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.
The Democrats just look like hypocrites. That's the problem. Either character matters or it doesn't. There's no middle ground.
Dems have spent the past ten years talking about how we should demand better of our elected officials, only to accept clear character flaws when it's one of their own. THIS is why normal people hate politics. You just cannot trust people to maintain a clear standard.
You want Platner, then fine. But know that "we need to control the Senate to stop Trump" is the *exact* same logic Republicans used when they argued for Trump.
With our current polarization, this would send state governance on a one way trip to hell. As it is, you at least kind of have a chance that these races will be about state level issues, which would go away overnight if they exclusively became proxies for Senate control.
More specifically, many liberals have spent the last ten years being VERY loose in their deployment of Nazi comparisons. To the point of really trivializing the Nazis. Now we have a candidate who sported a bona fide Nazi tattoo for *decades* and they don’t give a shit. I find the whole thing sickening.
I think we've tended to deploy Nazi comparisons based on policy choices, no? Not because of what side someone plays in Hearts of Iron or something aesthetic like that.
The thing that was bad about Nazis is what they did, not their aesthetic. Platner’s policies seem diametrically opposed to the bad things Nazis did like militarism, so the fact that he thinks their logo is cool is no more damning than someone who thinks the uniforms look stylish and still wears Hugo Boss.
I take Platner at his word about the tatoo. Mainers know he comes from a Jewish family and do not care. As I have said before those with a college education, even though they are not Marxists, have been indoctrinated with the view that everything is about economics. They do not take seriously the view that culture also matters. Character is part of culture. Collins beats Platner on character but she has enabled the hideous MAGA culture and has got to go.
Okay, but I thought that guilt by association / witch hunting stuff was dumb then, and I still think it is dumb now, so why should I go along with it? I am not obliged to continue other peoples' idiocy just because they sometimes vote the same way as I do.
"Either character matters or it doesn't. There's no middle ground."
Nonsense, there's tons of nuance here. For example, Trump is literally the President of the United States and commander-in-chief, while Platner would be just one of 100 senators. That's a crucial difference in terms of how much character matters.
Ah. So you’d definitely vote Trump should he choose to run for the Senate.
Finding “the difference” is what people do when they rationalize the things they otherwise condemn. There’s always differences. But what you fail to acknowledge is the similarities. We can’t have a man like Trump in government- except all other offices. Cmon.
Except of course you’re on record for criticizing his rhetoric and his ramblings. Less so on policy.
But hey -just dismiss a Nazi tattoo, crude remarks etc because he’ll only be 1 of 100!
I’d suggest you no longer examine or comment on personal choices anyone makes / because after all, only the president matters and there Trump is problematic. Senators we should ignore character ( because for this particular Democrat - he’d lose if character were at all important.
I totally believe you.
You comment a lot about the way people think. But suddenly.. it’s trivial.
a. Symbolic stuff like a Nazi tattoo that doesn't seem to be related to any particular friendliness to Nazi ideas or policies.
b. Character stuff like sexting with other women while he's married.
We might want to ask these questions in some abstract way, but of course they always get tangled up in this year's election and current politics, where people mostly abandon principles and go with their side.
"We need something with a hand and mouth connected to a beating heart to vote the party line" is decidedly different from whatever it is people wanted from Trump in any of his elections. Now that's a low bar. It's only there because of how little hope we have for individual Senators or Congress as an institution. It's also a risk. No one in fact is voting for a party line machine. We vote for people.
I agree it's not the same thing and that character doesn't simply matter or not matter (not that I'd want to campaign on that).
Why assess Trump voters, when you clearly think it’s defensible.
The issue here remains if it’s ok to elect a man with poor judgment, who hides behind contrived excuses.
To be sure, I served for decades and witnessed unimaginable things. Doctors who perform surgery and look at a human body bleeding out experience trauma daily There are some people that handle it better than others. That’s not a judgement- it’s the truth. But here’s the thing- if your excuse is you’re suffering from the experience mentally- then work through those issues. When you’re ready to run for senate- go ahead. But this guy uses his service as a shield in a disingenuous way. I personally don’t believe he’s suffering. But that’s an uninformed view. So I think he is capable to run for senate. What it means is he has to be held accountable for his poor judgment. And by reading these comments I think people are both accepting he’s suffering mentally but simultaneously saying he’s fit for office. That’s impossible for me to square.
That's not consistent with my sense of your comments on SB. I don't recall you advocating for anyone to compromise on your priorities to win elections.
They did, and I don't stand by Platner. Fortunately I'm not in Maine so it doesn't matter.
But the GOP stood for control of the Senate to prevent a Great Replacement run by a combo of brown people and Jews from driving white people and their delectable pets into extinction and forcing children to transition without telling their parents. If they didn't win the Senate, the Managerial Class would nonspecifically destroy everything good about America.
I could concretely list what Collins has done to enable Trump and explain the good that would be done if her and just a handful of people didn't enable him from the Senate. This scenario is sane, ongoing, and stoppable.
The form matters. I don't like "Our side at all cost." Heck, she voted to impeach? Someone convince her to vote against him now. But it is not the same scenario. It must matter eventually if the form is driven by reason or madness, even if those of us inside are poor judges if which is which.
>The Democrats just look like hypocrites. That's the problem. Either character matters or it doesn't.<
Who says character doesn't matter? OF COURSE it does. Always. That's not the issue here. The issue, rather, is: should candidate character matter enough to use one's vote to strengthen a political movement that is destroying all that is good about this country?
Sending Collins back to Washington strengthens Trumpism and MAGA. That for me is the bottom line. This dynamic doesn't mean it's impossible to criticize Platner for poor character.
When Platner says he didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol, I believe him, for the simple reason that *I myself* had never heard of this particular symbol even though I paid a lot more attention in history class than other students and am better read than most people.
If it were a swastika it’d be different, because even people who never paid attention in history class, never read, and only know about the Nazis from TV know that the swastika is a Nazi symbol. But the Nazis’ other symbols are obscure and known only to those who’ve studied Nazism in depth, which is only a tiny percentage of the population.
He didn’t know, because normal people don’t know. It’s that simple.
And the fact that he’s quoted as referring to it as “my totenkopf” in 2021 doesn’t change that? Poor judgement seems to be a clear thread through this man’s life, and not a trait that is desirable in a US senator.
I couldn’t agree more. And if there’s one thing the last ten years have shown me it’s that the line between clown and malevolent clown is a fine one that is often crossed.
One thing the last ten years have shown me is that a Republican-held Senate with Donald Trump as President can do terrific damage to the rule of law in my country.
I know this is a dem talking point that never is accompanied by example. So I won’t hold my breath. But id love to be better informed if you’d supply the Supreme Court orders he defied.
I think Dems tried to take him off ballot in Maine ( pro democracy!) I think Dems leaked his taxes ( illegal). I think Dems contrived the election collusion angle. Biden defied court on student loans as well as bastardized immigration law
So if you are genuinely concerned about rule of law vs using it as a cudgel - I think you should recognize reality.
To my reading, your comments on SB have not implied you prioritize winning over your ideological preferences. The Nazi thing is the first time I recall you saying what amounts to, 'whatever, its more important to win'.
Is he quoted that way? I see a single anonymous allegation that no reputable news source has verified. Waving that around as some sort of proof is pretty suspect.
I find the the "I didn't know it was an SS tattoo" defense implausible to the point of being insulting. It makes the whole thing much worse than if he just said he was a dumbass edge lord kid and that he's learned better since then. Going with "I didn't know" makes it way more unforgivable.
I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, but I feel like I must live in a different world from you. Do you believe if you showed that symbol to ten people, most of them would immediately recognize where it's from? Or if you showed then ten skull pictures, they could pick out the Nazi one confidently? Because I had no clue and even now might struggle to pick it out of a lineup.
Yeah, this reminds me of a lot of the cancellation campaigns of the 2010s.
Is there some theory here that implies that he actually has any Nazi ideas or supports any Nazi-like policies? Because otherwise, it seems like this would be a dumb reason to vote against a candidate you otherwise preferred.
Humans have a tendency to assume that if we know something and have known it for a while, everyone else must know it to. Back when we lived in little bands or villages, this heuristic worked pretty well. Now that we live in sprawling societies of many millions with highly fragmented media, it’s a *terrible* heuristic.
Never assume that other people know what you know.
How many permanent tattoos have you gotten where you just throw a dart and pick it- no clue as to what it means.
If you are better read than most as you claim- I hope you can prove it by supporting your insinuation that getting tattoos on your body happens frequently where the recipient has zero idea of the significance. Please cite your references. I know hundreds of men that are tattooed and a total of zero have “no idea” what their inking means.
I don't hang around with the kind of people who gets tattoos, and even I once was with a guy who got a random tattoo on a whim (a Chinese character that he only had the artist's word to go on what it meant). I feel like it's pretty common?
Not sure what this ranting is all about. But I do hang around with lots of people with lots of tattoos, and not a small number of them got done on a whim. The idea of a drunk early-20s marine looking over a page full of skull tats and saying "that one" strikes me as incredibly believable.
Tbh I'm surprised that a Navy man wouldn't see that immediately. You never ran into a guy on base with fresh ink that just sorta happened on a random night out?
I have no tattoos at all, because I think human bodies invariably look better without them. However, I understand that not everybody shares my aesthetic taste, so when talking to people who have tattoos, I don’t bring it up.
I have read plenty of stories of people getting tattoos carelessly and regretting them. It’s good that the guys in your social circle have a norm of selecting their tattoos carefully, but not everyone does. The consequences of getting a regrettable tattoo are rarely serious, so it hardly makes sense to be excessively judgmental about it.
There’s a whole youtube channel dedicated to reading Chinese tattoos on Westerns who apparently didn’t know what they were getting permanently etched on their skin
When I was 18 I went to 4 different tattoo parlors in my area and just looked through their books and on the images on the wall before picking a vaguely asian dragon tattoo. I never once bothered to look up the cultural or historical significance of the tattoo. I recently got it removed for the simple reason that I never actually loved it- I just wanted a tattoo when I was 18, and I thought that design was the one that looked the coolest.
This is not an uncommon decision making process for a young person. Platner was drinking with other marines when he got the tattoo. This notion that nobody gets permanent tattoos on a whim is absolutely absurd. I know better. You know better. We ALL know better. The existence of tattoo parlors in tourist destinations is precisely because the proprietors know that people who are having a great time are less inhibited and will do unwise things. The existence of an entire industry for tattoo removal is evidence that people often realize that the permanent tattoo they put on their bodies was not the most well thought out decision.
Support Platner or don't. I don't care. But this statement "If you are better read than most as you claim- I hope you can prove it by supporting your insinuation that getting tattoos on your body happens frequently where the recipient has zero idea of the significance" is just flat out ridiculous.
There are a huge number of people walking around in the world with ill-considered tattoos. I don't think that necessarily speaks well of their judgement, but it has little signifiicance other than that.
ISTR reading somewhere that big black panther tattoos are a favorite because they can cover up other ill-considered tattoos in a way that looks good....
The argument the Nazi tattoo is about Israel is so fucking absurd. Israel completely blinds people to normal reactions and the "Nazi tattoo is actual about Israel" talk is beyond borderline anti semitism. Ridiculous. One of MYs worst opinions. Planter hasn't even pretended to offer a reason why he has it. What about the nazis did he admire so much to get the tattoo and brag about it?
People who think Platner is an “edge lord” clearly have never spent time with blue collar men. “Haha yea I was drunk in the Marines and I got this tattoo and it turns out it’s some Nazi shit isn’t that fucking wild bro? Here have another shot!”
Let’s leave aside Platner was born to wealth and attended an elite prep school, so his blue collar background isn’t that solid. And the fact of the matter is that an extremely small number of blue collar men who join the military get SS tattoos and then keep them for two decades. Platner is an atypical example.
I can’t read the man’s mind or heart, but it shows - at a minimum - a lack of judgment, and that is buttressed by many of the other issues he’s had, some of which are understandable and others less so.
I think people ought be honest with themselves about how they would view Platner if he was not a Democrat with (currently) decent polling with no alternative. If there was a Democratic alternative, I feel pretty confident that most of his supporters here would happily give him the Al Franken treatment.
Have I missed some news where he admitted he knew what it was for a while? My understanding is that he never knew exactly what it meant until he become famous.
Is that so hard to believe? Maybe I'm the weird one for thinking it isn't that surprising that someone could see a "cool" looking image and say "give me that" without any other thought?
Sure. There is a ton of hypocrisy in politics. But also, everyone does the "hold your nose and vote for the clown because at least he's your clown" thing in elections. If you are a Democrat in Maine, probably Platner is the clown for whom you are going to vote (perhaps while holding your nose), since the alternative is someone who's probably got better personal judgement but supports worse policies and helps keep worse people in power.
I’ve met guys like that and don’t disagree. But that’s a specific type of blue collar guy, not blue collar men in general. Plenty of blue collar men are types I’d be happy to have representing me. But the Platner type you describe is not someone I want in the US Senate!
There's a lot of weird stereotyping here. I was in the army. Almost all the guys were blue collar. We all got drunk _a lot_. Very drunk ("snot-hanging drunk"), and often. Lots of guys got tattoos. (I could've, and had a plan to under certain circumstances, but didn't.) No one ever got a tattoo "on accident". No one got a tattoo drunk. Getting a tattoo takes a long time, often 2 or 3 sessions. They cost a lot of money for a low ranking soldier. People who got them put a lot of care into choosing what they got and where they put it.
Simple tattoos do not take multiple sessions. The tattoo I have was about as basic as Platners and took roughly 2 hours. I walked into the parlor, looked at the wall art for 30 minutes or so, and then sat down and got the tattoo. Multiple other people got full tattoos in the time I was there.
Why are so many of you completely determined to misrepresent what tattoos are, how people get them, and why they get them in this comment's section? I don't love Platner as a candidate. I think there are tons of reasons not to support him. But I don't have to lie about tattoos or make up facts to legitimately criticize him.
Not that his entire candidacy is worth defending, but I feel it's important to note: there is a deep and mostly unknown (in the US) history of Croatian sympathy for/collaboration with Nazis, that an American visitor to a random Croatian tattoo parlor would be completely unaware of. In other words, random Croatian tattoo parlors are disproportionately likely to offer Nazi-ish insignia as options. I'm not a huge Platner fan, and the tattoo seemed like a huge red flag, but when I found out it happened on a bender in Croatia I was like oohhhhhh, that makes sense.
Zoning angle: Maine's NIMBY-ism is preventing tattoo parlors from opening up, meaning that getting your shitty tattoo removed requires planning a trip to Portland or even Boston.
(I unironically would not be shocked if this was relevant, I'm not above "I really should fix this but it involves a long errand so I keep putting it off", granted none of my "really should fix this" involved fascist iconography so...)
That's not an explanation. If you were drunk for days on end would it cross your mind to get a Nazi tattoo? Having done so would you keep it for nearly 20y?
Id even be somewhat okay if he were a generic war history guy saying “I like how disciplined the SS were” or something. But its literally a tattoo popularized by use of nazis who worked in concentration camps. You have to give SOMEthing other than “yeah when I'm drunk I love concentration camp guards” !??? This is all so ridiculous.
