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A month ago, Graham Platner, the Marine vet and Maine oyster farmer, was the toast of liberals nationwide. He was just the sort of outsider candidate that they believed Democrats needed to run — and he was going to win the nomination and take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins next fall.
Today, Platner is fighting for his political life amid a series of stories about his past that should serve as a reminder that outsiders are rarely all that they are cracked up to be.
On Tuesday, the news that Platner has a skull and crossbones tattoo — that he got while drunk in Croatia — that resembles the iconography the Nazis embraced went viral.
Platner insisted he didn’t know what the tattoo meant — his former political director, who resigned last week, disagreed — and that he was “not a secret Nazi.” (Sidebar: If, as a candidate, you find yourself denying you were a secret Nazi, you are not in a good place.) He also promised to have the tattoo removed or covered over.
That controversy came just a week after Platner’s past Internet comments — in which he minimized sexual assault in the military, referred to himself as a socialist and a communist and said rural white people were stupid and racist — came to light.
“When I got back from Afghanistan in 2011, I stayed in the army for another year,” Platner said in a video attempting to explain his posts. “I got out in 2012. Some of the worst comments I made, the things that I think are least defensible, that I wouldn’t even try to defend, come from that time.”
Platner has insisted he will stay in the race. And, at least as of this morning, his highest profile supporter — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — is sticking with him.
But there’s no question that the twin controversies have damaged Platner’s candidacy even as Maine Gov. Janet Mills has entered the race for the Democratic Senate nomination.
(If you think it is a coincidence that Platner’s past has gone public just as Mills has started to run well then let me remind you that there are no coincidences in politics.)
Platner may well survive these scandals. After all, Donald Trump is in his second term as president right now! Maybe what the public expects and wants from its elected officials is just different now! (Sidebar: My educated guess is that there’s more to come out on Platner. And it won’t be good.)
But I do think Platner’s experience over the last week is lesson in why outsider candidates are oftentimes less appealing than they are touted to be.
Mills is, without question, part of the Democratic establishment. She spent years as Maine’s attorney general. And is finishing up 8 years as governor.
But, what that means is that she has been vetted. If there’s bad stuff kicking around out there about her or her past, we almost certainly know it.
That’s not the case for the Platners of the world — as we are finding out.
As Jonathan Martin writes in a terrific Politico piece this morning:
Will Democrats ever learn to stop swooning?….
…It goes something like this: Political outsider or mostly new name mounts statewide campaign with online video that leans heavily on compelling biography or powerful oratory, out-of-state liberal hobbyists quickly fall in love and fork over money, and journalists rush to profile the latest heartthrob before inevitable disappointment when the candidate loses or, well, becomes John Fetterman.
Platner is the latest example. A military veteran turned oysterman who looked the hirsute part, the Mainer’s populist candidacy seemed to be an immaculate conception. The contributions piled up, the profiles were published and then suddenly there was a disruption to the formula. Or maybe it was more of an acceleration.
Once his Democratic rival, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, entered the race, Platner was hit with a nor’easter of oppo research that had the added value of being his own damning words. Rationalizing political violence, calling himself a “communist,” referring to all police as “bastards” and calling himself an “antifa supersoldier,” Platner’s paper trail was the stuff of Senator Susan Collins’s dreams. And that was before Platner tried to get ahead of the next hit by revealing the apparent Nazi tattoo on his naked torso.
Yup. That’s it exactly.
The left loves to fall in love. But usually making the more pragmatic choice is the way to win. As unsexy as that may be.
