“Oh bloody hell,” as self-exiled EA columnist Curmie would say. The New York Times actually published this round-table circle-jerk by three of its writers on the opinion page: “‘There’s No Graham Platner Without Donald Trump’: 3 Writers on the Fiasco in Maine.” [Gift Link, with a head explosion risk warning] Sorry for the vulgarity, but seriously folks, how long can the New York Times go on like this? Yesterday the highest-ranking news editor at the King of the Axis Media, executive editor Joe Kahn, finally admitted that the outrageous May 11 opinion column by Nicholas Kristof accusing Israel of training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners didn’t meet Times news standards. Got that? So Times columnists can publicize fake news and unverified positions, and the paper lets them get away with that.
Now we have this garbage, with three progressives blaming the Platner debacle…on Donald Trump!
“In retrospect, it seems clear that Platner had something of Trump’s shamelessness. I saw him when the first scandals had just broken, and wondered both how many people would be in the crowd and how he’d explain himself. (No one knew at the time that much worse was to come, though of course some people suspected it.) He was unbowed in a way that read as strength…There’s no Graham Platner without Donald Trump. Trump’s ability to keep winning and hold G.O.P. support made Democrats feel like they had permission to accept Platner’s faults for as long as they did,,,”
What a crock. Platner is nothing like Trump, who was a CEO of a large and successful development company, had extensive business, negotiation and management experience, had authored books on management and was a national figure before he got into politics. Hhe doesn’t drink and has never used drugs. He also was and is about as far away from being a communist as it is possible to be. Platner was a substance-abusing part-time oyster fisherman who has accomplished exactly nothing: his “faults” are all there is.
Here’s the execrable Michelle Goldberg:
Ethics Alarms 
I think the observations from various conservatives is correct about the Democratic Party’s embrace of Platner: they are looking for the Democratic answer to Donald Trump, and thought maybe they found him in Platner. The problems here are manifold, though. First and foremost, they don’t understand what makes Trump popular to conservatives. Second, in searching for a masculine model, they have no idea what actual masculinity is. They took Trump’s crass behavior and somehow reasoned that they needed someone crass. (As though all their foul-mouthed, guttersnipe-turned-millionaire grifters weren’t crass enough!) They noticed Trump’s promiscuity and thought they needed someone who treated women dirty. They saw Trump’s businessman persona, and they thought they could create a businessman aura around their candidate. The problem in all of this is the Democrats cannot (and have for a generation at least) see anything beneath the surface. They are so caught up in superficial details and labels that they cannot even fathom there are depths that have to be considered.
Conservatives don’t like Trump’s promiscuity or narcissism; they tolerate it for Trump’s other characteristics and Trump’s record. Trump professed a love for the United States, which Democrats can never do. Trump identified the problems conservatives have, especially the hostility they have felt at values that have underwritten the United States since its founding: faith in God, self-determinism, and hard work. They have felt repressed by governments who catered to anyone but them, and especially to those groups who specifically weren’t them. Faith in God was derided; self-determinism was racist, violent, and toxic; hard work was treated as something to be punished. They have been struggling with the feeling of being replaced by foreigners, all the while being told they were imagining things. They were forced to observe, and call phobic if they didn’t support, every alternative lifestyle they had always believe was detrimental to a healthy family life. The list goes on and on.
Donald Trump showed himself sympathetic to their concerns, made plans to address those concerns, and showed himself a fighter who could get things done. His business record, his “Art of the Deal”, his promises to build a border wall and overthrow Roe v Wade, and the fact that he was outside the establishment all contributed to his appeal. His willingness to throw down with his political opponents, to call a spade a spade, all gave conservatives a growing assurance that he was a genuine article, not just another puffed-up suit that would collapse at the first sign of adversity. Moreover, in his first term, Trump showed himself a fighter. Under immense pressure from every direction, while suffering leaks and betrayals that would have destroyed lesser men, Trump kept fighting, kept working towards fulfilling those promises he made. In the interregnum, he continued to demonstrate his tenacity and fortitude in the face of adversity, and while conservatives may groan at all his flaws, they love the fact that after all the smoke had cleared from the relentless bombardment, Trump was still standing.
If Platner had been the genuine article, he would have taken his outrage at his own party trying to push him out to the rest of the nation, shown himself willing to brave the gauntlets of the establishment, fling defiance into the teeth of the gale, and refused to back down. But then, Platner was a 2-dimensional caricature from the start: no resume to qualify him, propped up by the establishment, and unable to deflect criticism without the help of a friendly media. His tough-guy persona was truly toxic: power that sought, not to protect or build, but to satisfy his own desires.
Democrats tried to invent their own Trump in Platner, and it backfired spectacularly. So there is some truth that the rise of Platner was due to Trump. But, like all the AstroTurf campaigns the Democrats run, Platner’s rise was not a genuine uprising against a Trump regime, but a manufactured facsimile of Trump that showed, once again, Democrats have no understanding of Trump at all.
I’d say that sums it up pretty well, RH!
PWS
Actually, I think there’s a great deal more to say about the situation – I just find myself time constrained.
For example, one interesting aspect of the DNC’s situation is how cash-strapped they are in this election cycle. They have more debt than cash on hand, and the GOP is way ahead in fundraising. The net advantage, some have said, is $100 million. The reasons for this are manifold — the DNC is still paying off debt from the 2024 presidential election, donors are feeling more reluctant to contribute after Harris burned through an obscene amount of money in a very short time, and there’s even speculation that members of NGOs are having a hard time coughing up contributions after USAID was shut down.
