“If Platner fooled you, maybe you should find something to do with your life besides writing columns about politics. Because the U.S. political landscape is full of creeps, cretins, con artists, crooks, and cads of every kind, and it always will be. If the media has any useful role to play in our system, it is to look beyond the spin and the campaign-crafted image and to tell the world who these candidates really are, warts and all, so the electorate can make an informed choice.”
—-Jim Geraghty in The National Review in a long, thorough and detailed review of just how obvious it should have been to Democrats and journalists (but I repeat myself) that Graham Platner is “an awful human being, and that fact was about as hidden as a supernova from the start.”
The specific political columnist Geraghty was admonishing is the New York Times’ hard left-biased, consistently unethical hack pundit Michelle Goldberg, one of my favorite examples of the kind of flagrant propagandist the New York Times gives its platform to. [Goldberg’s EA dossier is here.] I haven’t bothered to write about her for a while: The Julie Principle. In a classic “Oopsie!” column, she wrote,
“Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.” If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.”
Geraghty’s review of just how smoky the “Platner is a world-class creep” gun was is instructive. That anyone endorsed the guy or believed the lame narrative that he was a “changed man” should make the most knee-jerk Democrat think hard about how trustworthy, honest, and, let’s face it, smart this party and its leadership is. Geraghty makes showing their confirmation bias, corruption and contrived blindness look so easy because it is easy:
Ethics Alarms 
Really not much else to say except where the hell are the “me too” believers?
It appears that those who have withdrawn support have not rediscovered their principles – Platner’s poll numbers have not fared well of late. They still don’t care that he’s scum, only that they need a candidate who has a chance. So discouraging and frightening because the party of no scruples is very good at marketing and messaging.
I’d say the explanation for Platner is contained in the Steven King post earlier today. Democrats don’t care about character. As a matter of fact, they’re more than willing to throw scumbags into races because they are contemptuous of anyone who won’t vote Democrat straight down the line.
None of these people were fooled by Platner; they didn’t care! They might as well have said, “Sure, maybe he’s a creep, but he’s our creep, so live with it, assholes!” I find it ironic that they foisted John Fetterman on the Pennsylvania electorate and he turned out to be a fairly solid guy! Probably much to their chagrin insofar as he doesn’t seem to take orders and toe the line.,
“I find it ironic that they foisted John Fetterman on the Pennsylvania electorate and he turned out to be a fairly solid guy!”
I’m certain at least one hyper-partisan, silo-minded 77 Square Miles Surrounded By A Sea Of Reality LEFTY would like a MULLIGAN….
PWS
Worse than clinically depressed, it turns out Fetterman’s rational! Hilarious.
Ummm… Geraghty writes for National Review and The Washington Post. The quotes cited were from National Review. I’m pretty sure he’s never written for New Republic, although if they carry his work, more power to ’em…
I’m pretty sure I’ve made that mistake before. “NR” You’re lucky I didn’t write “Norwegian Reporter.”
Fixed. %$%#@!
HOWEVER, to be fair, the only place I made that mistake was in a link that went to..The National Review.
“Democrats are so contemptuous of the intelligence and judgment of the American people that they believe voters will accept any flaws in a candidate as long as they promise enough free stuff and paint Republicans as Hitler clones.” He’s not wrong, 75,017,613 votes for Harris in 2024 prove that.
It’s not that.
People have principles, and you aren’t going to get people to turn their backs on things they hold deeply because the candidate is a boor. I think we’re beyond that now. This isn’t only a Democrat thing… Look at exhibit T.
I don’t think I’ve been anything other than candid in my criticism of Trump, particularly in his second term. I think a lot of things he’s doing right now are detrimental to both American interests and the world, and for every objectively good thing that he’s doing, there’s probably three or four stupid offsets. It’s frustrating to me that’s happening, because I don’t see a reason why we couldn’t have all those good things and not have to deal with all the bullshit, except that Trump is a particular kind of savant and we’re rapidly approaching the reality where he probably could shoot the guy on 5th without a whole lot of blowback, if we aren’t already there.
All that said, when we get to the ballot box in a two-party system, the reality is that you have to make choices and compromises. I would have happily voted for Trump the first time… then, honestly, between how fraught Trump’s first term was and how Biden really was campaigning as a moderate unity candidate, I probably would have voted for Biden, and then, in Trump’s third election, between how awful Biden was and the strictly worse candidate Harris was, I’d probably have voted for Trump again… Not because I thought Trump was good, but because Harris was (and is) so damn awful.
This is why primaries matter… Once we get to the general, we’re functionally locked in. At least in the primaries, we could theoretically weed out the crazy and ineffective. Although… Recently, the democrats have been doing yeomen’s work of putting forward insanity. I’m going to browse through the last week or so that I’ve missed, but have we talked about Darializa Avila Chevalier yet?
He notes, “That same question was asked not too long ago, when Joe Biden was readying his re-election campaign. And the Democrats have yet to answer it.” His answer: “Democrats are so contemptuous of the intelligence and judgment of the American people that they believe voters will accept any flaws in a candidate as long as they promise enough free stuff and paint Republicans as Hitler clones.”
My take is a little different than this. I don’t think that Democrats value individualism, even a little bit: They believe, to some extent, that everyone is exactly the same. That anyone could do any job, that we are all just interchangeable cogs in an extraordinarily large machine. Everyone could be a doctor if only they had a chance to go to med school, anyone could run a business if only they got tapped as a CEO, anyone can be a senator so long as there’s a D after their name. This is explicit when they’re talking about diversity hires: So long as anyone could be a doctor, CEO, or senator, why not people that bring diversity to a job?
And I think because of that, because of the rejection of meritocracy, because frankly… A lot of the people they’d like to put forward as viable candidates probably have checkered pasts, they’ve let their standards on vetting go, because frankly… They don’t want to know. It would get in the way of the mission of putting in cogs that think like them. But there’s a difference between someone who had a couple of unfortunate decisions 20 years ago when they were a kid and the reams and reams of recent information and alarm bells going off in a case like Platner.
Like I said here a while back: Was there no one the DSA thought people would vote for that didn’t have Nazi tattoos on his chest and a number of recent sexual assault charges? Did no one else left of Collins want to be a senator in the state?
Let’s be real: There probably was. They put him up anyway. Every endorsement should follow these morons around like a brand.
They believe, to some extent, that everyone is exactly the same. That anyone could do any job, that we are all just interchangeable cogs in an extraordinarily large machine. Everyone could be a doctor if only they had a chance to go to med school, anyone could run a business if only they got tapped as a CEO, anyone can be a senator so long as there’s a D after their name.
I’m not sure what the word for that observation is. Trenchant? Profound?
Maybe Calculus or even Trigonometry should be required of all high school students. Make them sit through a couple of weeks of classes and take an exam and flunk it. Maybe make all college students take Organic Chemistry. Knowing what you don’t know and what you’re incapable of is an essential life skill. And you’re right, a deficit on this front has become a feature of public policy.