Over the last week, Democrats have been at each other’s throats about a Senate primary that doesn’t happen for seven months. I am not innocent in this situation. I wrote a piece criticizing Senate Democratic leadership for preemptively endorsing Maine Governor Janet Mills in a multi-candidate primary that included Graham Platner, the veteran and oysterman who has generated a lot of grassroots enthusiasm. I argued:
In 2020, Democrats ran an establishment politician against Collins and got their asses kicked. Mills would likely run a better campaign than Sara Gideon, but at a time when voters hate politicians, are down on Democrats, and are yearning for younger leaders, is a 77-year-old, two-term incumbent governor really the best choice?
I got a lot of feedback from people mad at me for writing it. I heard from people associated with Senate Democrats and the Mills campaign arguing that I was misreading the situation, underestimating Mills despite her age, and putting too much faith in an untested, unvetted candidate.
Then, a combination of Mills’s allies and enterprising reporters found a trove of Platner’s problematic posts on Reddit from a few years ago. The posts included everything from calling himself a communist to downplaying sexual assault in the military to insulting Trump voters as stupid and racist. Platner apologized for the posts, disavowed them, and attributed them to a dark period of his life when he was dealing with PTSD after coming back from war. Platner appeared on Tuesday’s episode of Pod Save America to address the posts and a tattoo that resembled a Nazi-symbol.
Everyone should watch the interview and make their own judgment on his responses. Platner announced yesterday that he would get the tattoo removed, but the controvery raged on.
The revelation of the Platner posts led to a round of “I told you so’s” from Democratic establishment types and a fair amount of dunking on my post and a subsequent discussion about the race on Pod Save America. While recognizing I contributed to it, I find the whole Platner discourse exhausting. I should just let it go, but I can’t. So here are some thoughts on Platner, electability, and what this is all about.
Unless you are deep into the various fractious online fights in the Democratic Party, people getting this worked up about a June primary in Maine probably seems insane.
