republicans to time this Platner rape accusation for July to help their candidate in November.
However, the explosive Platner news just happened to come out exactly one week before the 5 p.m. July 13 deadline for Maine’s Democrat party to change candidates, just enough time to force Platner out.
Truly, an amazing coincidence!
Of course, we don’t know who set up the liberal Politico to provide the perfectly timed, damaging interview that gave Democrats cover to suddenly discover that Platner was now a loser and replace him with a more palatable pol to gain their profoundly coveted Senate control, perhaps.
Who would try such a cynical double-cross?
Let’s see, is there perhaps some leaderless group of fumbling pols who would most want to dump this fake oysterman now without taking any responsibility for blocking a successful female governor, for blindly setting Platner up as a sure-fire winner, and then cynically, suddenly, discarding him as disposable even though he was duly elected by 72 percent of the state's primary voters?
Platner’s gone now, grumbling. And some 600 select Maine Democrats have until July 27 to pick a new, presumably less-tainted candidate to knock off Collins and get them a Senate win.
Who might replace him?
Does anything in this whole sad scenario feel familiar to you?
Anything like, say, a man duly selected as the party’s nominee for president by some 16 million Democrat primary voters; a man endorsed by all the party elites who vowed he was “sharp as a tack,” absolutely ready to fully perform important duties in Washington for a second term; an 82-year-old man that most everyone outside his party saw as terribly-flawed and both mentally and physically incapable of holding an elected office.
Until one evening in a nationally televised confrontation that he himself had sought, in front of 55 million fellow Americans, he melted mentally.
And 24 days later, an even more elderly party leader named Nancy Pelosi forced him out as a certain loser completely incapable of being president in a second term, yet somehow, amazingly, capable of remaining commander in chief for the last six months of his first term.
The entire country dodged a bullet there.
Unilaterally, Pelosi simply discarded the choice of all those primary voters, and single-handedly slotted in an inept replacement, who would lose handily to Trump while spending $1.5 billion in earnest donations. The inept replacement now indicates she wants to try it again.
The arrogance of that and dumping Platner is stunning. As Fox Radio Host Guy Benson aptly put it on-air:
From Biden to Platner, it’s been astounding to discover how many officials within the self-appointed ‘Party of Democracy’ view their own ‘elections’ as mere exhibition games — which don’t really count and can simply be nullified once outcomes become politically inconvenient.
A new party chairman, Ken Martin, commissioned an autopsy of the 2024 defeat, you know, to learn valuable lessons for the future, promising full public transparency.
But then, for unexplained reasons, he refused to release the results. Until months later, under public pressure, he put out the “autopsy” that was worse than half-assed, incomplete, and laced with keen grasps of the obvious. So much for demonstrating a serious operation capable of leading the nation.
With only 2024's failed effort and wanton campaign spending, failed government shutdowns, and stale attacks on Trump to sell, Martin's party fundraising has been underwhelming, leaving Democrats far behind the GOP in financial resources.
As I wrote here last month:
A galaxy of events, lousy leadership, election losses, dumb decisions, clumsy conclusions, and changing demographics have combined to put the ancient party of Andrew Jackson in a deep, deep hole.
The good news for Republicans is the Dems are still digging.
As the answer to their own self-inflicted wounds and blissfully free of lessons from history, many Democrats are turning to socialism with all its free goodies, which naturally becomes communism.
And to vows of impeachment and revenge on Trump supporters should they acquire congressional control in this fall’s midterm balloting, which historically goes against the party of an incumbent president.
Democrat desperation has already put the country through that colossal Russiagate hoax, countless trumped-up indictments and lawfare trial cases against Trump, collusion with sympathetic media to hide Hunter Biden’s laptop contents, secret censorship of social media, 9 percent inflation, two pointless impeachment attempts, then offering an inept, senile old man as commander in chief.
That was followed by promoting a nonsensical vice president as his successor: "It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day."
And don't forget the global embarrassment of that horribly botched Afghan troop withdrawal that saw 13 service members perish.
My RedState colleague Brad Slager points out:
What is astounding is how none of Platner’s problems were a mystery. His flaws were evident in beta testing, but the Democrats were operating with the confidence that they could sell him with sheer will and a compliant media complex.
Hey, that kind of empty thinking worked with Biden for nearly four years. You just need to help enough unthinking people to see what they want to see.