No, don't you see, Quinn. There's nothing to be learned about someone based on what they do when they are drunk. We can't hold anyone accountable for their actions if they've had a couple of beers too many? I still don't understand why drunk driving is a crime -- I mean, he was drunk so whatta ya gonna do? "I only slept with that woman because I was drunk" isn't going to work at home, and I don't know why Eric thinks it works here.
So you will vote against anyone, no matter what, if they got drunk and did something stupid? (I mean, stupid, not criminal or horrific, like killing some poor kid while driving.)
I'm only responding to the thread, not making a meta-argument. And Eric is trying desperately to explain away the tattoo with "well, he was probably drunk", which I find to be ... less than convincing, and even less convincing as to the idea that it doesn't say *anything* about Platner.
Getting drunk and doing something stupid is not disqualifying. Nor is even what Platner did (assuming it was because he was drunk, even though I don't think that is his argument). But Eric's defense is off base.
I'm in Florida. I don't have a vote in Maine and I'm glad of that fact. The fact that Collins voted to impeach Trump is enough for me to say she is one of the good Republicans, regardless of the rest of her votes. And Platner seems like an asshole. So a tough call.
I think you have probably not spent that much time around the kind of guy who was in the Marines and then became an oyster farmer. No, obviously he didn’t intentionally get a Nazi tattoo and also no I’m not saying this reflects well on him — it doesn’t! Personally I think he’s pretty dumb and honestly I’m not even sure I’d vote for him over Collins if I lived in Maine. But the idea that he’s a Nazi or an “edge lord” or whatever is the most out of touch shit I’ve heard.
I was enlisted in the military for 23 years and saw a lot of dumb Marines and others from various branches do dumb shit. That’s all forgivable IMO, including the tattoo.
The problem isn’t that he did something dumb on leave long ago, it’s that he kept the mistake for two decades, lied about it, and only got rid of it a few months ago when it became a political problem.
Getting the tattoo (and keeping it) makes him seem dumb and reckless. I do not think he’s a Nazi. But I do think he’s dumb, reckless, and opinionated in a bombastic way. Doesn’t seem to have good character. Probably entertaining enough to hang out with. But not someone who has any business in the US senate (I would say this even if I generally agreed with him factionally). And even if he was drunk when he got the tattoo, he wasn’t (I hope) drunk for the entire 20 years he kept it.
I have done about $80M+ worth of contract work with the Marines. You think he accidentally got a highly specific nazi tattoo? That's even more absurd than pretending he's just an edge lord and won't admit it.
The number of people who are now certain Platner is a nazi based on that tattoo is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than the number of people who knew that tattoo was a nazi symbol prior to articles being written about it last October.
It's actually worse tbh to get a more specific nazi tattoo than a less specific one imo. Esp as it, again, was popularized by concentration camp guards and the SS. He absolutely knew what he was doing. You think he never thought twice about what it meant ever again? Beyond absurd.
On what basis do you say he absolutely knew what he was doing? If you showed a hundred young men a selection of tattoos and asked them to pick a badass one, you think none of them would choose that skull with ignorance of its origin?
Yes, I think it’s very possible he accidentally got a totenkopf tattoo. And I think if he knew what it meant he wouldn’t have *released a video of him dancing shirtless after starting a campaign*
All I know is that we're six months into this, and we're still talking about the same tattoo. Which is effectively equivalent to "this is the worst thing he's done." I'm pretty comfortable with that.
Yes my theory is that he spent years posting about military history on reddit and didn't remove it for nearly 20y. Your theory is someone you made up in your mind because it's more convenient to believe it
Most people have no clue that this particular skull motif is a Nazi symbol. Everybody knows the swastika, but the other Nazi symbols are known only to those who’ve studied the Nazis in depth.
but what about all the other stuff, about women in particular? It's pretty gross. And there's plenty of other stuff to get turned off by. Plus the sexting story just broke a couple of days ago. Is he sending pics of his private parts around? Is he another Anthony Wiener? He's either debilitatingly stupid, has major mental health issues, is drunk all day every day, or jsut a terrible person. None of those options means he should be governing anyone.
He doesn’t sound like Anthony Weiner. It doesn’t sound like it was non-consensual sexting.
None of this stuff means he should be governing - but none of it means that it’s better to give Susan Collins another six years to pretend to be shocked by Trump.
The fact that anyone is looking at this stuff, setting it against the possibility of Trump controlling the Senate for two more years, and saying "hmm, I'm not sure" (let alone "I oppose this guy now that he's the nominee") tells me a lot of things about the Slow Boring commentariat. None of it flattering.
I feel like I want to post some variant that meme about secular atheists trying to use Christian beliefs to call out Christians despite having nothing but contempt for them otherwise. The set of people who will forgive absolutely every personal flaw from Trump because power is all that matters would like to know why liberals aren't sticking to their stated values and rejecting Platner.
It's fine to prefer Platner to Collins but she did vote to impeach Trump. I'm not super familiar with her whole record but I suspect you're being unfair to her.
The knock on Susan Collins is that the Dems can count on her vote when they don't need it. She's fantastic at voting against the Republicans when they have enough votes to pass something without her or when there are enough defectors that she's not the decisive vote. She's never been the *reason* the Republicans don't get their way.
But it is weird the story is about sexting and not about having an affair. I have no idea what he's actually doing; it's far too early to say it whether it was consensual or non consensual. And it doesn't matter to me since I had already decided he's too much a sleazebag before the latest revelation. I wasn't going to vote for Collins but this guy should not be representing my state.
Then all mistakes can be similarly excused for all politicians.
Susan Collins made mistakes on votes. So? You can excuse her and cast your vote.
I am old enough to remember when democrats claimed that republicans were uneducated idiots and mocked them as such. Now you’re fine with idiots representing you. Hmm
We're literally electing Senators to cast votes. That's the whole job. So no, a mistake on votes is not the same. You should vote the candidate who you think will cast the votes you want them to cast because that's the literal job.
Prior to the news breaking about the tattoo if you'd been shown pictures of one hundred skull and crossbone tatoos could you have pointed to the right one and said, yes, *that's* the totenkopf.
I couldn't have.
Maybe he should have removed it immediately upon learning its origin but people are funny. That leads to the secondary question: does the tattoo he got while drunk provide evidence that he has Nazi sympathies? And if not, man, what are we arguing about?
Platner, based on his Reddit history, was extremely knowledgeable about military tattoo policy. He specifically complained about the Marine crackdown on tattoos (which at the time was due to controversial tattoos and people getting kicked out of the service). He was prevented him for rejoining the Marines due to arm tattoos which is why he went to the Army instead. And he’s a self-described military history buff. In the Reddit posts he debates with others about scout snipers getting SS tattoos in which he argued that getting the lightning-bolt tattoos were a cultural thing within the Matine scout sniper community rather than proof of white-supremacist ideology.
It’s simply not credible he didn’t know the meaning of his own tattoo until last fall. At least, Lots of military people would have said something.
All that said, I don’t think he’s a Nazi or SS sympathizer, much less a white supremacist, so I’m still on the side of strategically voting for him (again, in spirit, I’m not a Maine voter) in the same way I’m for FDR helping the USSR in WW2. But if it was any Republican but Trump in the WH, my calculus would be different and I’m not going to defend or make excuses or downplay Platner’s actions to be a good team player regardless of whether his motivations- which we can’t know - can be attributed to being really effing stupid (more likely) or whatever other reason one wants to imagine (lots of possibilities).
If there was a viable D alternative we all know and ought to admit we would throw Platner under the bus for that alternative. I’ll state categorically that the only reason I would vote for Platner is the lack of a viable D alternative. There isn’t an alternative and so we have to make a choice between strategy which requires sacrificing principles for the team, or holding our principles. I think either option is entirely justified and don’t begrudge anyone’s choice, especially those who choose differently than me, but I’m not going to drink the koolaid and hand-wave away his problems or create the most charitable explanation for his actions and behavior and try to gaslight others into supporting him.
" In the Reddit posts he debates with others about scout snipers getting SS tattoos in which he argued that getting the lightning-bolt tattoos were a cultural thing within the Matine scout sniper community rather than proof of white-supremacist ideology."
This seems like a (ill-considered, but logical from Platner's perspective) justification for not concealing the tattoo - it's just a cool badass symbol of camaraderie and I'm not gonna remove it out of stubbornness because blacking it out would be acknowledging it's bad. Obviously still really dumb.
This is actually the opposite of dumb. Being thoughtful about "who is a actually white supremacist" rather than indexing on symbols is actually an appropriate way to think about this.
I'm not aware of him bragging about his Nazi tattoo, at least not in those terms. I find it very believable he wasn't aware of the symbolism, and thought it was just a skull & crossbones.
I'm just sick of the witch hunts. I'm tired of people who act like the most cynical, least charitable interpretation is obviously true & anyone who disagrees is naive or complicit. It's stupid, and people who do it in public should be called stupid, in public, as often as it takes.
Platner's not a Nazi. If he was, he would've recognized the totenkopf & wouldn't have tattooed it on his chest. I am begging everyone to just think about it for five minutes.
I'm Jewish and I had no idea what a totenkopf was until this controversy. Maybe I'm just dumb, totally possible! But for what it’s worth I am very well-educated--B.A. in Political Science and History followed by a J.D.
I never came across the symbol in all my years of study, so I'm not buying the idea being put forth by opportunists that it's basically a swastika.
I also have a lot of tattoos, and my reason for getting almost all of them was "I think that would look cool and good."
All this to say, I believe Platner when he says he got the tattoo for similar reasons and had no idea the symbol was used by the Nazis, and I think Matt is correct that this is a “scandal” that’s been ginned up by people who don’t like Platner’s stated opinions on Israel.
I’ll add that I feel no particular compulsion to defend Platner. The strongest endorsement I’ll give him is that I would absolutely, positively vote for him over Susan Collins, because I don’t think he would look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resume and life’s work and conclude that guy should be in charge of huge swaths of American public health. But I definitely find the adultery off putting, and my ideal candidate would have a far more robust track record on policy questions, and a far less robust track record on Reddit.
The tattoo thing is complete and utter nonsense, though.
Matt is atypically off on this. The modal post I see on Bluesky is both anti-Platner AND somewhere on the spectrum between Netanyahu is a war criminal destroying Israel to Israel deserves destruction and plenty of these people talk about the Nazi tattoo. They're not all AIPAC bots by a long shot!
I don't even like these people generally, but they are sincere.
It seems like he exposes hypocrisy on the left. You can paint picture where a guy having a weird one after doing some war with his bros got a metal-ass looking tattoo and eventually came to realize how sketchy it was without hastening to do anything about it. And you can paint a picture of a guy who had some marital troubles and put himself out there as available.
The problem is that his supporters are the same people who would never have given a shred of benefit of the doubt to anyone over the last decade, but instead would have immediately buried them as Nazis or sexual predators.
May be true about some of his supporters, but it says nothing about his actual feelings, opinions, or motivations. Give him grace or not, but regardless an actual bona fide Nazi that votes with the Democrats against Trump is better than Susan Collins
Yeah, it's possible to be critical of Netanyahu and also think that the Nazis are beyond the pale because of the Holocaust. Nazi symbolism is just straight old-fashioned anti-Semitism. This shouldn't be hard.
Everyone has such perfect knowledge they didn't have before the answer was handed them on a silver platter. I don't know about you, but prior to the news, I couldn't have picked the totenkopf out of a bunch of skull and crossbones for the life of me.
So, I agree, this shouldn't be hard. For very different reasons than you say, though.
I'm glad you're in this thread challenging people on this. I don't think I would like Platner, but the "Nazi tattoo" argument is driving me crazy. The totenkopf is not a recognizable symbol. It's a skull. There's a lot of douchebags out there with skull tattoos.
It was literally the symbol from the "Are we the baddies?" sketch from over a decade ago. He also had years before he ran for office to have it removed. Combine that with all of his weird edgelord behavior, this is a pattern of behavior of being an absolute moron and having no personal standards.
Nice reference. I'll repeat my question: prior to the news could *you* have accurately identified it as the Nazi tattoo? Maybe you could have (good for you); I couldn't have, and I suspect your average person couldn't have either.
In the meantime, if he's so obviously bad, why do so many people in Maine seem to like him?
Yes, I would have known what that was. According to people in his inner circle, he also knew what it was for years and referred to it as a totenkopf before he even ran for office.
I hate to break it to you but online is not real life and that sketch is not exactly "more cowbell" in terms of how recognizable it is to random dudes.
I mean, now I know it's all over the Indiana Jones movies, which I've seen probably a hundred times, and I didn't immediately recognize it. The initial tattoo I can understand. To me it's his behavior afterward that's been an issue - an absolute unwillingness to own up and take responsibility that doesnt bode well in the future.
Any decent person, having learned they’d accidentally gotten a Nazi tattoo, would get it covered at the first opportunity. He waited years, and didn’t cover it until he started running for Senate. In addition to retweeting antisemites and going on antisemitic podcasts. I don’t know whether he’s a Nazi, but he’s nowhere near as averse to Nazis as he should be.
>Any decent person, having learned they’d accidentally gotten a Nazi tattoo, would get it covered at the first opportunity.<
That sounds a stretch. I imagine there are "decent" people out there who might not get it taken off immediately because of fear of a painful procedure, or because they plan to keep it covered, or because of cost, or some other factor, or a mix of several reasons.
Getting a tattoo covered is as simple as getting a different tattoo on top of it. And obviously he doesn’t mind getting tattoos. You’re embarrassing yourself with this nonsense.
I've had a tattoo removed and the doctor that did it injected lidocaine beforehand and it STILL hurt, not to mention the soreness and tenderness after the lidocaine wore off. And the cost was in the many thousands of dollars.
The lack of time so many of these commenters are putting into thinking about this situation from any other perspective than condemnation is truly astounding. Everyone is acting like getting a tattoo is something you take a graduate level course in where you spend months REALLY studying what tattoo to get and what's it's historical and cultural meanings are, and then turning around and acting like you can remove a tattoo as easily as rinsing the smell of the beach out of your hair after you get home. It's really wild to witness.
I'm viewing it as a trolley problem. Pull the level and kill one person on the tracks rather than let the train take its course and kill 6.
Almost nothing matters about Platner, other than he will vote with dems and gives dems a chance to win senate control against Trump. That's all I need. And, I don't get to vote for Platner. If Mainers love him, its good enough for me.
>My POLICY views are similar to Platner’s on a lot of issues, but come on.<
My POLICY views aren't all that similar to Platner's. I'm not a fan of MFA, and I don't want to break up Amazon. But Susan Collins is a vote to empower MAGA. C'mon!
>The Nazi tattoo is bad because the Nazis themselves are very bad!<
It's 100% true that Nazi tattoos, like Nazis themselves, are very bad.
It's also 100% true that sending Susan Collins back to the Senate will have vastly more negative consequences for my country and my planet that electing a man who once got a Nazi tattoo when he was out getting shitfaced with his buddies.
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.
