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The Graham Platner Fiasco Proves Messiah Politics Is No Alternative to a Failed Establishment

Democratic leaders have rightfully lost credibility. But that’s no excuse for political adventurers to seize the moment and pump up false saviors.

Graham Platner’s video dropping out of the US Senate race in Maine.

The least surprising news about Graham Platner is that his senatorial candidacy in Maine crashed and burned. The genuinely startling news about him is that he got as far as he did. He won the Democratic primary by a landslide (receiving 72.1 percent of the vote in an election with a robust turnout). Some of Platner’s more besotted admirers, like his political consultant Morris Katz, were even touting the idea that if the candidate won the Senate race, he had a shot at becoming the Democratic presidential candidate in 2028.

This is even though, during his rapid ascent and equally quick plummet from political stardom, Platner waved more red flags than the track marshals in a hundred auto races. Among the major scandals he endured were: the Nazi tattoo on his chest; six years of employment as a private defense contractor (in other words, as a mercenary) for the firm then known as Blackwater; a history of lurid, misogynist, and generally inflammatory Reddit posts; a recent pattern of sexting other women while married; and allegations of abusive behavior towards women.

Democratic voters largely forgave Platner for all of this. Many accepted his narrative that his behavior was due in part to severe PTSD from his military service as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. He presented himself as a flawed person who was changing and struggling to get his life on track. And after he stormed to victory in his primary, it seemed as though he might have successfully overcome all of his baggage.

That was until Monday, when a former partner, Jenny Racicot, alleged to Politico and CNN that Platner had raped her during their relationship. Racicot’s horrifying and credible story made clear that Platner’s flaws went well beyond the realm of forgiveness. Another sign of that came in Platner’s video announcing the end of his political run. He seemed not at all contrite over the damage he had done but rather aggrieved and self-pitying.

Now it is left to Democrats to pick up the pieces, and to the rest of us to see what can be learned from this debacle. Here’s one important lesson: The Platner story is about more than the downfall of one deeply damaged and flawed man. Rather, its true significance is that someone with as many glaring blemishes as Platner was able to win over so many primary voters who had lost faith in the Democratic Party establishment.

The emerging storyline is that Platner wasn’t properly vetted by the political consultants who managed his cause. This is only partly true. The rape allegation is new (although it had already been floating around as a rumor for weeks), but many of the other discreditable facts about Platner were well-known. But Maine voters were not only willing to brush those facts aside—they overwhelmingly backed Platner, who had come virtually from nowhere, in a primary race against their state’s sitting, two-term Democratic governor. Why?

David Axelrod, former adviser to Barack Obama, raised the salient point:

Lost in the recriminations........

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