4. Ann Althouse has super-cynical reaction to the mess today, asking why Platner should quit the race from his perspective:
“[W]hat’s Platner’s motivation to withdraw? He won the primary. It’s his nomination. What good is there for him in withdrawing? If he hangs on for a few more days, past the July 13th deadline for replacing him as the candidate, won’t the heat die down? He will have weathered the storm, and he can present himself as a rebellious survivor. Yes, he may lose, and that loss may be the one Senate seat that denies Democrats the majority they covet, but so what? I mean: “So what?” from his point of view. Should he shrink back into oyster-ridden obscurity because of a rape he says he did not commit? Because of a tattoo everyone knew about when he won the primary?”
Oh, I can top Ann in the cynicism department. Democrats are desperate, and Platner can name his price…and yes, I mean money. Surely this most Machiavellian of all political parties can find a billionaire donor willing to pay Platner his extortion fee to drop out. Why would the part-time oysterman want to run in an election he would be sure to lose, and spend the rest of his life being blamed for Democrats not sweeping the mid-terms, like they blamed Ralph Nader for Gore’s loss in 2000?
5. Ann also is hard on the Democrats, as she should be. She writes, regarding the naive question “Why did Democrats ignore the red flags around Platner?”:
“Democrats didn’t ignore red flags. They saw them and went forward anyway. The question should be why did they do that, and we know why. It’s not hard to figure out. I don’t for one minute believe that Democrats are deeply contemplating why they backed Platner despite what they knew. They wanted to win the Senate seat, and they imagined he was their best hope. Now, they are trying to act as though they were blindsided by this rape accusation, and it suddenly disqualifies Platner in a new way.”
6. Steven King, chicken, deleted his post saying that he hoped Platner didn’t drop out, then lied about what he had written. “Not defending Grah, Platner. If he committed rape, he should bow out. Just making a comparison,” the horror author tweeted.
7. Lyndsey Fifield, another ex-girlfriend Platner’s, told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed his condoms without her consent. She she told Platner repeatedly that he had to wear condoms during sex because she was not on birth control, but “He would pull condoms off,” she said. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.” I’m sure that goes over well with the “Handmaiden’s Tale” fans.
8. Platner’s campaign called Fifield’s story“categorically false and politically motivated” and noted that Fifield supported now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when he was accused of sexual assault before his confirmation. Yes, that would be because there was no credible evidence that such an assault ever took place. Everyone should have supported Kavanaugh. An obvious partisan operative testifying in a contrived baby-doll voice and claiming a “discovered” memory (in therapy) of an attempted sexual assault taking place when she and the SCOTUS nominee were teenagers at a time and place she couldn’t remember….this goes far beyond “believe all women.” It requires “believe everything.”
UPDATE: Platner withdrew after all.
Ethics Alarms 
Actually Democrats DID ignore the red flags. Seeing a red flag and moving forward anyways is the very definition of “ignoring” something…the same way I ignore a “Bridge Out Ahead” sign on the road, move forward anyway, and end up swimming in Chesapeake Bay. I ignored the sign.
Democrats are willing to let nearly any red flag go – up to and including credible accusations of felonious activity – when it serves their purposes. Only when the backlash becomes too heavy do they 1) take action, 2) blame the GOP for the need to take action, and 3) accuse the GOP of committing the same “red-flag” acts.
What’s tragic is that the GOP is now starting – to a lesser degree – to mimic the Democratic Party’s lack of discretion in selecting its candidates.
They had started that quite a while ago, with Trump one of the worst offenders.
The MAGA Republicans (and I mention influencers like Glenn Reynolds and Matt Walsh) have the philosophy that there there should be no double standards, with one set of standards for Democrats and one for Republicans; they should either operate and be judged by the same standards, or else no standards should apply.
The climactic event in this regard was the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. Prior to Bill Clinton the standard was that sexual misconduct in office led to removal from office. The immediate example prior to Bill Clinton was Senator Packwood (R-OR), who had to resign under threat of expulsion (with bipartisan support) in 1995 due to sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and sexual assault. The Republicans lost that Senate seat permanently.
Bill Clinton was just as big as a creep as Bob Packwood, with many women accusing him of harassment and even rape (Juanita Broaddrick), and was impeached on grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice after his dalliance in the Oval Room with Monica Lewinsky. But in this case the vote on conviction broke down on partisan lines, and Bill Clinton survived. Feminists like Gloria Steinem argued that feminists should resist pressure to call for President Bill Clinton’s resignation or impeachment, because his overall support for women’s reproductive and social policies outweighed his private misbehavior.
I think that is the moment that Republicans started to notice that for Democrats politics outweighs the moral and ethical conduct of politicians, and that throwing solid politicians under the bus because they do not live up to the family values cherished by Republicans was not good politics. This is probably one of the reasons why Senator David Vitter (R-LA) survived his prostitution scandal in 2007.
In 2016 Donald Trump won the Presidency. Donald Trump is not a traditional family values conservative. He is trice married, with trophy wives all of them. His locker room talk did not kill his campaign. MAGA has changed the Republican Party forever. The old GOP, beholden to political decorum, family values, and conservative standards of behavior is dying. We are a long way from 1988 when the Democratic frontrunner for the nomination for President had to drop out of the race because of an affair.