Nobody can seriously believe Platner is pro-Nazi though, right? Like, he absolutely does seem like the kind of guy who would drunkenly get a tattoo, later find out it’s a Nazi tattoo, find that funny and brag (probably drunkenly) about how ridiculous it is, and also not get it removed because he just doesn’t care that much. Sure, that kind of guy is also not who I want in the senate. But he’s not a Nazi.
A committed national socialist ideologue? Nah. But the man sported an SS tattoo for two decades, has a history of racist tweets, and is hostile to the only Jewish state. If you told me those three facts about any random person, I’d presume they hate Jews.
He walked around with that thing on his chest for twenty years - well after he was aware of the symbolism - and only covered it when it became a political liability. If I was a big enough idiot to accidentally get a racist tattoo, I’d be mortified and RUN to get it removed as soon as I found out.
How many tattoos have you ever gotten, and how many have you ever covered up? If those answers sum to less than ten, then I suspect you shouldn’t assume that you have any idea how this guy thinks about tattoos.
I never got a tattoo, realized that it was a symbol of a paramilitary organization tasked with the systematic elimination and murder of multiple entire ethnic groups, and then was like..."eh fuck it, it's kinda sweet".
Ha, that may be so. It’s pretty plausible that he’s just a moron with terrible judgment and impulse control. But I think, as with Alito’s flags, people are also justified in drawing them other conclusions.
I don't think he's a card carrying national socialist. I certainly believe he's mildly anti semitic, and I believe for some people on the left that's a reason to vote for him. And all together I find his candidacy concerning
Unironically I wonder if the gap in how people perceive this could be based on how seriously you take tattoos in the first place.
I am not a tattoo guy, and everytime I have had the idle thought of getting a tattoo it was something that at the time I cared about deeply and wanted a tattoo to represent that. (I actually remember when I was a teenager, my mom asked me what I thought about tattoos, and she told me that in college in the 80s she considered getting a Woody Allen tattoo and in retrospect, is glad she didn't; that scared me away from tattoos way more than any "you'll never get hired" scolding did, so if that was her aim, great parenting on her part.)
But some people get a *lot* of tattoos. Maybe their bad tattoos are closer to my bad tweets. A lot of people who I saw become more skeptical after the tattoo had been willing to shrug off the Reddit posts that were unveiled a few days before. I think voters on the ground thought of the two as closer together (and also did not think highly of the people trying to make these a campaign issue, which could also be what leads people to shrug off this round of scandals too).
"maybe their bad tattoos are closer to my bad tweets" is actually a TERRIFIC perspective on this, and an interesting analogy I'd been wracking my brain for but couldn't land on.
"Pro-Nazi" seems like a very high bar to clear when (last I checked, sigh) everybody basically agreed that Nazis were the bad guys.
It's a lower bar to clear to say that Platner is an enormous dipshit who is not qualified to sit in the Senate, and for me (ymmv) we don't need to clear the higher bar. It's just not very interesting.
The Nazis targeted and killed lots of people, not just the Jews. Gypsys, gay & lesbians, the disabled, mixed-race people. Not everything is about Israel, Gaza and the Jews.
The guy has a Nazi tattoo, is incredibly critical of Israel, and is a stated fan on an antisemitic podcast. How much grace are we supposed to give him? If we heard that Susan Collins had once had dinner with Nick Fuentes, it’d be used as proof of her secret Nazi inclinations. But somehow the guy with a literal Nazi tattoo deserves our discernment?
Did Elon Musk give a Nazi salute? In that moment, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But all the other things he did cries out that he has fascistic tendencies so maybe the salute he gave was probative.
Platner gets a tattoo possibly for innocent (albeit boneheaded) reasons and maybe not. But, like with Elon, don't you need at least some other evidence that he has Nazi sympathies? And is there such evidence? Folks, the answer is "no." The tattoo is a synecdoche for . . . nothing.
You are of course free to feel strongly what you feel, but if we give up controls of our government to Trump/MAGA this easily then we'll get what we deserve.
I don't care if Platner is or isn't a Nazi. I think that it's bad for the Democratic Party's national brand to throw their support behind someone with a Nazi tattoo, and that it would be pressing to win a fight while ceding strength in the larger war.
The Democrats in general, and factional, anti-establishment leftists in particular, are not acting like they are "fighting to save our nation from these goons". They are not making tough choices and compromising to maximize the chances of winning. They are putting their pet priorities first. If they were fighting to save our nation from these goons, they would have pushed for Jared Golden.
Right, and I think, tactically, it will hurt us in ALL the races for the midterms to have the reputation as the hypocritical party that backed a guy with a Nazi tattoo. We don't just need to win in Maine, we need to win a lot of races in November across the country, where there are a lot of swing voters susceptible to the message that both sides are bad so they may as well not vote or go for Republicans.
It's not about my morals. It's about how I think this makes us look nationally.
Standard response from Candidate X in State Y when asked, "I'm not interested in what's happening in Maine; that's an issue for the voters in Maine. I care about the voters in State Y and how they're suffering under Trump's corrupt and failed policies yadda yadda yadda."
We in the chattering classes are all wrapped up in this but I guarantee that 99% of the voters outside of Maine will never give a damn if they know about it at all.
Well, the alternative is that when we find out someone had an offensive tattoo, we're honor bound to drum them out of the party, which when I say it aloud sounds absurd.
The other evidence being his long history of Reddit comments, his vehement criticism of Israel and “Jewish money”, and the fact that he is an avid fan of an antisemitic podcast? Come on Marc, you’re smarter than this.
Yes, back when he was an asshole he made asshole comments on Reddit; he's faced up to that to my satisfaction.
"Vehement criticism of Israel." You want to hear vehement criticism of Israel? Go to Israel and listen to Israelis. Israel is a big boy country; it can take criticism.
"Jewish money"? You're going to need to show documentation on that one.
Anti-semitic podcast fan? Well, yeah, he did go on a podcast but "avid fan"? Again, [citation needed].
This is so transparently motivated reasoning, you are bending over backwards to give Platner the benefit of the doubt because he has a D next to his name.
I’m frankly pretty disgusted with some of these defenses of him, and I don’t know how you can pretend that he has a completely different character now than he did in the past. I see zero evidence for that.
I am motivated to capture the Senate and save the country from the degradations of Trump and MAGA so I'm prepared to overlook things that otherwise I might draw the line at. Platner has not crossed the line into the unacceptable for me.
Still, I'd like to see some documentation for accusations you're making.
The hypocrisy of progressive Democrats (Sirota etc.) just drives me nuts. Imagine a Republican candidate for federal office with a Nazi tattoo, a Reddit history of racist & genuinely sexist comments (blaming women for being raped, etc.), a DUI (this is surprisingly underreported), and now apparently sexting with 6-12 women (the number is from the Platner campaign this morning!) People would be foaming at the mouth if he had generic rightwing views.
I don't think Platner's secretly a Nazi, but I think he is probably a knucklehead. If you don't think that's a real issue, I'd just point you in the direction of Fetterman- supposedly progressive Blue Collar Coded Dude who has some genuinely bad votes now that he's in office, and appears to have genuine mental health struggles.
Not to uh reveal what state I live in, but I'm just going to write in Margaret Chase Smith and call it a day
Edit: I read Lisa C's comment's and I strongly agree with it. Even if Platner wins this particular seat, the damage to the Democratic brand nationally is pretty bad. 'Your party has the Senator with a Nazi tattoo and a bunch of racist & sex scandals' is just a terrible look. People saying 'well he's better than Collins' have the strategic mind of a goldfish
This would be more salient if the national Democratic brand wasn't already trash, even among their own voters. And it isn't trash because of upstarts like Platner, but because of the milquetoast moderates who have been in control of the party for more than a decade now, and in particular their perceived fecklessness as the the only vehicle for opposition to Trump.
Platner is pulling a Trump in that he has recognized and is now riding populist discontent against both his own party and Republican governance to political success. It may be hypocritical to only support it when it's your guy (or at least not the other guy) but that's more a result of the incentives of primaries, FPTP, and the various other ways our winner-take-all system distort our politics.
I don't fully buy MY's take that Mills was a fake-good candidate because she was old and not very popular as governor. Mamdani and Platner have learned from Trump that running against your own party in their own primary can be very successful when your own party is quite unpopular and ineffective. MY's take is based on the reasoning that you need to convince moderates to vote for you to win; Mamdani, Trump, and maybe now Platner's strategy is motivating people who are unlikely to vote to come out for you, specifically, because of this vague anti-establishment sentiment, along with some people from the opposite side who are also motivated by that sentiment (like the Trump to Mamdani voters we have seen reported on). It's irrational, but that seems like it just is the vibe in US politics now and likely going forward.
"And it isn't trash because of upstarts like Platner, but because of the milquetoast moderates who have been in control of the party for more than a decade now"
You can't be serious. It's trash because of far left policies that drive normies away.
Stuff like tolerance for illegal immigration, crime and biological males playing women's sports.
The Democratic brand is already a millstone around the neck of every candidate running in a state to the right of Pennsylvania. Your grand strategy is to turn around the Democratic Party's national brand by all but guaranteeing another two years of Trump judges to give Republican election-tampering and criminality a pass? I know you have a thing about whataboutism, but why do you think Pennsylvania voters are going to care about some guy in Maine when Mike Lee is out here publicly cheering when Democrats get attacked and killed? I honestly don't think anybody outside of Maine and a handful of very online individuals such as ourselves are paying attention.
***PROBABLY*** a knucklehead? Try 1,000% certifiably a knucklehead. That's at least part of his appeal/"charm". Unfortunately. His candidacy is Exhibit A in support of the contention that the Party system is badly broken.
Susan Collins voted for the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump in 2021. I figure there is a non-zero chance (maybe 10%, 20%?) Trump endorses Platner.
Trump as stupid as he is is not that stupid. He knows Collins is the most important Senator in the whole body for him: A Republican from a blue state who will always be there for him when she's most needed. The contrast with Cassidy couldn't be clearer: vote for Trump's conviction and find yourself tossed aside for another MAGA person in a deep red state.
Surprisingly, this is one area where I have a lower opinion of Trump than you appear to have. I don't think Trump cares AT ALL about the Republican Party except to the extent he can wear it as a skin suit over his personal pursuits. I don't think he sees Collins any differently than Cassidy, Cornyn, Mamdani or Platner. They are all just enemies to him, some near and some far.
Yes. He sees everyone that way insofar as he doesn't think anyone is capable of being a "true" friend or "true" believer. He doesn't believe anyone has more integrity than he does.
The "my opponent was mean to you, dear leader" lane is very, very wide and runs straight into the White House (with an exit for the Justice Department). The more I think about it, I wouldn't bet against it at even a 30% chance he endorses Platner.
Did she vote for John thune? Did she confirm most of Trump’s cabinet picks? She’s voted with republicans 90% since 2024 in a light blue state. She’s going to lose. Her age is another factor.
Cornyn was a much more reliable Trump supporter and that didn't save him (albeit in the primary). I'd gladly take the other side of your "0% chance" bet.
I don't like Graham Platner's views on Israel, it's true, but I don't think he's a Nazi, and I haven't seen anyone claiming that he is. But the Nazi tattoo - and his subsequent disingenuousness over it - shows something: that's he's an edgelord who found it funny to play around with Nazi symbols until they became an embarrassment to him.
And - to turn the argument around - I don't think that progressives would accept that from a figure whose politics they disapproved of, whereas I can't frankly imagine moderates accepting it from a figure whose politics they approved of. I do think it is the progressives who are behaving hypocritically in this - another example of Gaza as the Omnicause which trumps everything else.
People who think Platner is an “edge lord” clearly have never spent time with blue collar men. “Haha yea I was drunk in the Marines and I got this tattoo and it turns out it’s some Nazi shit isn’t that fucking wild bro? Here have another shot!”
Why should someone with such poor judgment be a senator? If I got drunk and woke up with a Nazi tattoo, my first order of business would be removing it, not bragging about it.
That's what I said in the first place! He's definitely not a Nazi. But I called him an "edgelord" - which is far from being an actual Nazi - and you disagreed. But your account of him here makes him sound exactly like an edgelord - in other words, a person who says or does outrageous things, not because he believes in them, but because he likes the shock it causes. Because if he wasn't, he would have had the tattoo removed immediately, not spent time joking and laughing about it.
Now it's true that - as you correctly intuited! - I haven't spent much time socializing with blue-collar men. (Not that Platner is actually blue-collar by background, but that's another matter.) But to me, you simply make it sound that blue-collar male culture is a culture that is very open to edgelord behavior, and that is a problem when someone from that culture wants to appeal to the broader electorate, to many of whom that behavior is disqualifying. And again, I don't think progressives would accept that excuse from anyone but another progressive.
Fair points. I think conceptually the difference is “edge lord” has an intentionality and even intelligence to it, the goal is to provoke. Whereas I suspect Platner’s behavior in this realm and others is more just impulsiveness bordering on being somewhat dumb. Like he really just does not think these things through.
Plenty of prep school kids go into the military. It doesn't mean they didn't come from money. There's a particular type of rich kid who adopts the aesthetic of a stereotype of the working class because it lets them be an edgelord. It's not that far off from guys who get white Rasta dreads or wear berets in college.
It's obviously not, but you know the reason for him to be a senator and you've said a hundred times that Dems winning the Senate doesn't matter to you, so there's nothing to discuss.
I disagree, but I also think it's about what the country needs, not just the Democrats. Every Trump judicial nominee is a crack in the foundation of the Republic.
There’s some ambiguity in what it means to be an edgelord. It goes from being playfully transgressive to a limited audience and oblivious to greater consequences to deliberately provoking those consequences
The politics are relevant to how you judge the tattoo. If someone with Nazi-adjacent politics had this tattoo, you’d have more questions about whether they were an actual Nazi. I think this blog made the analogy earlier—like when you see Jordan Peterson having communist propaganda posters decorating his house no one thinks he’s a secret communist, but if you had Hasan Piker with those same decorations you would wonder about it.
The N-word is widely recognizable and doesn’t have alternate meanings (even then where there is an alternate meaning people would understand—like there is a running joke that a very harmless Chinese phrase is pronounced like the n-word), whereas many militaries throughout history have used a skull-and-crossbones insignia and you’d have to be a pretty serious history buff to recognize this specific one as being the Nazi one.
In my experience its the opposite - at any criticism of the tattoo the pro platner people leap to: "so you think he's a Nazi? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Go listen to his John Stewart podcast!"
I'd be interested to find someone who actually says this - not saying you're wrong, but I haven't seen them. I literally haven't seen a single person claiming that the tattoo means that he's a Nazi - but maybe I've been looking in the wrong places ...
There's actually a pretty big divide among the left on this. The most voal Platner defenders are your Sirota/Stoller "class not race" economic leftists. The stereotypical "woke" progressives on Bluesky are basically universally negative on Platner, didn't support him in the primary (or grudgingly supported him due to age concerns with Mills) and are voting for him out of political necessity.
I can't get behind Platner because I think in the long run, Democrats lose too much moral high ground in exchange for a shot at a Senate seat. It just fortifies the opinions of the "both sides are bad" swing voters to support a guy with a Nazi tattoo. It makes us look like hypocrites, which is a smear Republicans already love to throw at us and which does find an audience among swing voters. I think ultimately Democrats throwing their weight behind Platner will weaken us on a national level.
