Graham Platner seems like old news now that the Maine Democrats have another working-class hero to run against Susan Collins: a temperamental logger instead of a part-time oyster fisherman, Troy Jackson. I meant to post this Comment of the Day a week ago but got distracted: never mind. Ryan Harkin’s observations are still relevant, and, as always, he does a thorough and articulate job. This is the first half of a Ryan Harkins Comment of the Day double-header, with the second half arriving tomorrow morning.

Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Train Wreck Update, In Which the Complicit and Corrupt NYT Journalists and Pundits Can’t Bring Themselves To Be Honest About Graham Platner”:

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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.

[O]ne 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.