Yes, the GOP has some low quality politicians. Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace. This is not a new problem. In 1998 Byron (Low Tax) Looper ran for the Tennessee Senate, and could not be stricken off the ballot after he was arrested for the murder of the Democrat running against him for the Senate, Tommy Burks. This is vetting problem, a political party not doing its work properly to select good candidates.
The Democrats have another problem, the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA), who wins election with incompetent radicals like AOC and Rashida Tlaib, Mamdani (NY mayor), Katie Wilson (Seattle mayor). The Democrats are divided, as a great deal of the base has gone crazy, and in Maine the felt that they needed to repudiate the party establishment by endorsing a wild candidate like Platner against the safe establishment candidate Governor Mills.
Ann Althouse is spot on with her criticism and it confirms/supports Jack’s position that the Democrats, desperate to retake control of both the House and Senate, hooked the wagon to a terrible candidate.
What they don’t seem to understand is that Sen. Collins always out-performs in actual voting results than polling seems to indicate. She has won that seat in contested elections before and will likely do so again. Sen. Collins is not some hard line consertive, a la Sen. Cruz or Sec. Rubio. She is a middle of the road, almost liberal-leaning Republican who is popular in Maine.
jvb
Step 1: Imagine.
Step 2: Believe.
Step 3: Repeat
Are you forgetting ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘Outbreak’?
Seriously. The man has no political experience other than attending events and donating to the party. Other than being far more gentlemanly, he had no more crecentials then the rapist.
‘than’
The inimitable Babylon Bee humbly weighs in:
Dems Wishing There Had Been Some Sort Of Sign That Platner Was A Bad Person
PWS
Oh, I can top Ann in the cynicism department. Democrats are desperate, and Platner can name his price…and yes, I mean money. Surely this most Machiavellian of all political parties can find a billionaire donor willing to pay Platner his extortion fee to drop out. Why would the part-time oysterman want to run in an election he would be sure to lose, and spend the rest of his life being blamed for Democrats not sweeping the mid-terms, like they blamed Ralph Nader for Gore’s loss in 2000?
Heh. So he can just “sell” the seat to somebody? Get bribed? Bought off? Extort it from them? What’s the right word, and doesn’t this kind of seem, I don’t know, similar to conduct we have crimes for?
Did I sniff glue or did some dude in Illinois get thrown in federal prison for something similar? Yeah, I know, malfeasance in office, etc, but while the facts are a bit different, the corruption is identical.
For me, Platner should go down with the ship. He owes absolutely no loyalty to the Dems, his true party, the Democratic Communists or whatever they are, seem willing to stand by him. If I were him, I would poll those guys and see where they stand. If they are majority in, he should be too.
Then again, he is a Nazi rapist misogynistic rich kid cosplaying as a middle-class oyster farmer on land owned by his parents. How much more unethical can it be to just tell the Dems to pound sand?
“Did I sniff glue or did some dude in Illinois get thrown in federal prison for something similar?”
Exact same thing crossed my mind, GL….minus the huffing part.
PWS
What would the crime be, to accept money to drop out? Sure, its unethical, but also self -justifying: if you’d take money not to run, you’re unworthy of running to begin with.
I read an article by Batya Ungar-Sargon in Substack at Real Clear Policy about why they chose Platner, which shows what the progressive Democrat Socialists think the working class men want in a candidate which just shows how out of touch they are.
“Platner was to be the Democrats’ ticket back to men, back to the working class, out of the vat full of HR lady approved beta males; far from a dealbreaker, his Reddit posts, his nasty tattoo, his habit of throwing around his ex-girlfriend and cheating on his wife made the mythology around him even more compelling to progressives. To the college-educated elites leading progressive politics, these were signifiers of a traditional masculinity, their ticket back to the working class.
“But while Nepo-baby elites and trust fund socialists were willing to forgive Platner a Nazi tattoo and roughing up his ex-girlfriend, actual working class voters were not.”
It’s so comical that the lefty elites evidently thought a guy who’d gone to Hotchkiss, an honest to God preppy for God’s sake, could be passed off as being “authentic.”
7. He repeatedly pulled off his condom without her consent. Repeatedly? What’s wrong with these women? Does something like that have to happen more than once before they give the guy the boot? What is up with these desperate women? Are there that few guys in Maine?
Seems the talented Herr Platner won’t go quietly into that good night:
Platner’s Angry Exit Speech Could Demoralize, Or Further Radicalize, His Supporters
MONEY QUOTE: “A big question facing Maine Democrats […] is whether THEY CAN HARNESS THE ENTHUSIASM OF HIS SUPPORTERS with another candidate.” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
His…um…supporters remain enthusiastic???
PWS
Well, his supporters are by definition ignoramuses and idiots, so sure, they can be duped again.
This is interesting. From MS Now of all places. Platner was torpedoed because he was polling poorly, not because he was taking his raincoat off:
Polling expert G. Elliott Morris has observed that Platner had been polling “quite poorly” compared to other Democratic candidates and House and Senate races across the country even before the news came out. A New York times//Siena poll of likely Maine voters conducted between June 19-26, for instance, found that Platner was leading Collins by just 2 points. Only 45% of Maine voters held a favorable opinion of Platner, while 50% held an unfavorable view. This very well may have been due, at least in part, to his constant aura of controversy. As the Times noted in its write-up of the findings, “a clear majority of registered voters — including 29 percent of his own supporters — say all the controversies make them question whether they can support him.” That relentless stream of scandals could have dampened turnout or deterred swing voters in the election.
It was just a hatchet job! Have a nice life, Graham!