>>I think in the long run, Democrats lose too much moral high ground in exchange for a shot at a Senate seat.
Isn't this what running a big tent means? Let people in with whom you disagree, perhaps strongly, so that you can command a majority?
If Platner loses people will forget about him and the damage to reputation will be short lived. If he wins he may be a key vote needed to stop Trump abuses of power.
Losing too much reputational high ground, that is, as in, he tarnishes our whole brand nationally and makes us look like hypocrites who cry wolf about Nazis but only if it serves us.
I don't like Platner because I know he's going to vote against my interests (outlawing female spaces) plus he's unserious clown, but I feel there needs to be a little bit of grace for people who are genuinely contrite to leave behind racist/dumb shit they did in the past.
Since everyone is discussing the tattoo I’ll offer my 2c. I believe Platner’s claim that he got it because he picked something that looked cool off the tattoo parlor wall when he was in his 20s without knowing the history of it. I don’t believe that he only found out it was a Nazi symbol last year. Should’ve gotten it covered up earlier; fact that he didn’t shows poor judgement.
To add to this, the correct point, which Matt makes, is that Platner is a shitty candidate and there were many other better choices and yet again the Democrats somehow managed to screw this up, leaving us all arguing about Platner and his stupid tattoos and bad policy ideas.
Sure but in this case “the Democrats” means “Maine primary voters.” The reason Mills dropped out is because she was losing (which is because she’s also a bad candidate).
Agreed that Maine primary voters bear much responsibility, but I also want to point the finger at the state and national parties for not doing a better job recruiting better candidates.
Fetterman should be a warning to Dems about getting behind someone too weird. Best case scenario, Platner wins and he votes like Angus King and doesn't rock the boat. More likely he's going to break with the caucus at inopportune moments and cause headaches for six years (or just loses outright to Collins, which should cause Chuck Schumer to resign his leadership role).
Best case scenario, he behaves like Bernie Sanders, a leftist team player. Worst case scenario, he behaves like a left-wing version of MTG, votes against party both from the left and the right from an anti-establishment perspective.
But IMO it will be closer to the best case scenario than the worst.
He did, albeit somewhat half-heartedly. But that's kind of my point; he really couldn't have recruited anyone better than a 77-year old former governor in a heavily blue state?
Matt went through the choices. A year ago Collins looked unbeatable, and no serious Maine dem wanted to spend 18 months bashing their head against a wall. Trump being so blatantly terrible in every possible way and with every decision he makes is why Collins looks beatable today, and the person available today to beat her is Platner.
Seeing the top comments here, I have to take the other side.
I'm genuinely mystified why people care so much about the tattoo. I have to ask the people who say it's disqualifying- do you not know any military veterans? Any men who work blue collar jobs? I don't like Platner and probably wouldn't vote for him but geez what a complete non-issue!
Calibration- I work in the mining industry. Getting an offensive tattoo because you're on a bender and it looks cool on the wall then keeping it because it's a wild story? I know approximately 1 million dudes who would do that.
Because this isn't an application for a mining job, it's for the US Senate? I'm getting tired of people repeating this dumb 'don't you know blue collar guys' meme over & over again in this thread. A Senator is not a blue collar job. The Senate is not a mine. Platner can be a miner or an oyster farmer or a trucker or a bouncer or hang drywall with his Nazi tattoo. What he can't be is 1 of 100 people in the more powerful chamber of the world's superpower- the standard for that job is higher than that of a miner. Is that really hard so hard to understand?
He’s obviously not one of the top 100 people I’d pick for the job. But if the alternative is someone who votes for basically anyone Trump nominates, isn’t he still better?
1. It hurts the Democratic Party overall, makes us look like gigantic hypocrites, and worsens our chances of winning future elections. Please try to have a time horizon beyond 1 election
2. It greatly increases the odds of whacko candidates from both sides- it'll be easier for them to win the nomination after 1 has broken through
Kenny we're going to end up like Argentina (or worse) if voters can't block obvious demagogues. Weimar collapsed because voters split themselves between the far right and the Communists. You know 'ever wondered what you'd do during the rise of fascism? Now's your chance' has become popular on the left? Well, ever wondered what you'd do if a Trump-like figure was running for your party's nomination? Now's our (well, my) chance to do the right thing
>It hurts the Democratic Party overall, makes us look like gigantic hypocrites
Hypocrisy is dead. Dead and buried, next to irony.
Besides, if I had a dollar for every time I was told "Democrats come across as too preachy, scolding, holier-than-thou, they think they're better than the rest of us," I could fund my lab for the next ten years. Say what you will about Platner, he does not come across as a pearl-clutching, holier-than-thou elitist!
You have a more exalted view than I do of the job 'politician'.
Working class or at least working-class-conversant (which is really what Platner is) politicians are absolutely vital to any governing coalition that could be called in any sense 'left'. People who don't follow a well-manicured path to public office. People like Shaun Fain or Chris Smalls. Have your gripes with Platner by all means (he seems like a major knucklehead), but I dislike this implication that people from certain career backgrounds haven't earned the dignity of being elected to represent their fellow citizens.
Just as an example- Platner couldn't become a cop or even rejoin the military with that tattoo. Law enforcement has tattoo policies, straight-up Nazi shit is an absolute no-go anywhere in the country. Obviously being a cop is a blue collar job. If his tattoos are totally unacceptable on the paradigmatic licensed blue collar job...... isn't the bar for US Senate *at least* as high as being a cop?
While I agree with your point about working class people having a place in a left-wing political coalition, the reason Shawn Fain is UAW president is because grad student unions are part of the UAW.
Its fine that he's a military and oyster guy. It's just that he hasn't demonstrated any serious policy acumen. Better to elect a military oyster guy that at least sat on a city council.
Getting raked for saying exactly this up above, nice to see someone who gets it. The guy I do jiujitsu with who has tattoos on his skull? No I don’t ask him why he thought that was a good idea or what they mean. Does make me wonder if support for Platner is actually weaker than we think though and seeing all this bickering over his tattoos makes me want to put money on Collins winning yet again.
Right, even my other comment replying to LF is sort of orthogonal to the point of my comment, which is that it's weird people are making such a big deal about a tattoo. Some people just have tattoos and it doesn't mean much. And Platner is so obviously a reddit-brained shitlib (I say with affection) that it's absurd anyone would be going on about this 'Nazi tattoo' as if it says something about his politics.
I'm a military veteran, so is my brother, so is my grandpa. Needless to say I have many military friends. I also have friends working numerous blue collar jobs, including in the oil industry.
I have a problem with the tattoo because it confirms his rhetoric that at best he's an antiSemite. I don't like that.
I think we spent decades saying Jew Hatred is wrong and pushing it out of polite society. I'm aghast that many "educated" people on the left are looking at the sewer of the alt-right and saying "ooh let's do that Jew Hatred looks fun"
I promise I have no problem with Platner’s criticism of Israel but I do have a problem with his Nazi tattoo. I simply don’t believe he didn’t know what it was. Do I believe he’s a “devotee of National Socialism”? No. I believe he is an arrogant, immature, aggressive edgelord with serious impulsivity problems. The texting - and being on Kik of all places! - is yet more evidence. The Reddit comments are more evidence still. I don’t know what I’d do if I lived in Maine. I do have relatives who live in Maine. They’re all old ladies (that’s who lives in Maine!) and reliable democrats. And they’re appalled and also struggling with the decision. Susan Collins is terrible for the country, but she’s been pretty good for Maine. That’s the dilemma.
Maybe he got it in a drunken stupor, but he had it on his body for two decades. There are people who came forward and said he referred to it as “my Totenkopf.” (This was reported by CNN!) He is a self-described military history buff. There’s no way he spent all that time in a state of blissful ignorance of what he saw in the mirror every day. Maybe if this were the only thing wrong with him and he truly seemed like he had become less impulsive and more stable now, I would think “ok, youthful indiscretion, people can change.” But every new thing that comes out confirms that he has issues with aggression and impulsiveness, and he’s lied about a lot. I also think Matt’s complaint about policy positioning is related to this. Why doesn’t he moderate to appeal to voters in the middle? Because it isn’t fun and edgy and gives him no outlet for aggression.
I find all this "I simply don't believe he didn't know" stuff crazy. I had no clue, and *even now* I would struggle to pick it out of a lineup of stylized skulls.
But we have his own Reddit history and his word to go off of that he knew exactly what it was! He was referring to it as “my totenkopf” long before he ran for this seat.
Platner is a boob. No one knows what he'd be like in the Senate. At least Susan Collins will revert to normal once the midterms are over and Trump is clearly a lameduck president. We need moderates of her caliber in the Senate, no matter what party she belongs to.
I'm assuming that there will be a reset in the GOP -- at least in the Senate -- after the midterms. Trump is already faltering. Let's see. The only thing to recommend Platner is pure Democratic parrtisanship. I mean, don't you agree that he's a clown? We already have too many clowns in the Senate.
Yes, of course he's a clown. There are already several or dozens of extremely high-impact freakish clowns (I'm staring at RFKjr, but there are many others) in the executive branch and Collins will vote to confirm more. I wish I thought better of her, but I don't.
So what you're saying is that a wild-card Democratic clown is better than a serious, moderate Republican. We really need to start thinking beyond Trump but many Democrats can think of nothing else. Anyway, nice chatting.
There's not going to be a reset. As long as Trump has the ability to end Senator's careers by endorsing primary opponents they'll bend the knee. While Trump is faltering among the electorate at large, a majority of GOP primary voters still have an almost cultish devotion to him.
Trump is an old man. He'll leave the White House in January 2029, if he's still alive. My deepest fear for Democrats is that they'll blow 2028 by not having any message for the country beyond opposition to Trump. There are signs of that already, such as the willingness to put a Democratic version of Tommy Tuberville into the U.S. Senate simply because he's anti-Trump (for now).
Trump has already lost a midterm and a general election and this didn’t happen. I could maybe believe this in 2018 but it seems like wishful thinking now.
See the link for some biographic information on Collins. She's not right on everything -- not by a long shot -- but I've never heard anyone question her seriousness, ethics, or intelligence. Normally I'd vote for a Democrat -- but Platner really does seem like a boob.
There is absolutely nothing that Susan Collins could do on the committee level that would balance out the damage she causes simply by caucusing with Republicans. Control of the Senate would be _huge_ toward minimizing the damage that Trump can do in the second half of his term, but if we can't flip Maine, there's roughly 0% chance it'll happen.
The last time I can remember Collins casting a maverick vote that was of any consequence was in 2017 when she, Murkowski, and McCain prevented ACA repeal. That's great, but a replacement-level Democrat in her seat would blow it out of the water. Even another Fetterman would be an improvement over Collins because Fetterman votes with Democrats a healthy amount of the time.
To continue the Fetterman comparison: I understand why Democratic voters feel burned, and if I were a Pennsylvanian I'd vote for Literally Anyone Else when he gets primaried in a couple years. But Fetterman is _miles_ better than Oz would've been in the Senate.
Much like Manchin/Sinema: it'd be annoying if we couldn't get something done because a dingus like Platner decided to be a maverick. But the only way that could happen is if Platner were the deciding vote. And if Platner were the deciding vote, it means that the alternative would've been Collins in that seat and Republicans in control of the Senate.
This isn't even a close call. Hold your nose and vote for the guy with a D next to his name. Don't talk yourself into the idea that it's important to keep one of Trump's biggest enablers in the Senate.
This was a case of bad recruitment by establishment Dems as mentioned. Mills was the easy button but never made sense for the reasons stated. People complain all the time about Schumer for ideological reasons but I think the strongest case for new leadership is he has lost his political touch.
What’s most disqualifying about Platner is the very fact that he wants to be a Senator. The combination of Platner’s delusion and the cowardice of other Maine Democrats who chose not to run creates a toxic brew and gives Collins an opening she shouldn’t have had. I’m glad not to be a Mainer faced with this awful choice.
Edit: This was meant as a main-thread comment. But since it didn’t land there I’ll respond thusly to MikeV: We should at least give credit to Schumer for recognizing that Platner was a uniquely bad candidate, even if he didn’t respond appropriately by press-ganging Mills as a lousy opponent.
Wouldn't any veteran without a ton of skeletons in the closet be better? How hard is it to regurgitate Bernie talking points from a teleprompter? This is not that hard!
Sure but we can't magically enter a new candidate into the race. The bed was made, a competitor was recruited, she got her teeth kicked in, we are where we are. I don't have to like it but can only chart a path forward.
I’m inclined to believe that Platner may in fact be the right candidate to challenge Susan Collins even though he wouldn’t be correct in a different race. The usual playbook for winning tough races - run a nice, clean moderate whose issue positions appeal to the median voter - will not work against Collins because that is exactly what she herself is. The voters who could normally be won over by a clean moderate candidate are loyal to her.
The way to peel voters away from Susan Collins is to appeal to anti-establishment, anti-system voters. She cannot avoid being coded as an establishment candidate. Platner’s issue positions are on the left but his vibes are about as anti-establishment as it gets, and that can win him votes that Sara Gideon couldn’t get.
usually not, but I suspect this year is different. Platner won this election on the day that the US attacked Iran.
Unlike a moderate Dem who gives a mealy mouthed opposition to Iran on Congressional power, Platner has been very clear and blunt about his opposition to these Middle East wars. And that probably resonates with the majority in Maine.
That doesn't mean Platner would work in most years though. My guess is that he would have been a bad fit in 2024.
I don't really understand point 2. I don't think he wants to bring back the Third Reich or make trains run on time, but it seems pretty coherent to me to see a guy with a Nazi tattoo and hostility to Israel to think "Irrespective of whether or not this guy subscribes to the tenets of national socialism, I wonder if what appeals to him about national socialism is also what appeals to him about opposition to Israel."
Thank you. If someone has a Nazi tattoo for twenty years, plus racist social media posts, plus doesn’t like the only Jewish state, it’s rather suggestive. Why are we automatically giving him the benefit of the doubt? He hasn’t earned it.
What’s wild is that I haven’t seen a single commenter here bringing up his 20 years of disability fraud, because there are so many other even larger red flags to argue about.
The problem with Platner is that he has no discernible virtues whatsoever. He is a crook and a sadist. He has accomplished nothing of note, produced nothing, done nothing but feed on the efforts of those who toil and work and earn bread. He should shame and terrify us, because he is that who we could all become if we gave in to sin and vice. So no, I do not care for him. The sexting scandal, to be frank, is nothing at all — it’s everything else that’s the problem.
I actually think only an infinitesimally small number of people could become at all successful by giving in to sin and vice, certainly we couldn't become Senators. Most people who give in to sin and vice end up in the street or in jail.
No, you're just repeating your point and ignoring mine. Since almost no one could "give in to sin and vice" (which I think overstates the case quite a bit, but then I don't hate government benefits and you do) and have a chance to get elected Senator, something is distinguishing Platner, not just Americans'/Mainers' lack of discrimination. (Doesn't mean it's something *good* that distinguishes him!)
