How did we get Graham Platner and Ken Paxton? Voters can demand better.

If you want to know just how unprincipled — and how unabashedly hypocritical — politicians and their supporters can be, consider how Democrats would respond if Graham Platner were a Republican.

Platner, the Democrats’ nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, has spent weeks answering questions about his past. By now, you probably know at least some of the story. During what he describes as a dark period in his life after military service, he had a Nazi tattoo emblazoned on his chest — which he maintained for nearly two decades. He has acknowledged inappropriate relationships with women. He has made insulting comments about military heroes and said things about Black Americans that, at the very least, demonstrated remarkably poor judgment.

Now ask yourself a simple question: What would Democrats be saying if Platner were a Republican?

Would they call him a Nazi? Of course they would. Democrats routinely compare President Trump to Nazis, and Trump never had a Totenkopf SS tattoo on his body. They would call him a misogynist, a racist, and a walking example of toxic masculinity. Cable news panels would discuss his unfitness for office. Editorial writers would write about how he represented a threat to American values.

And maybe some of those criticisms would be justified, but that’s not the point. The point is that more than 70 percent of Democratic primary voters in Maine chose Platner to be their party’s Senate nominee. They had alternatives. They knew the controversies. They voted for him anyway.

That’s their right. In a democracy, voters get to make their own choices. But once they do, they lose some credibility when they lecture Republicans about character.

Consider Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who recently defeated longtime Sen. John........

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