Nick Catoggio:
Despite all the hype about new blood and “outsider” energy, Platnermania ended up incorporating elements of two of the most notorious Democratic campaign disasters of the past 20 years.
One is John Edwards’ presidential run in 2007, which saw Edwards mount a challenge from the left to frontrunners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The candidate spoke movingly on the trail about his wife’s breast cancer; meanwhile, he was secretly engaged in a long-running affair and had already fathered a child with his mistress.
Edwards recklessly placed his own ambition ahead of his party’s welfare, knowing that the skeletons in his closet could have wrecked Democrats’ chances at the presidency if they had tumbled out after he won the nomination. By letting progressives get excited about a candidacy that was all but certain to end in disgrace, he played the left for chumps. That’s Platner all over.
The other is Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign, of course. For many months during that cycle, influential Democrats ignored the evidence of their own eyes and ears—and lots and lots of data—that the then-president had a liability that would render him unelectable. They downplayed it, rationalized it, and made excuses for it … until Biden’s catastrophic debate performance left no doubt that the party would lose unless it very belatedly removed him as nominee.
That too is Platner all over. The man had more red flags than China, yet not until something emerged to convince the left that his campaign was well and truly doomed did they very belatedly turn on him. They were okay with electing an unfit cretin to the Senate this year, just as they were okay with nominating an unfit, senescent eightysomething for another four-year term in the White House. What they weren’t okay with was losing.
Here’s the difference between Platner, Edwards, and Biden, though. Two were known quantities in politics, figures whom Democratic voters were familiar with and whom they might be forgiven for (foolishly) granting the benefit of the doubt as to their fitness. The third was a black box, reportedly deemed Senate material after a single brief conversation with a strategist, and whose views on policy could be fairly summarized as a noun, a verb, and “oligarchs” or “Israel.” How did someone like that earn the benefit of the doubt until Monday afternoon?
I’m going to be biting my tongue on a lot of “I told you sos” in the next week.
In April, I said that I largely agreed with Ben Rhodes’ piece on Graham Platner but wondered if he was actually describing a Platner candidacy or, well, a Rhodes candidacy. That was on day one of my Platner Research Project. I usually wait as long as possible before I look seriously at the names on an upcoming local ballot, sometimes right up to the last week. I think a) you give yourself a more sober chance to read about someone and b) you avoid a lot of the hype and buy-in trench digging as it inevitably occurs.
Yeah, I’d seen the signs everywhere in the neighborhood, but I paid zero attention to him. And boy did I miss some deep trenches.
In late April I started reading. And I started asking everyone I knew what they thought of Platner. Friends, neighbors, coworkers — I didn’t hide the fact that I was unconvinced but genuinely interested, and wanted to Believe. But even the most avid supporters were exactly zero convincing. It took only a few days to figure out: I could not join my neighbors in their lawn ornamentation.
(The single biggest red flag for me was actually reading the Reddit comments, particularly the “strictly professional,” “I dig it” comments about executed Israeli soldiers. The creepy shirtless-in-a-towel-mirror-selfie profile picture on some random social site/app was a close second when that came out. Some things are bigger deals than these, but not more telling.)
Like many, I too believe that Trump and the GOP must be stopped. But I refuse to stop asking and answering to the question, “At what cost?”
As an “unaffiliated registered voter” in Maine I get to choose which party primary to vote in. And when the primary rolled around, I grabbed a Democratic ballot and did what I could to see that G.P. got no ranking vote from me.
After weeks of conversation, the futility of that vote was not surprising.
Of all the folks on the Left I talked to, only two people said they didn’t particularly like Platner, and both of them quickly lost the desire to be open about that once Janet Mills dropped out of the race. All were adamant about the need to vote for him; most expressed full-hearted support for him; some enthusiastically attended town hall meetings.
(Despite my own concern that Platner might pull on some of the same “America first only” heartstrings we’ve seen tuned in recent years, I know of not one single Right-leaning person who was ever taken with Platner.)
But there was one person who really stuck out. I came home one day after my wife had walk-talked with a friend in the neighborhood. She told me, “You have to talk to E—. She’s so happy to hear that you don’t like Platner either.” Specifically, she was happy that I didn’t like Platner and that I had no hesitation to say so or hear so. My neighborhood friend is a self-described progressive and has now told me numerous times how disheartening it has been that none of her progressive friends and acquaintances would talk to her openly about how bad Platner was as a candidate. “Give him a chance.” “That was in the past.” “We have to win.” “The country is at stake.”
My friend needed someone to talk to. And myself being someone very short on People To Talk To for over a decade, I’m all sympathy. How could I not be? That’s exactly what happened to squishy (former) RINO’s like me ten years ago.
Hence the message above from my friend on Tuesday morning, who will (hopefully) no longer have to make that choice in November. No, not the choice between Collins, Platner, or a blank; the one between your conscience and your “friends.”
Clueless or careless, it is amazing that a party hell-bent on defeating Trumpism could so perfectly mimic Trumpism. Or nearly mimic it, anyway. As Catoggio points out, they are at least now backtracking: “The best I can do to find a silver lining in Democrats’ conduct is this: Unlike certain other parties, they were willing to belatedly draw some sort of line here.”
As many have pointed out for a while now, there is really only one functioning political party in the country. And this is another sign that, as utterly stupid as the Democratic Party often is, that remains true. Though, personally, I think that one of the reasons that Democrats aren’t more crazy than they are — that is, one thing that has kept them more sane — is Trumpism.
Though not sane enough, obviously.
I am not a progressive or even close to one. I also don’t give two shits about the GOP. I call that being free to think and free to speak.
And hopefully, hopefully, hopefully my neighbor friend will feel a little more free now as well.
Still. Someone on The Dispatch Podcast recently referenced the Mr. Belvedere Fan Club SNL skit with Tom Hanks where he’s forced to hold a vote on whether to kill Mr. Belvedere. Alright, Platner (hopefully) won’t be on the ballot, but it shouldn’t have been that close. The fact that it was is not a good sign.