I do not hate government benefits. I believe redistribution is important. I simply think that Mr. Platner faked his conditions in order to get benefits.
Sorry for misstating your beliefs. But I just don’t believe that’s so horrible as to be disqualifying, and very few people think so either (which is why tattoo + sexts has gotten a million times more attention as an issue). That doesn’t mean we’re right, but it means you’re just bound to be spitting into the wind when you talk about it like it’s self-evident.
1. Platner is defrauding veterans’ disability. By his campaign’s admission, he has qualified for enhancements which preclude being able to work, which he has avoided losing by having his wife be the recipient of income earned through his business.
2. He enlisted in a war he hated because he wanted the opportunity to kill people. Upon doing several tours, he went back for a private company. Sometime after this, of course, he developed whatever PTSD was necessary to qualify for benefits — I guess he could point toward his alcoholism as support.
I was not aware of 1 but 2 was over 20 years ago, Platner has not been accused of any war crime or excessive violence to my knowledge, and he seems reformed there and is now anti-war—that seems like a forgivable yellow flag.
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.
The Democrats just look like hypocrites. That's the problem. Either character matters or it doesn't. There's no middle ground.
Dems have spent the past ten years talking about how we should demand better of our elected officials, only to accept clear character flaws when it's one of their own. THIS is why normal people hate politics. You just cannot trust people to maintain a clear standard.
You want Platner, then fine. But know that "we need to control the Senate to stop Trump" is the *exact* same logic Republicans used when they argued for Trump.
If parties actually had power, we wouldn't get candidates like Platner. The only thing the last 10 years have taught us is normal people are stupid.
The elites are stupid, they decided their pick should be someone born in 1947.
Everyone is stupid and the system could be much better designed and structured.
Sanders is six years older and was re-elected in 2024.
And that really is bad
Plenty of Platner fans didn't think so but insist Mills is too old.
Repeal the 17th, anyone?
General election voters are fine. It’s the primary voters that suck.
With our current polarization, this would send state governance on a one way trip to hell. As it is, you at least kind of have a chance that these races will be about state level issues, which would go away overnight if they exclusively became proxies for Senate control.
Previously, they were nothing but proxies for the Senate. That's why it was changed.
If this is based on “the voters are stupid,” then it becomes the basis for trashing the entire project of republican (note small “r”) government.
More specifically, many liberals have spent the last ten years being VERY loose in their deployment of Nazi comparisons. To the point of really trivializing the Nazis. Now we have a candidate who sported a bona fide Nazi tattoo for *decades* and they don’t give a shit. I find the whole thing sickening.
I think we've tended to deploy Nazi comparisons based on policy choices, no? Not because of what side someone plays in Hearts of Iron or something aesthetic like that.
Yeah, there has been more outside focused stuff lately but that's because Bovino's ridiculous Nazi jacket came *after* his ridiculous behavior.
Yeah, if you're gonna argue he was a Nazi, then you should probably have an explanation as to why he's not in the party that's welcoming to Nazis.
We've got Nazi-equivalents without tattoos in government; what's your point?
The thing that was bad about Nazis is what they did, not their aesthetic. Platner’s policies seem diametrically opposed to the bad things Nazis did like militarism, so the fact that he thinks their logo is cool is no more damning than someone who thinks the uniforms look stylish and still wears Hugo Boss.
Well, jeff, I suppose one might also say it has a whiff of Nuremberg about it.
I take Platner at his word about the tatoo. Mainers know he comes from a Jewish family and do not care. As I have said before those with a college education, even though they are not Marxists, have been indoctrinated with the view that everything is about economics. They do not take seriously the view that culture also matters. Character is part of culture. Collins beats Platner on character but she has enabled the hideous MAGA culture and has got to go.
He does not come from a Jewish family. One of his parents remarried, to a Jewish person.
Thanks for the clarification
Okay, but I thought that guilt by association / witch hunting stuff was dumb then, and I still think it is dumb now, so why should I go along with it? I am not obliged to continue other peoples' idiocy just because they sometimes vote the same way as I do.
"Either character matters or it doesn't. There's no middle ground."
Nonsense, there's tons of nuance here. For example, Trump is literally the President of the United States and commander-in-chief, while Platner would be just one of 100 senators. That's a crucial difference in terms of how much character matters.
Ah. So you’d definitely vote Trump should he choose to run for the Senate.
Finding “the difference” is what people do when they rationalize the things they otherwise condemn. There’s always differences. But what you fail to acknowledge is the similarities. We can’t have a man like Trump in government- except all other offices. Cmon.
I wouldn't vote for Trump for another office because I disagree with him on policy, there's no contradiction here!
But yes, it would be significantly less dangerous for Trump to be a senator than president.
Except of course you’re on record for criticizing his rhetoric and his ramblings. Less so on policy.
But hey -just dismiss a Nazi tattoo, crude remarks etc because he’ll only be 1 of 100!
I’d suggest you no longer examine or comment on personal choices anyone makes / because after all, only the president matters and there Trump is problematic. Senators we should ignore character ( because for this particular Democrat - he’d lose if character were at all important.
I totally believe you.
You comment a lot about the way people think. But suddenly.. it’s trivial.
How much should we as voters weigh:
a. Symbolic stuff like a Nazi tattoo that doesn't seem to be related to any particular friendliness to Nazi ideas or policies.
b. Character stuff like sexting with other women while he's married.
We might want to ask these questions in some abstract way, but of course they always get tangled up in this year's election and current politics, where people mostly abandon principles and go with their side.
This is just another way of saying senators are less consequential than presidents. I don’t see how it bears on the discussion.
"We need something with a hand and mouth connected to a beating heart to vote the party line" is decidedly different from whatever it is people wanted from Trump in any of his elections. Now that's a low bar. It's only there because of how little hope we have for individual Senators or Congress as an institution. It's also a risk. No one in fact is voting for a party line machine. We vote for people.
I agree it's not the same thing and that character doesn't simply matter or not matter (not that I'd want to campaign on that).
I'm glad I'm not in Maine.
And when it comes down to a single vote in the senate…? Will the character not matter then…?
I am struggling to think of a set of votes that Platner would make that are worse than the votes that *I know* Collins will make.
I'd rather be a winning hypocrite than a losing noble person.
This is a common take among Trump supporters, no?
Why assess Trump voters, when you clearly think it’s defensible.
The issue here remains if it’s ok to elect a man with poor judgment, who hides behind contrived excuses.
To be sure, I served for decades and witnessed unimaginable things. Doctors who perform surgery and look at a human body bleeding out experience trauma daily There are some people that handle it better than others. That’s not a judgement- it’s the truth. But here’s the thing- if your excuse is you’re suffering from the experience mentally- then work through those issues. When you’re ready to run for senate- go ahead. But this guy uses his service as a shield in a disingenuous way. I personally don’t believe he’s suffering. But that’s an uninformed view. So I think he is capable to run for senate. What it means is he has to be held accountable for his poor judgment. And by reading these comments I think people are both accepting he’s suffering mentally but simultaneously saying he’s fit for office. That’s impossible for me to square.
>This is a common take among Trump supporters, no?<
Probably. The difference is when Trump supporters employ hypocrisy in the cause of winning, the victorious candidates go on to gravely weaken America.
When Democrats employ hypocrisy in the cause of winning, the victorious candidates try to block or reverse this weakening.
Helpful heuristic: try to ascertain which candidate Xi Jinping prefers, and vote against that person.
The sad thing is that I think vanishingly few of them are hypocrites.
That's not consistent with my sense of your comments on SB. I don't recall you advocating for anyone to compromise on your priorities to win elections.
I think climate change is an extremely serious issue that we absolutely need to address.
And I'm absolutely fine with Talarico and Peltola extolling the greatness of their state's fossil fuel industry if that's what they need to do to win.
Once in power, though, I'd be beyond disappointed if, say, the Democrats as a whole decided to continue all of Trump's "climate" policies.
I'm glad to hear that. I have not had the impression you were that ideologically flexible. Good for you.
They did, and I don't stand by Platner. Fortunately I'm not in Maine so it doesn't matter.
But the GOP stood for control of the Senate to prevent a Great Replacement run by a combo of brown people and Jews from driving white people and their delectable pets into extinction and forcing children to transition without telling their parents. If they didn't win the Senate, the Managerial Class would nonspecifically destroy everything good about America.
I could concretely list what Collins has done to enable Trump and explain the good that would be done if her and just a handful of people didn't enable him from the Senate. This scenario is sane, ongoing, and stoppable.
The form matters. I don't like "Our side at all cost." Heck, she voted to impeach? Someone convince her to vote against him now. But it is not the same scenario. It must matter eventually if the form is driven by reason or madness, even if those of us inside are poor judges if which is which.
Bill Clinton would like a word....
>The Democrats just look like hypocrites. That's the problem. Either character matters or it doesn't.<
Who says character doesn't matter? OF COURSE it does. Always. That's not the issue here. The issue, rather, is: should candidate character matter enough to use one's vote to strengthen a political movement that is destroying all that is good about this country?
Sending Collins back to Washington strengthens Trumpism and MAGA. That for me is the bottom line. This dynamic doesn't mean it's impossible to criticize Platner for poor character.
When Platner says he didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol, I believe him, for the simple reason that *I myself* had never heard of this particular symbol even though I paid a lot more attention in history class than other students and am better read than most people.
If it were a swastika it’d be different, because even people who never paid attention in history class, never read, and only know about the Nazis from TV know that the swastika is a Nazi symbol. But the Nazis’ other symbols are obscure and known only to those who’ve studied Nazism in depth, which is only a tiny percentage of the population.
He didn’t know, because normal people don’t know. It’s that simple.
And the fact that he’s quoted as referring to it as “my totenkopf” in 2021 doesn’t change that? Poor judgement seems to be a clear thread through this man’s life, and not a trait that is desirable in a US senator.
Yeah I don't think he's a Nazi, I think he's a fucking clown.
I couldn’t agree more. And if there’s one thing the last ten years have shown me it’s that the line between clown and malevolent clown is a fine one that is often crossed.
One thing the last ten years have shown me is that a Republican-held Senate with Donald Trump as President can do terrific damage to the rule of law in my country.
Which laws have been subverted?
I know this is a dem talking point that never is accompanied by example. So I won’t hold my breath. But id love to be better informed if you’d supply the Supreme Court orders he defied.
I think Dems tried to take him off ballot in Maine ( pro democracy!) I think Dems leaked his taxes ( illegal). I think Dems contrived the election collusion angle. Biden defied court on student loans as well as bastardized immigration law
So if you are genuinely concerned about rule of law vs using it as a cudgel - I think you should recognize reality.
I’ll agree with you there which is exactly the problem with sending low character individuals to high office.
To my reading, your comments on SB have not implied you prioritize winning over your ideological preferences. The Nazi thing is the first time I recall you saying what amounts to, 'whatever, its more important to win'.
A while ago, I commented:
> Assuming he wins, which trajectory does Platner follow: A) Sinema and Fetterman, B) Schwarzzenegger, or C) Jesse "The Body" Ventura?
Many such cases in politics.
Is he quoted that way? I see a single anonymous allegation that no reputable news source has verified. Waving that around as some sort of proof is pretty suspect.
I didn’t know what a totenkopf is either, not until this campaign
And did you get it tattooed on yourself ?
I'm not sure what that proves? - the word mean's death head or something like in german. The tattoo artist might have called it that.
Even today, in 2026, with Google, I'm having a hard time tracking down what the actual SS-associated image was.
I find the the "I didn't know it was an SS tattoo" defense implausible to the point of being insulting. It makes the whole thing much worse than if he just said he was a dumbass edge lord kid and that he's learned better since then. Going with "I didn't know" makes it way more unforgivable.
I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, but I feel like I must live in a different world from you. Do you believe if you showed that symbol to ten people, most of them would immediately recognize where it's from? Or if you showed then ten skull pictures, they could pick out the Nazi one confidently? Because I had no clue and even now might struggle to pick it out of a lineup.
Yeah, this reminds me of a lot of the cancellation campaigns of the 2010s.
Is there some theory here that implies that he actually has any Nazi ideas or supports any Nazi-like policies? Because otherwise, it seems like this would be a dumb reason to vote against a candidate you otherwise preferred.
Humans have a tendency to assume that if we know something and have known it for a while, everyone else must know it to. Back when we lived in little bands or villages, this heuristic worked pretty well. Now that we live in sprawling societies of many millions with highly fragmented media, it’s a *terrible* heuristic.
Never assume that other people know what you know.
How many permanent tattoos have you gotten where you just throw a dart and pick it- no clue as to what it means.
If you are better read than most as you claim- I hope you can prove it by supporting your insinuation that getting tattoos on your body happens frequently where the recipient has zero idea of the significance. Please cite your references. I know hundreds of men that are tattooed and a total of zero have “no idea” what their inking means.
I don't hang around with the kind of people who gets tattoos, and even I once was with a guy who got a random tattoo on a whim (a Chinese character that he only had the artist's word to go on what it meant). I feel like it's pretty common?
Gotcha.
There’s “the kind of people” that you don’t associate with.
Because you judge them
Insinuating you’re a bit smarter/ a bit better.
But then offer up an uninformed opinion that “it’s common”. But I was with a guy that got one.
Sharp.
I don’t hang around people without tattoos. But I know how they think.
Jesus christ man, get off your fucking "holier than thou" schtick. I'm not judging anyone. It's just not common among the people I know.
I’m not holier than though. Man
“The kind of people “
I happen to know and like a lot of people with tattoos.
You don’t associate with them. I’m pretty sure I know what that means.
Too bad you don’t
Not sure what this ranting is all about. But I do hang around with lots of people with lots of tattoos, and not a small number of them got done on a whim. The idea of a drunk early-20s marine looking over a page full of skull tats and saying "that one" strikes me as incredibly believable.
Tbh I'm surprised that a Navy man wouldn't see that immediately. You never ran into a guy on base with fresh ink that just sorta happened on a random night out?
I’m not surprised by the dishonesty of a liberal looking to further bs narratives. But thanks.
Platner was in his 30’s. And not sure why you think he was drunk?
I guess that’s what you were told?
But yeah - I’ve known a hundred men with tattoos and none will ever say “ I’ve got no idea what it means”. Maybe the men I know- aren’t mindless?
I have no tattoos at all, because I think human bodies invariably look better without them. However, I understand that not everybody shares my aesthetic taste, so when talking to people who have tattoos, I don’t bring it up.
I have read plenty of stories of people getting tattoos carelessly and regretting them. It’s good that the guys in your social circle have a norm of selecting their tattoos carefully, but not everyone does. The consequences of getting a regrettable tattoo are rarely serious, so it hardly makes sense to be excessively judgmental about it.
There’s a whole youtube channel dedicated to reading Chinese tattoos on Westerns who apparently didn’t know what they were getting permanently etched on their skin
When I was 18 I went to 4 different tattoo parlors in my area and just looked through their books and on the images on the wall before picking a vaguely asian dragon tattoo. I never once bothered to look up the cultural or historical significance of the tattoo. I recently got it removed for the simple reason that I never actually loved it- I just wanted a tattoo when I was 18, and I thought that design was the one that looked the coolest.