Couple this with the shifting demographics. Hispanics, black men, young men, and Asians all demonstrated a shift towards the GOP in 2024. This means that there are groups that Democrats count on for support that are not turning up for Democrats in quite the same numbers. Now consider the closing of the border, the voluntary exodus of an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants, and the removal of another 0.5 million illegal immigrants, and the demographic picture that had been so favorable to Democrats is now not quite as rosy. Finally, the Democratic Socialist insurrection in the party is having an impact, and the Democrats seem on the fence of whether to support them or fight them.
The House is likely to swing back to the Democrats. They need the Senate. And given the small margin for error, they need to make sure their Senate candidates are going to shine. They thought they had that in Platner, and they were willing to go all-in on his defense, until it became glaringly obvious that his position was untenable. Now they are at risk of having wasted a great deal of effort in Maine with no reward, so they have to run damage control as quickly and as aggressively as they can. I expect that come November, no Democrat is going to admit to knowing the name “Platner,” much less admit they ever supported him.
There’s a lot that I agree with here, specific to Trump, but I think it reads way too much into Platner’s rise – or fall. Bottom line, I’m not at all convinced that he was essentially chosen to be the “AntiTrump,” as implied, all that that might have factored in somewhat.
What most of the media seems to have missed in Platner’s candidacy is that it wasn’t driven by Mainers. The recruiters, financiers and the bulk of the media coverage came “from away.” Under normal circumstances, that would be more than enough for Maine voters to be highly suspicious of such a candidate. These are not normal circumstances.
TDS in Maine is significant, and at least partially driven by news media under the control of left-leaning foundations (more out-of-state money) and in-state progressive NGOs that managed to get their hands on most of the state’s levers of power. The import of libs from Massachusetts and New York resulting from the pandemic almost certainly had an impact. Maine is almost two states now – the southwestern part of the state, running up in a narrow band towards the midcoast, and pretty much everything north of that. North of that, away from the tourist-y spots, the state remains much more conservative. The problem is that the population is far less concentrated – and there ARE people struggling there given the fact that the paper and logging industries are shadows of their former selves.
Yes, Maine’s legislature tilts heavily D. But that overlooks another on-the-ground reality: Maine’s legislative districts are actually rather small, and if you live upstate the odds are pretty good that you’ve encountered your rep or senators. Heck, you might have gone to school with them. You may vote for them because you like them as people, and you might not know much about their political views.
This then runs headlong into the machinery in Augusta, where legislators are tightly term-limited and where an up-or-out election cycle holds the cards. By the time a legislator fully gains an understanding of how the legislative process works, they’re staring down the barrel of their last term. Making things even crazier, committee chairs aren’t always senior; there have been some appointed as freshmen. As a result, much of the heavy lifting in the Maine legislature is actually managed by NGOs – almost entirely left-biased.
Platner had NOTHING to do with that machinery. He had no experience with anything related to governance. But he was advanced by out-of-state interests who saw Maine as an inexpensive way to capture a Senate seat (Maine’s a good sized state from a land area standpoint, but a small state from a population standpoint (only eight states are smaller) so it normally doesn’t cost much to run a campaign). And for outsiders looking to campaign cheaply, Maine has its own media ecosystem. It’s not like buying ad time in Rhode Island, where you have to spend bundles on Boston stations.
One of the intriguing things about this particular cycle is that historically there’s been minimal polling done during the primary cycles. I’ve never seen heavier coverage than this time, because Platner wasn’t a MAINE candidate – effectively, he was a NATIONAL one. And then a curious thing happened. State and national D apparatchiks showed that Platner was likely to get his ass handed to him by Collins. I’m sure that D-Party leaders, writ large, are also terrified of the DSA insurgency that’s happening elsewhere and, frightened about their own standing, decided to defenestrate Platner in order to get a better chance of beating Collins, and also to send a warning to the Mandami coalition.
There’s a right-wing think tank in the state that runs a news website called The Maine Wire. They’ve been onto Platner and the various shenanigans for a very long time. Their latest scoop: shortly after the Politico story broke, and shortly before Platner “suspended” his campaign, there was contact between Maine’s Attorney General and the Platner campaign. Speculation is all we have right now, but the suspicion is that Platner was basically offered a choice: drop out of the race, or we’ll bring charges on the rape allegations.
This seems a viable theory to me.
Thank you, Arthur! That fleshes out a lot of details I didn’t know about.
…and thank YOU as well, AIM! One question…
If the rape allegations were credible – and it sounds as though they were – why wouldn’t the AG pursue charges regardless?
If the rape allegations were credible – and it sounds as though they were – why wouldn’t the AG pursue charges regardless?
Professional courtesy, I suppose. Besides, it’s poor sportsmanship to blackmail someone and carry through with the threat even after getting what you want.
In other news, it’s now emerging that Platner’s campaign had burned through 90% of its war chest. So in addition to looking like a long shot, he was a long shot with serious budget challenges.
If the rape allegations were credible – and it sounds as though they were – why wouldn’t the AG pursue charges regardless?
That is my doubt as well, are the rape allegations credible? Or did establishment Democrats pull a Christine Blasey Ford, just to push Platner off the ticket?
As with any scandalous revelations during a campaign, timing is everything. The rape “revelations” against Platner arrive just in time to have him drop out of the race.
The Democrats are ruthless during elections; they do everything to win elections, ethics be damned, as long as they can get away with it. Primary results be damned as well.
I’d also throw this into the boiling water along with Platner and a few lobstahs:
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!
Ryan, this was outstanding! Thanks for taking the time to share it.
…as well as no understanding of the nation they want to run, its culture, its history and its values.
Comment of the Day.
Amazing. Better reportage and opinion pieces in EA than in the mainstream media.
I’d say two, if I had any say.