Seventeen thoughts on Graham Platner
Issues still matter, but can he make the case for himself?
All of politics Twitter and several group chats I’m in have been buzzing all day about this Wall Street Journal scoop revealing that during the early phases of Graham Platner’s Senate campaign, his wife, in the spirit of doing self-oppo research, shared that she’d caught her husband texting with other women. And checking out the mailbag this week, I saw we got a bunch of Maine Senate questions. So I thought that rather than write a bunch of tweets, I should compose some thoughts and share them here.
I don’t find misconduct of the sort revealed in these stories to be disqualifying of Platner as a candidate — try to imagine this coming out about a politician whose work on policy you really admire, and I think you’ll see what I mean.
I feel this even more strongly about the tattoo. The people I know who are most angry about the tattoo also have a strong policy disagreement with Platner. They don’t believe he’s a secret devotee of National Socialism; they believe his criticisms of Israel are unforgivably bad.
By the same token, I don’t find Platner’s repeated and oft-articulated critiques of the Democratic Party establishment to be persuasive or appealing.
The argument that a charismatic military veteran and small businessman was in fact a better general election candidate against Susan Collins than Janet Mills, by contrast, made a fair amount of sense to me. It is true that personal scandal undermines this and somewhat undermines the credibility of the consultants and strategists behind the campaign.
Stepping back, Mills was a fake-good recruit. An incumbent governor is typically an ideal Senate candidate. If Gretchen Whitmer were running in Michigan, the Democratic Party would be in much better shape. But Mills is not only too old to run, she’s one of the least-popular governors in America. The play here didn’t make sense.
The problem was that no prominent Democrats in the state wanted to take on Susan Collins. Hannah Pingree, the former Maine House Speaker and daughter of the ME-1 member of Congress, wanted to run for governor. So did Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Troy Jackson, a veteran state legislator, decided to enter the gubernatorial race as the progressive candidate. And they’re all losing in the polls to the guy who ran Maine’s Covid response. Most egregiously of all, the state auditor decided to run a primary challenge to Jared Golden, which succeeded in inspiring him to resign. This was the recruiting failure. Any of those people would have had a strong electability argument in a primary against Platner.
Note that the conventional wisdom on this race has changed dramatically. The reason no one was clamoring to run last spring is they thought beating Susan Collins would be impossible. The reason these scandals are a big story is that Platner was way up in the polls before the news broke.
As I’ve said before, I find the meta-narratives around this race annoying. If Democrats want to do better, they need to win in places that Trump won. If you pay attention to Josh Shapiro, John Fetterman, Ruben Gallego, Mark Kelly, Katie Hobbs, Tony Evers, Tammy Baldwin, Whitmer, Elissa Slotkin, Raphael Warnock, and John Ossoff you won’t necessarily answer all the questions, but you’re looking in the right places. It’s also probably helpful to look at how Mary Peltola and Roy Cooper became favorites in their senate races. But Maine is a blue state. The only “lesson” to be learned from Maine is that Susan Collins overperforms because she’s moderate. If Platner were the world’s greatest husband and had impeccable taste in body art, there would still be no lessons from any political success he might or might not achieve, because beating Collins in Maine doesn’t generalize to anywhere.
Platner’s best friend here is baseline partisanship. In the Silver Bulletin model, the generic ballot in Maine is currently D +14.6 — all Platner needs to do to win is to persuade Clinton/Biden/Harris voters to vote for him.
The flip side of my initial points is that Platner doesn’t have a ton to recommend him if you don’t jibe with him ideologically. He’s not a dedicated lifelong public servant. He’s not a successful entrepreneur. You don’t look at the guy and say, “Well, nobody can question his brilliance and work ethic.” The people who like him like that he stands for their factional cause. And that’s a very reasonable thing to like about a politician. If Collins were more right-wing, it would clearly be enough to win a race in a state like Maine. But does it really make sense to try to beat a moderate Republican with a campaign that is explicitly pitched as a kind of “fuck you” to moderate Democrats?
Of course, all’s fair in a primary. Mills was a sneaky-bad recruit, but it’s still really hard to beat an incumbent governor who’s backed by the DSCC — her age and her lethargic campaign are why Platner could pull it off, but the factionalism fueled his campaign.
What’s really struck me since Mills dropped out isn’t so much any of the new revelations; it’s that Platner has continued running a factional race even though he’s already the presumptive nominee. He’s done rallies with Jackson, the progressive gubernatorial candidate who’s fighting a primary battle. He’s teamed up with David Sirota to do hits on “abundance bros.” In a campaign where all Platner needs to do to win is unite partisan Democrats behind him, he hasn’t really been trying.
My best guess is that’s because polling showed him with a large lead, so the team of factionalists who’s backing him just skipped right into victory lap mode.
In 2020, Sara Gideon also had a large lead in the polls over Collins. When I spoke at Colby College a couple of months ago, I got a bunch of questions about this race, and what I said is that after watching what happened in 2020, I’ll believe Collins is losing when the votes are counted.
Platner ought to be running like an underdog. If a whiff of scandal makes him feel more like an underdog, that would be good for him.
People judge politicians more generously when they sympathize with them on broader questions of policy and ideology. Some of that is hypocrisy, but some of it is common sense. If you think Platner’s statements about Israel are anti-semitic, then the tattoo confirms that suspicion. If you agree with his statements about Israel, then there’s literally nothing about the guy to remotely suggest he’s a Nazi and the tattoo talk seems absurd. If you think his rhetoric about oligarchy and the working class suggests he’s a dishonest, ignorant person, then his sexting confirms that. If you think he’s making sense on the biggest issue of the day, then what’s between a husband and wife is nobody’s business.
I know this is just my take on everything, but my take on this is that ideology and issue-positioning are underrated. Platner needs partisan Democrats to win. Platner needs Democrats who don’t hate Chuck Schumer and aren’t enraged by “the establishment” to take a generous view of his personal life. This should not be that hard for him to do. But he does have to try.
This is a little off base to me. The Nazi tattoo isn’t bad because of any thing about what Platner says about Israel. The Nazi tattoo is bad because the Nazis themselves are very bad! Res ipsa loquitor! My POLICY views are similar to Platner’s on a lot of issues, but come on. The man got a Nazi tattoo and bragged about it for over a decade! He doesn’t belong in the US Senate.
Democrats should demand better.
Gotta push back on the idea that people only care about the tattoo to the extent it reflects opinions about Israel. My wife brought up Platner last night and was legit angry at the idea that someone with a Totenkopf tattoo was running for Senate. She didn't mention Israel once in the conversation, and anyway isn't "pro-Israel" in a factional sense. She just thought it reflected very poor judgment and temperament.