This is not an uncommon decision making process for a young person. Platner was drinking with other marines when he got the tattoo. This notion that nobody gets permanent tattoos on a whim is absolutely absurd. I know better. You know better. We ALL know better. The existence of tattoo parlors in tourist destinations is precisely because the proprietors know that people who are having a great time are less inhibited and will do unwise things. The existence of an entire industry for tattoo removal is evidence that people often realize that the permanent tattoo they put on their bodies was not the most well thought out decision.
Support Platner or don't. I don't care. But this statement "If you are better read than most as you claim- I hope you can prove it by supporting your insinuation that getting tattoos on your body happens frequently where the recipient has zero idea of the significance" is just flat out ridiculous.
There are a huge number of people walking around in the world with ill-considered tattoos. I don't think that necessarily speaks well of their judgement, but it has little signifiicance other than that.
NO RAGRETS
ISTR reading somewhere that big black panther tattoos are a favorite because they can cover up other ill-considered tattoos in a way that looks good....
What about that he used the term blitzkrieg and other Nazi terms in his sexting
Those are fake (the ones using those words, that is).
The argument the Nazi tattoo is about Israel is so fucking absurd. Israel completely blinds people to normal reactions and the "Nazi tattoo is actual about Israel" talk is beyond borderline anti semitism. Ridiculous. One of MYs worst opinions. Planter hasn't even pretended to offer a reason why he has it. What about the nazis did he admire so much to get the tattoo and brag about it?
He said he was drunk and given everything else I believe that and that he’s just kind of dumb in general
If I woke up from a bender and discovered I had a Nazi tattoo, my first order of business would be removing the Nazi tattoo.
My comment from elsewhere:
People who think Platner is an “edge lord” clearly have never spent time with blue collar men. “Haha yea I was drunk in the Marines and I got this tattoo and it turns out it’s some Nazi shit isn’t that fucking wild bro? Here have another shot!”
Let’s leave aside Platner was born to wealth and attended an elite prep school, so his blue collar background isn’t that solid. And the fact of the matter is that an extremely small number of blue collar men who join the military get SS tattoos and then keep them for two decades. Platner is an atypical example.
I can’t read the man’s mind or heart, but it shows - at a minimum - a lack of judgment, and that is buttressed by many of the other issues he’s had, some of which are understandable and others less so.
I think people ought be honest with themselves about how they would view Platner if he was not a Democrat with (currently) decent polling with no alternative. If there was a Democratic alternative, I feel pretty confident that most of his supporters here would happily give him the Al Franken treatment.
Have I missed some news where he admitted he knew what it was for a while? My understanding is that he never knew exactly what it meant until he become famous.
Is that so hard to believe? Maybe I'm the weird one for thinking it isn't that surprising that someone could see a "cool" looking image and say "give me that" without any other thought?
Sure. There is a ton of hypocrisy in politics. But also, everyone does the "hold your nose and vote for the clown because at least he's your clown" thing in elections. If you are a Democrat in Maine, probably Platner is the clown for whom you are going to vote (perhaps while holding your nose), since the alternative is someone who's probably got better personal judgement but supports worse policies and helps keep worse people in power.
I’ve met guys like that and don’t disagree. But that’s a specific type of blue collar guy, not blue collar men in general. Plenty of blue collar men are types I’d be happy to have representing me. But the Platner type you describe is not someone I want in the US Senate!
Fair—that was classist of me
People like this deserve to be nowhere near the authority of running an Applebee's much less in the Senate
Running an Applebee’s is more authority than being a senator
No one like that should be in the Senate.
There's a lot of weird stereotyping here. I was in the army. Almost all the guys were blue collar. We all got drunk _a lot_. Very drunk ("snot-hanging drunk"), and often. Lots of guys got tattoos. (I could've, and had a plan to under certain circumstances, but didn't.) No one ever got a tattoo "on accident". No one got a tattoo drunk. Getting a tattoo takes a long time, often 2 or 3 sessions. They cost a lot of money for a low ranking soldier. People who got them put a lot of care into choosing what they got and where they put it.
Simple tattoos do not take multiple sessions. The tattoo I have was about as basic as Platners and took roughly 2 hours. I walked into the parlor, looked at the wall art for 30 minutes or so, and then sat down and got the tattoo. Multiple other people got full tattoos in the time I was there.
Why are so many of you completely determined to misrepresent what tattoos are, how people get them, and why they get them in this comment's section? I don't love Platner as a candidate. I think there are tons of reasons not to support him. But I don't have to lie about tattoos or make up facts to legitimately criticize him.
I've spent a lot of time with military veterans and blue collar types, frequently covered in ink. Yes, he's an edgelord.
Not that his entire candidacy is worth defending, but I feel it's important to note: there is a deep and mostly unknown (in the US) history of Croatian sympathy for/collaboration with Nazis, that an American visitor to a random Croatian tattoo parlor would be completely unaware of. In other words, random Croatian tattoo parlors are disproportionately likely to offer Nazi-ish insignia as options. I'm not a huge Platner fan, and the tattoo seemed like a huge red flag, but when I found out it happened on a bender in Croatia I was like oohhhhhh, that makes sense.
Would be great if Matt could follow this up with a deep-dive on the Ustaše before the general
See also: Ukrainian nationalists
Zoning angle: Maine's NIMBY-ism is preventing tattoo parlors from opening up, meaning that getting your shitty tattoo removed requires planning a trip to Portland or even Boston.
(I unironically would not be shocked if this was relevant, I'm not above "I really should fix this but it involves a long errand so I keep putting it off", granted none of my "really should fix this" involved fascist iconography so...)
Agree 100%. The lesson from the Nazi tattoo is that Platner is dumb and just doesn’t think deeply about things.
Thank you
Nah only smart people have all the correct Bernie opinions!
That's not an explanation. If you were drunk for days on end would it cross your mind to get a Nazi tattoo? Having done so would you keep it for nearly 20y?
Id even be somewhat okay if he were a generic war history guy saying “I like how disciplined the SS were” or something. But its literally a tattoo popularized by use of nazis who worked in concentration camps. You have to give SOMEthing other than “yeah when I'm drunk I love concentration camp guards” !??? This is all so ridiculous.
No, don't you see, Quinn. There's nothing to be learned about someone based on what they do when they are drunk. We can't hold anyone accountable for their actions if they've had a couple of beers too many? I still don't understand why drunk driving is a crime -- I mean, he was drunk so whatta ya gonna do? "I only slept with that woman because I was drunk" isn't going to work at home, and I don't know why Eric thinks it works here.
So you will vote against anyone, no matter what, if they got drunk and did something stupid? (I mean, stupid, not criminal or horrific, like killing some poor kid while driving.)
I'm only responding to the thread, not making a meta-argument. And Eric is trying desperately to explain away the tattoo with "well, he was probably drunk", which I find to be ... less than convincing, and even less convincing as to the idea that it doesn't say *anything* about Platner.
Getting drunk and doing something stupid is not disqualifying. Nor is even what Platner did (assuming it was because he was drunk, even though I don't think that is his argument). But Eric's defense is off base.
I'm in Florida. I don't have a vote in Maine and I'm glad of that fact. The fact that Collins voted to impeach Trump is enough for me to say she is one of the good Republicans, regardless of the rest of her votes. And Platner seems like an asshole. So a tough call.
I think you have probably not spent that much time around the kind of guy who was in the Marines and then became an oyster farmer. No, obviously he didn’t intentionally get a Nazi tattoo and also no I’m not saying this reflects well on him — it doesn’t! Personally I think he’s pretty dumb and honestly I’m not even sure I’d vote for him over Collins if I lived in Maine. But the idea that he’s a Nazi or an “edge lord” or whatever is the most out of touch shit I’ve heard.
I was enlisted in the military for 23 years and saw a lot of dumb Marines and others from various branches do dumb shit. That’s all forgivable IMO, including the tattoo.
The problem isn’t that he did something dumb on leave long ago, it’s that he kept the mistake for two decades, lied about it, and only got rid of it a few months ago when it became a political problem.
Getting the tattoo (and keeping it) makes him seem dumb and reckless. I do not think he’s a Nazi. But I do think he’s dumb, reckless, and opinionated in a bombastic way. Doesn’t seem to have good character. Probably entertaining enough to hang out with. But not someone who has any business in the US senate (I would say this even if I generally agreed with him factionally). And even if he was drunk when he got the tattoo, he wasn’t (I hope) drunk for the entire 20 years he kept it.
I have done about $80M+ worth of contract work with the Marines. You think he accidentally got a highly specific nazi tattoo? That's even more absurd than pretending he's just an edge lord and won't admit it.
You must not hear anything if you think that people that judge a Nazi tattoo are too judgmental.
Take a deep breath. Imagine a republican in Florida has a kkk tattoo. And then say it’s weird people judge him. Seriously?
You apparently are ok w bigots as long as they’re democrats
The number of people who are now certain Platner is a nazi based on that tattoo is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than the number of people who knew that tattoo was a nazi symbol prior to articles being written about it last October.
Exactly.
It’s not like he has a swastika on his chest. He got a random skull and crossbones tattoo in Croatia. Which he covered up in October.
It's actually worse tbh to get a more specific nazi tattoo than a less specific one imo. Esp as it, again, was popularized by concentration camp guards and the SS. He absolutely knew what he was doing. You think he never thought twice about what it meant ever again? Beyond absurd.
On what basis do you say he absolutely knew what he was doing? If you showed a hundred young men a selection of tattoos and asked them to pick a badass one, you think none of them would choose that skull with ignorance of its origin?
Yes, I think it’s very possible he accidentally got a totenkopf tattoo. And I think if he knew what it meant he wouldn’t have *released a video of him dancing shirtless after starting a campaign*
All I know is that we're six months into this, and we're still talking about the same tattoo. Which is effectively equivalent to "this is the worst thing he's done." I'm pretty comfortable with that.
Your theory of the case is that he is a fan of the Nazis? Isn’t “it looks badass, and he didn’t bother to remove it” a plausible alternative?
Yes my theory is that he spent years posting about military history on reddit and didn't remove it for nearly 20y. Your theory is someone you made up in your mind because it's more convenient to believe it
Sorry, just want to make sure I understand your position. You think he’s a Nazi?
Most people have no clue that this particular skull motif is a Nazi symbol. Everybody knows the swastika, but the other Nazi symbols are known only to those who’ve studied the Nazis in depth.
but what about all the other stuff, about women in particular? It's pretty gross. And there's plenty of other stuff to get turned off by. Plus the sexting story just broke a couple of days ago. Is he sending pics of his private parts around? Is he another Anthony Wiener? He's either debilitatingly stupid, has major mental health issues, is drunk all day every day, or jsut a terrible person. None of those options means he should be governing anyone.
He doesn’t sound like Anthony Weiner. It doesn’t sound like it was non-consensual sexting.
None of this stuff means he should be governing - but none of it means that it’s better to give Susan Collins another six years to pretend to be shocked by Trump.
The fact that anyone is looking at this stuff, setting it against the possibility of Trump controlling the Senate for two more years, and saying "hmm, I'm not sure" (let alone "I oppose this guy now that he's the nominee") tells me a lot of things about the Slow Boring commentariat. None of it flattering.
I feel like I want to post some variant that meme about secular atheists trying to use Christian beliefs to call out Christians despite having nothing but contempt for them otherwise. The set of people who will forgive absolutely every personal flaw from Trump because power is all that matters would like to know why liberals aren't sticking to their stated values and rejecting Platner.
It's fine to prefer Platner to Collins but she did vote to impeach Trump. I'm not super familiar with her whole record but I suspect you're being unfair to her.
The knock on Susan Collins is that the Dems can count on her vote when they don't need it. She's fantastic at voting against the Republicans when they have enough votes to pass something without her or when there are enough defectors that she's not the decisive vote. She's never been the *reason* the Republicans don't get their way.
Nobody is being unfair to her. She's a reliable SCOTUS vote among many other things. That's all that matters.
But it is weird the story is about sexting and not about having an affair. I have no idea what he's actually doing; it's far too early to say it whether it was consensual or non consensual. And it doesn't matter to me since I had already decided he's too much a sleazebag before the latest revelation. I wasn't going to vote for Collins but this guy should not be representing my state.
Literally just saying he’s not a Nazi
Then all mistakes can be similarly excused for all politicians.
Susan Collins made mistakes on votes. So? You can excuse her and cast your vote.
I am old enough to remember when democrats claimed that republicans were uneducated idiots and mocked them as such. Now you’re fine with idiots representing you. Hmm
Literally just saying he’s not a Nazi
He is though
We're literally electing Senators to cast votes. That's the whole job. So no, a mistake on votes is not the same. You should vote the candidate who you think will cast the votes you want them to cast because that's the literal job.
This isn't that hard to grasp.
Seems less a defense, than an indictment.
What I do know, is that Dems need to come together over sensible policy and sensible candidates. Both boxes checked.
Not sure he does that.
I’m not defending him, I’m literally just saying he’s not a Nazi
Didn’t think you were on either count.
Prior to the news breaking about the tattoo if you'd been shown pictures of one hundred skull and crossbone tatoos could you have pointed to the right one and said, yes, *that's* the totenkopf.
I couldn't have.
Maybe he should have removed it immediately upon learning its origin but people are funny. That leads to the secondary question: does the tattoo he got while drunk provide evidence that he has Nazi sympathies? And if not, man, what are we arguing about?
I knew what a totenkopf was in high school.
Platner, based on his Reddit history, was extremely knowledgeable about military tattoo policy. He specifically complained about the Marine crackdown on tattoos (which at the time was due to controversial tattoos and people getting kicked out of the service). He was prevented him for rejoining the Marines due to arm tattoos which is why he went to the Army instead. And he’s a self-described military history buff. In the Reddit posts he debates with others about scout snipers getting SS tattoos in which he argued that getting the lightning-bolt tattoos were a cultural thing within the Matine scout sniper community rather than proof of white-supremacist ideology.
It’s simply not credible he didn’t know the meaning of his own tattoo until last fall. At least, Lots of military people would have said something.
All that said, I don’t think he’s a Nazi or SS sympathizer, much less a white supremacist, so I’m still on the side of strategically voting for him (again, in spirit, I’m not a Maine voter) in the same way I’m for FDR helping the USSR in WW2. But if it was any Republican but Trump in the WH, my calculus would be different and I’m not going to defend or make excuses or downplay Platner’s actions to be a good team player regardless of whether his motivations- which we can’t know - can be attributed to being really effing stupid (more likely) or whatever other reason one wants to imagine (lots of possibilities).
If there was a viable D alternative we all know and ought to admit we would throw Platner under the bus for that alternative. I’ll state categorically that the only reason I would vote for Platner is the lack of a viable D alternative. There isn’t an alternative and so we have to make a choice between strategy which requires sacrificing principles for the team, or holding our principles. I think either option is entirely justified and don’t begrudge anyone’s choice, especially those who choose differently than me, but I’m not going to drink the koolaid and hand-wave away his problems or create the most charitable explanation for his actions and behavior and try to gaslight others into supporting him.
You make good points the best of which is that sometimes one has to take actions one otherwise would prefer not to.
We really really need this seat.
As the slogan in the Louisiana governor election had it a long time ago. "Vote for the crook; it's important. :
Justice Aileen Cannon is all anyone needs to say.
Collins will have concerns about her before voting yes if Trump needs her to.
" In the Reddit posts he debates with others about scout snipers getting SS tattoos in which he argued that getting the lightning-bolt tattoos were a cultural thing within the Matine scout sniper community rather than proof of white-supremacist ideology."
This seems like a (ill-considered, but logical from Platner's perspective) justification for not concealing the tattoo - it's just a cool badass symbol of camaraderie and I'm not gonna remove it out of stubbornness because blacking it out would be acknowledging it's bad. Obviously still really dumb.
This is actually the opposite of dumb. Being thoughtful about "who is a actually white supremacist" rather than indexing on symbols is actually an appropriate way to think about this.
They should demand better, but as a matter of the 2026 general election, they can't demand anything and it's too late.
I'm glad I'm not eligible to vote in Maine.
This wasn't a fait accompli, there was a primary!
And I would have voted for Platner over whatever is the name of the 90 year old governor! Turrible, just turrible.
I'm not aware of him bragging about his Nazi tattoo, at least not in those terms. I find it very believable he wasn't aware of the symbolism, and thought it was just a skull & crossbones.
I bet MLM people (Amway, Herbalife, etc) love you.
Did you know what the totenkopf looked like before the news here broke? Not me.
Drunken young Marines -- I mean, like, wow, who could imagine.
This is a dickish response to a good faith comment
I'm just sick of the witch hunts. I'm tired of people who act like the most cynical, least charitable interpretation is obviously true & anyone who disagrees is naive or complicit. It's stupid, and people who do it in public should be called stupid, in public, as often as it takes.
Platner's not a Nazi. If he was, he would've recognized the totenkopf & wouldn't have tattooed it on his chest. I am begging everyone to just think about it for five minutes.
Feeling rather sheltered that I don’t recall that word, ever.
I mean I know enough German to know the word must mean Death head or Killing Head but other than that I’ve not heard of it until this
I'm Jewish and I had no idea what a totenkopf was until this controversy. Maybe I'm just dumb, totally possible! But for what it’s worth I am very well-educated--B.A. in Political Science and History followed by a J.D.
I never came across the symbol in all my years of study, so I'm not buying the idea being put forth by opportunists that it's basically a swastika.
I also have a lot of tattoos, and my reason for getting almost all of them was "I think that would look cool and good."
All this to say, I believe Platner when he says he got the tattoo for similar reasons and had no idea the symbol was used by the Nazis, and I think Matt is correct that this is a “scandal” that’s been ginned up by people who don’t like Platner’s stated opinions on Israel.
I’ll add that I feel no particular compulsion to defend Platner. The strongest endorsement I’ll give him is that I would absolutely, positively vote for him over Susan Collins, because I don’t think he would look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resume and life’s work and conclude that guy should be in charge of huge swaths of American public health. But I definitely find the adultery off putting, and my ideal candidate would have a far more robust track record on policy questions, and a far less robust track record on Reddit.
The tattoo thing is complete and utter nonsense, though.
This is the correct take
Matt is atypically off on this. The modal post I see on Bluesky is both anti-Platner AND somewhere on the spectrum between Netanyahu is a war criminal destroying Israel to Israel deserves destruction and plenty of these people talk about the Nazi tattoo. They're not all AIPAC bots by a long shot!
I don't even like these people generally, but they are sincere.
Am I the only one that assumes that all Marines have some form of ill-considered racist macho tough guy Punisher tattoo?
Especially after their ninth shot of JD.
It seems like he exposes hypocrisy on the left. You can paint picture where a guy having a weird one after doing some war with his bros got a metal-ass looking tattoo and eventually came to realize how sketchy it was without hastening to do anything about it. And you can paint a picture of a guy who had some marital troubles and put himself out there as available.
The problem is that his supporters are the same people who would never have given a shred of benefit of the doubt to anyone over the last decade, but instead would have immediately buried them as Nazis or sexual predators.
May be true about some of his supporters, but it says nothing about his actual feelings, opinions, or motivations. Give him grace or not, but regardless an actual bona fide Nazi that votes with the Democrats against Trump is better than Susan Collins
Yeah, it's possible to be critical of Netanyahu and also think that the Nazis are beyond the pale because of the Holocaust. Nazi symbolism is just straight old-fashioned anti-Semitism. This shouldn't be hard.
Everyone has such perfect knowledge they didn't have before the answer was handed them on a silver platter. I don't know about you, but prior to the news, I couldn't have picked the totenkopf out of a bunch of skull and crossbones for the life of me.
So, I agree, this shouldn't be hard. For very different reasons than you say, though.
I'm glad you're in this thread challenging people on this. I don't think I would like Platner, but the "Nazi tattoo" argument is driving me crazy. The totenkopf is not a recognizable symbol. It's a skull. There's a lot of douchebags out there with skull tattoos.
It was literally the symbol from the "Are we the baddies?" sketch from over a decade ago. He also had years before he ran for office to have it removed. Combine that with all of his weird edgelord behavior, this is a pattern of behavior of being an absolute moron and having no personal standards.
Nice reference. I'll repeat my question: prior to the news could *you* have accurately identified it as the Nazi tattoo? Maybe you could have (good for you); I couldn't have, and I suspect your average person couldn't have either.
In the meantime, if he's so obviously bad, why do so many people in Maine seem to like him?
Yes, I would have known what that was. According to people in his inner circle, he also knew what it was for years and referred to it as a totenkopf before he even ran for office.
I know a good amount about the Holocaust and am descended from survivors and I'd never even heard the word much less knew what it looked like
I hate to break it to you but online is not real life and that sketch is not exactly "more cowbell" in terms of how recognizable it is to random dudes.
One of the other controversies was a long history of inflammatory reddit posts.
>Combine that with all of his weird edgelord behavior, this is a pattern of behavior of being an absolute moron<
Collins absolutely isn't a moron. Unfortunately, she puts her considerable smarts to work in the service of a movement that is raping the country.
I'll take a dumbruck who will oppose MAGA in Senate votes 90% of the time over the Trumpist handmaiden any day of the week.
I mean, now I know it's all over the Indiana Jones movies, which I've seen probably a hundred times, and I didn't immediately recognize it. The initial tattoo I can understand. To me it's his behavior afterward that's been an issue - an absolute unwillingness to own up and take responsibility that doesnt bode well in the future.
Wait, there’s a symbol in that video? I certainly wouldn’t recognize it.
Any decent person, having learned they’d accidentally gotten a Nazi tattoo, would get it covered at the first opportunity. He waited years, and didn’t cover it until he started running for Senate. In addition to retweeting antisemites and going on antisemitic podcasts. I don’t know whether he’s a Nazi, but he’s nowhere near as averse to Nazis as he should be.
>Any decent person, having learned they’d accidentally gotten a Nazi tattoo, would get it covered at the first opportunity.<
That sounds a stretch. I imagine there are "decent" people out there who might not get it taken off immediately because of fear of a painful procedure, or because they plan to keep it covered, or because of cost, or some other factor, or a mix of several reasons.
Getting a tattoo covered is as simple as getting a different tattoo on top of it. And obviously he doesn’t mind getting tattoos. You’re embarrassing yourself with this nonsense.
I’m not even moderately, embarrassed by my perfectly reasonable comment; and the procedure you described does not sound simple to me.
Nah tattoo removal is expensive and, I think, painful.
I've had a tattoo removed and the doctor that did it injected lidocaine beforehand and it STILL hurt, not to mention the soreness and tenderness after the lidocaine wore off. And the cost was in the many thousands of dollars.
The lack of time so many of these commenters are putting into thinking about this situation from any other perspective than condemnation is truly astounding. Everyone is acting like getting a tattoo is something you take a graduate level course in where you spend months REALLY studying what tattoo to get and what's it's historical and cultural meanings are, and then turning around and acting like you can remove a tattoo as easily as rinsing the smell of the beach out of your hair after you get home. It's really wild to witness.
You don't know whether he's a Nazi?
The evidence is mixed.
I don't know about you either, but I know about me. I well knew what that symbol was. I don't think I'm particularly special.
You are quite special.
I'm viewing it as a trolley problem. Pull the level and kill one person on the tracks rather than let the train take its course and kill 6.
Almost nothing matters about Platner, other than he will vote with dems and gives dems a chance to win senate control against Trump. That's all I need. And, I don't get to vote for Platner. If Mainers love him, its good enough for me.
>My POLICY views are similar to Platner’s on a lot of issues, but come on.<
My POLICY views aren't all that similar to Platner's. I'm not a fan of MFA, and I don't want to break up Amazon. But Susan Collins is a vote to empower MAGA. C'mon!
>The Nazi tattoo is bad because the Nazis themselves are very bad!<
It's 100% true that Nazi tattoos, like Nazis themselves, are very bad.
It's also 100% true that sending Susan Collins back to the Senate will have vastly more negative consequences for my country and my planet that electing a man who once got a Nazi tattoo when he was out getting shitfaced with his buddies.
He's the nominee. pound sand
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.
Nobody can seriously believe Platner is pro-Nazi though, right? Like, he absolutely does seem like the kind of guy who would drunkenly get a tattoo, later find out it’s a Nazi tattoo, find that funny and brag (probably drunkenly) about how ridiculous it is, and also not get it removed because he just doesn’t care that much. Sure, that kind of guy is also not who I want in the senate. But he’s not a Nazi.
I doubt he's pro-Nazi. He's probably just an idiot.
Exactly. Thank you.
A committed national socialist ideologue? Nah. But the man sported an SS tattoo for two decades, has a history of racist tweets, and is hostile to the only Jewish state. If you told me those three facts about any random person, I’d presume they hate Jews.
That’s what happens when you take a few carefully chosen facts about a person and forget everything else about them.
Is there a counter I should be aware of? Has he been demonstrating solidarity with Jews in some way that hasn’t been reported?
Slow Boring: we need candidates that share the same values as the broader US population.
*Maine does exactly that*
Slow Boring: Not that way!!
Loves Bernie tho
He walked around with that thing on his chest for twenty years - well after he was aware of the symbolism - and only covered it when it became a political liability. If I was a big enough idiot to accidentally get a racist tattoo, I’d be mortified and RUN to get it removed as soon as I found out.
How many tattoos have you ever gotten, and how many have you ever covered up? If those answers sum to less than ten, then I suspect you shouldn’t assume that you have any idea how this guy thinks about tattoos.
I never got a tattoo, realized that it was a symbol of a paramilitary organization tasked with the systematic elimination and murder of multiple entire ethnic groups, and then was like..."eh fuck it, it's kinda sweet".
https://stereogum.com/1726345/lil-waynes-new-face-tattoo-doesnt-mean-what-he-thinks-it-means/news
I think you underestimate how dumb some people are
Ha, that may be so. It’s pretty plausible that he’s just a moron with terrible judgment and impulse control. But I think, as with Alito’s flags, people are also justified in drawing them other conclusions.
So your theory is that he is a Nazi?
I don't think he's a card carrying national socialist. I certainly believe he's mildly anti semitic, and I believe for some people on the left that's a reason to vote for him. And all together I find his candidacy concerning
Unironically I wonder if the gap in how people perceive this could be based on how seriously you take tattoos in the first place.
I am not a tattoo guy, and everytime I have had the idle thought of getting a tattoo it was something that at the time I cared about deeply and wanted a tattoo to represent that. (I actually remember when I was a teenager, my mom asked me what I thought about tattoos, and she told me that in college in the 80s she considered getting a Woody Allen tattoo and in retrospect, is glad she didn't; that scared me away from tattoos way more than any "you'll never get hired" scolding did, so if that was her aim, great parenting on her part.)
But some people get a *lot* of tattoos. Maybe their bad tattoos are closer to my bad tweets. A lot of people who I saw become more skeptical after the tattoo had been willing to shrug off the Reddit posts that were unveiled a few days before. I think voters on the ground thought of the two as closer together (and also did not think highly of the people trying to make these a campaign issue, which could also be what leads people to shrug off this round of scandals too).
"maybe their bad tattoos are closer to my bad tweets" is actually a TERRIFIC perspective on this, and an interesting analogy I'd been wracking my brain for but couldn't land on.
It’s the not caring that much about having a Nazi tattoo on his body that’s the problem.
Didn’t he use Nazi language when sexting? Combine that with the tattoo and why on Earth wouldn’t we think he’s pro-Nazi?
Those screen shots of the texts going around twitter are fake. As far as we know, Platner has never actually offered to "blitzkrieg that ass."
Lonely Island's controversial follow up to "Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song)"
"Pro-Nazi" seems like a very high bar to clear when (last I checked, sigh) everybody basically agreed that Nazis were the bad guys.
It's a lower bar to clear to say that Platner is an enormous dipshit who is not qualified to sit in the Senate, and for me (ymmv) we don't need to clear the higher bar. It's just not very interesting.
Link?
The Nazis targeted and killed lots of people, not just the Jews. Gypsys, gay & lesbians, the disabled, mixed-race people. Not everything is about Israel, Gaza and the Jews.
What does that have to do with what I said?
I'm agreeing with you. Lots of reasons to hate Nazis and some of them have nothing to do with Israel or Jewish people.
Got it. Fwiw, my wife and I are both Jewish (though you couldn't know that). My wife believes that the tattoo is evidence that Platner is antisemitic.
The guy has a Nazi tattoo, is incredibly critical of Israel, and is a stated fan on an antisemitic podcast. How much grace are we supposed to give him? If we heard that Susan Collins had once had dinner with Nick Fuentes, it’d be used as proof of her secret Nazi inclinations. But somehow the guy with a literal Nazi tattoo deserves our discernment?
I'm not giving him grace. I think he's an idiot, though I suspect more in the edgelord sense than the legitimate antisemite sense.
Many Russians and Ukrainians…the Nazi’s went east too.
Yeah, I honestly don't even know much about Platner's views on Israel and I still think the Nazi tattoo is disqualifying.
Did Elon Musk give a Nazi salute? In that moment, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But all the other things he did cries out that he has fascistic tendencies so maybe the salute he gave was probative.
Platner gets a tattoo possibly for innocent (albeit boneheaded) reasons and maybe not. But, like with Elon, don't you need at least some other evidence that he has Nazi sympathies? And is there such evidence? Folks, the answer is "no." The tattoo is a synecdoche for . . . nothing.
You are of course free to feel strongly what you feel, but if we give up controls of our government to Trump/MAGA this easily then we'll get what we deserve.
I don't care if Platner is or isn't a Nazi. I think that it's bad for the Democratic Party's national brand to throw their support behind someone with a Nazi tattoo, and that it would be pressing to win a fight while ceding strength in the larger war.
And I respect your position. But I have to say this with all honesty: screw "the larger war." We're fighting to save our nation from these goons.
I stand with Churchill with how he saw the alliance with Stalin and the USSR:
"If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
The Democrats in general, and factional, anti-establishment leftists in particular, are not acting like they are "fighting to save our nation from these goons". They are not making tough choices and compromising to maximize the chances of winning. They are putting their pet priorities first. If they were fighting to save our nation from these goons, they would have pushed for Jared Golden.
Right, and I think, tactically, it will hurt us in ALL the races for the midterms to have the reputation as the hypocritical party that backed a guy with a Nazi tattoo. We don't just need to win in Maine, we need to win a lot of races in November across the country, where there are a lot of swing voters susceptible to the message that both sides are bad so they may as well not vote or go for Republicans.
It's not about my morals. It's about how I think this makes us look nationally.
Standard response from Candidate X in State Y when asked, "I'm not interested in what's happening in Maine; that's an issue for the voters in Maine. I care about the voters in State Y and how they're suffering under Trump's corrupt and failed policies yadda yadda yadda."
We in the chattering classes are all wrapped up in this but I guarantee that 99% of the voters outside of Maine will never give a damn if they know about it at all.
I disagree, but I respect this position
He doesn't have the tattoo anymore.
That feels irrelevant to the point.
Well, the alternative is that when we find out someone had an offensive tattoo, we're honor bound to drum them out of the party, which when I say it aloud sounds absurd.
I agree, and the time to litigate that was the primary.
The other evidence being his long history of Reddit comments, his vehement criticism of Israel and “Jewish money”, and the fact that he is an avid fan of an antisemitic podcast? Come on Marc, you’re smarter than this.
Yes, back when he was an asshole he made asshole comments on Reddit; he's faced up to that to my satisfaction.
"Vehement criticism of Israel." You want to hear vehement criticism of Israel? Go to Israel and listen to Israelis. Israel is a big boy country; it can take criticism.
"Jewish money"? You're going to need to show documentation on that one.
Anti-semitic podcast fan? Well, yeah, he did go on a podcast but "avid fan"? Again, [citation needed].
This is so transparently motivated reasoning, you are bending over backwards to give Platner the benefit of the doubt because he has a D next to his name.
I’m frankly pretty disgusted with some of these defenses of him, and I don’t know how you can pretend that he has a completely different character now than he did in the past. I see zero evidence for that.
I am motivated to capture the Senate and save the country from the degradations of Trump and MAGA so I'm prepared to overlook things that otherwise I might draw the line at. Platner has not crossed the line into the unacceptable for me.
Still, I'd like to see some documentation for accusations you're making.
The hypocrisy of progressive Democrats (Sirota etc.) just drives me nuts. Imagine a Republican candidate for federal office with a Nazi tattoo, a Reddit history of racist & genuinely sexist comments (blaming women for being raped, etc.), a DUI (this is surprisingly underreported), and now apparently sexting with 6-12 women (the number is from the Platner campaign this morning!) People would be foaming at the mouth if he had generic rightwing views.
I don't think Platner's secretly a Nazi, but I think he is probably a knucklehead. If you don't think that's a real issue, I'd just point you in the direction of Fetterman- supposedly progressive Blue Collar Coded Dude who has some genuinely bad votes now that he's in office, and appears to have genuine mental health struggles.
Not to uh reveal what state I live in, but I'm just going to write in Margaret Chase Smith and call it a day
Edit: I read Lisa C's comment's and I strongly agree with it. Even if Platner wins this particular seat, the damage to the Democratic brand nationally is pretty bad. 'Your party has the Senator with a Nazi tattoo and a bunch of racist & sex scandals' is just a terrible look. People saying 'well he's better than Collins' have the strategic mind of a goldfish
This would be more salient if the national Democratic brand wasn't already trash, even among their own voters. And it isn't trash because of upstarts like Platner, but because of the milquetoast moderates who have been in control of the party for more than a decade now, and in particular their perceived fecklessness as the the only vehicle for opposition to Trump.
Platner is pulling a Trump in that he has recognized and is now riding populist discontent against both his own party and Republican governance to political success. It may be hypocritical to only support it when it's your guy (or at least not the other guy) but that's more a result of the incentives of primaries, FPTP, and the various other ways our winner-take-all system distort our politics.
I don't fully buy MY's take that Mills was a fake-good candidate because she was old and not very popular as governor. Mamdani and Platner have learned from Trump that running against your own party in their own primary can be very successful when your own party is quite unpopular and ineffective. MY's take is based on the reasoning that you need to convince moderates to vote for you to win; Mamdani, Trump, and maybe now Platner's strategy is motivating people who are unlikely to vote to come out for you, specifically, because of this vague anti-establishment sentiment, along with some people from the opposite side who are also motivated by that sentiment (like the Trump to Mamdani voters we have seen reported on). It's irrational, but that seems like it just is the vibe in US politics now and likely going forward.
Mamdani didn't win a purple state.
Neither would Platner.
"And it isn't trash because of upstarts like Platner, but because of the milquetoast moderates who have been in control of the party for more than a decade now"
You can't be serious. It's trash because of far left policies that drive normies away.
Stuff like tolerance for illegal immigration, crime and biological males playing women's sports.
The Democratic brand is already a millstone around the neck of every candidate running in a state to the right of Pennsylvania. Your grand strategy is to turn around the Democratic Party's national brand by all but guaranteeing another two years of Trump judges to give Republican election-tampering and criminality a pass? I know you have a thing about whataboutism, but why do you think Pennsylvania voters are going to care about some guy in Maine when Mike Lee is out here publicly cheering when Democrats get attacked and killed? I honestly don't think anybody outside of Maine and a handful of very online individuals such as ourselves are paying attention.
***PROBABLY*** a knucklehead? Try 1,000% certifiably a knucklehead. That's at least part of his appeal/"charm". Unfortunately. His candidacy is Exhibit A in support of the contention that the Party system is badly broken.
Susan Collins voted for the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump in 2021. I figure there is a non-zero chance (maybe 10%, 20%?) Trump endorses Platner.
Trump as stupid as he is is not that stupid. He knows Collins is the most important Senator in the whole body for him: A Republican from a blue state who will always be there for him when she's most needed. The contrast with Cassidy couldn't be clearer: vote for Trump's conviction and find yourself tossed aside for another MAGA person in a deep red state.
Surprisingly, this is one area where I have a lower opinion of Trump than you appear to have. I don't think Trump cares AT ALL about the Republican Party except to the extent he can wear it as a skin suit over his personal pursuits. I don't think he sees Collins any differently than Cassidy, Cornyn, Mamdani or Platner. They are all just enemies to him, some near and some far.
Yes. He sees everyone that way insofar as he doesn't think anyone is capable of being a "true" friend or "true" believer. He doesn't believe anyone has more integrity than he does.
Trump was perfectly happy to nuke the Republicans in Georgia to make it clear who's boss.
We shall see
I do wonder if Platner has a narrow lane to do this a la Mamdani’s by-most-conventional-accounts-successful visit to the White House.
The "my opponent was mean to you, dear leader" lane is very, very wide and runs straight into the White House (with an exit for the Justice Department). The more I think about it, I wouldn't bet against it at even a 30% chance he endorses Platner.
Did she vote for John thune? Did she confirm most of Trump’s cabinet picks? She’s voted with republicans 90% since 2024 in a light blue state. She’s going to lose. Her age is another factor.
None of which is relevant to my comment.
It’s 0%. For all the reasons I listed.
Cornyn was a much more reliable Trump supporter and that didn't save him (albeit in the primary). I'd gladly take the other side of your "0% chance" bet.
Cornyn isn’t in a light blue state. Tx hasn’t elected a Dem to the senate since the 80s.
I don't like Graham Platner's views on Israel, it's true, but I don't think he's a Nazi, and I haven't seen anyone claiming that he is. But the Nazi tattoo - and his subsequent disingenuousness over it - shows something: that's he's an edgelord who found it funny to play around with Nazi symbols until they became an embarrassment to him.
And - to turn the argument around - I don't think that progressives would accept that from a figure whose politics they disapproved of, whereas I can't frankly imagine moderates accepting it from a figure whose politics they approved of. I do think it is the progressives who are behaving hypocritically in this - another example of Gaza as the Omnicause which trumps everything else.
People who think Platner is an “edge lord” clearly have never spent time with blue collar men. “Haha yea I was drunk in the Marines and I got this tattoo and it turns out it’s some Nazi shit isn’t that fucking wild bro? Here have another shot!”
Why should someone with such poor judgment be a senator? If I got drunk and woke up with a Nazi tattoo, my first order of business would be removing it, not bragging about it.
Is his judgment as poor as someone who voted for every member of Trump’s cabinet other than Hegseth?
Because the 2 party system traps us into "well he's not Collins and the possibility of Trump doing really evil shit might come down to 1 senator"
Not saying he should. He probably shouldn’t! Literally just saying he’s not a Nazi.
That's what I said in the first place! He's definitely not a Nazi. But I called him an "edgelord" - which is far from being an actual Nazi - and you disagreed. But your account of him here makes him sound exactly like an edgelord - in other words, a person who says or does outrageous things, not because he believes in them, but because he likes the shock it causes. Because if he wasn't, he would have had the tattoo removed immediately, not spent time joking and laughing about it.
Now it's true that - as you correctly intuited! - I haven't spent much time socializing with blue-collar men. (Not that Platner is actually blue-collar by background, but that's another matter.) But to me, you simply make it sound that blue-collar male culture is a culture that is very open to edgelord behavior, and that is a problem when someone from that culture wants to appeal to the broader electorate, to many of whom that behavior is disqualifying. And again, I don't think progressives would accept that excuse from anyone but another progressive.
Fair points. I think conceptually the difference is “edge lord” has an intentionality and even intelligence to it, the goal is to provoke. Whereas I suspect Platner’s behavior in this realm and others is more just impulsiveness bordering on being somewhat dumb. Like he really just does not think these things through.
That is a pretty small motte you are in.
He's a prep school kid larping as blue collar.
I guess he was larping as a Marine grunt in the middle of firefights in Ramadi and Fallujah over three tours. Typical prep school kid behavior.
Plenty of prep school kids go into the military. It doesn't mean they didn't come from money. There's a particular type of rich kid who adopts the aesthetic of a stereotype of the working class because it lets them be an edgelord. It's not that far off from guys who get white Rasta dreads or wear berets in college.
"Plenty of prep school kids go into the military." Lol, no
Do you deny that Platner went to a prep school or grew up with money? He's not working class.
This is the correct take
Why is this a reason for him to be a senator?
It's obviously not, but you know the reason for him to be a senator and you've said a hundred times that Dems winning the Senate doesn't matter to you, so there's nothing to discuss.
Democrats do not need to win the Senate so badly as to elect someone of such character as Platner.
I disagree, but I also think it's about what the country needs, not just the Democrats. Every Trump judicial nominee is a crack in the foundation of the Republic.
Trump will be dead very soon, chill. We don't have to elect open commies.
Did I say that? No.
There’s some ambiguity in what it means to be an edgelord. It goes from being playfully transgressive to a limited audience and oblivious to greater consequences to deliberately provoking those consequences
Fwiw I think edgelord or whatever correlates closer to his posting but also like being in the military has that humor style from what I pick up
The politics are relevant to how you judge the tattoo. If someone with Nazi-adjacent politics had this tattoo, you’d have more questions about whether they were an actual Nazi. I think this blog made the analogy earlier—like when you see Jordan Peterson having communist propaganda posters decorating his house no one thinks he’s a secret communist, but if you had Hasan Piker with those same decorations you would wonder about it.
If a candidate's tattoo had the N-word, progressives would be outraged, no? Even if it was a moderate Dem who doesn't seem racist?
The N-word is widely recognizable and doesn’t have alternate meanings (even then where there is an alternate meaning people would understand—like there is a running joke that a very harmless Chinese phrase is pronounced like the n-word), whereas many militaries throughout history have used a skull-and-crossbones insignia and you’d have to be a pretty serious history buff to recognize this specific one as being the Nazi one.
Maybe in Mississippi!
I feel like a see a bit of this from some anti-Platner people :
Motte: Platner had an offensive tattoo for a long time (this is true)
Bailey: Platner is a Nazi
In my experience its the opposite - at any criticism of the tattoo the pro platner people leap to: "so you think he's a Nazi? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Go listen to his John Stewart podcast!"
I mean this is kind of how motte and bailey-ing works. Or it could go like this
Motte: Planter has weird edgelord personality traits and had a offensive tattoo
Bailey: Platner is an anti-Semitic bigot
Anyway the correct position is "Everyone can feel free to vote however they want"
I'd be interested to find someone who actually says this - not saying you're wrong, but I haven't seen them. I literally haven't seen a single person claiming that the tattoo means that he's a Nazi - but maybe I've been looking in the wrong places ...
I don’t particularly think I see “Platner is a Nazi” at all
There's actually a pretty big divide among the left on this. The most voal Platner defenders are your Sirota/Stoller "class not race" economic leftists. The stereotypical "woke" progressives on Bluesky are basically universally negative on Platner, didn't support him in the primary (or grudgingly supported him due to age concerns with Mills) and are voting for him out of political necessity.
I can't get behind Platner because I think in the long run, Democrats lose too much moral high ground in exchange for a shot at a Senate seat. It just fortifies the opinions of the "both sides are bad" swing voters to support a guy with a Nazi tattoo. It makes us look like hypocrites, which is a smear Republicans already love to throw at us and which does find an audience among swing voters. I think ultimately Democrats throwing their weight behind Platner will weaken us on a national level.
As someone who finds Trump nauseating and votes Democrat when I vote at all, but who doesn't identify as a Democrat...
Yes, can confirm. Platner makes y'all look really bad to me.
Just like Jay Jones.
>>I think in the long run, Democrats lose too much moral high ground in exchange for a shot at a Senate seat.
Isn't this what running a big tent means? Let people in with whom you disagree, perhaps strongly, so that you can command a majority?
If Platner loses people will forget about him and the damage to reputation will be short lived. If he wins he may be a key vote needed to stop Trump abuses of power.
I don't like him either but I hope he wins.
Losing too much reputational high ground, that is, as in, he tarnishes our whole brand nationally and makes us look like hypocrites who cry wolf about Nazis but only if it serves us.
It's not like Dems have a pristine reputation and he's tarnishing it. A lot of people already think of them as hypocrites.
I don't like Platner because I know he's going to vote against my interests (outlawing female spaces) plus he's unserious clown, but I feel there needs to be a little bit of grace for people who are genuinely contrite to leave behind racist/dumb shit they did in the past.
Democrats should put money behind one of these other good candidates Yglesias mentioned to run a write-in campaign.
Since everyone is discussing the tattoo I’ll offer my 2c. I believe Platner’s claim that he got it because he picked something that looked cool off the tattoo parlor wall when he was in his 20s without knowing the history of it. I don’t believe that he only found out it was a Nazi symbol last year. Should’ve gotten it covered up earlier; fact that he didn’t shows poor judgement.
One of a long list of things showing extremely poor judgement.
To add to this, the correct point, which Matt makes, is that Platner is a shitty candidate and there were many other better choices and yet again the Democrats somehow managed to screw this up, leaving us all arguing about Platner and his stupid tattoos and bad policy ideas.
Sure but in this case “the Democrats” means “Maine primary voters.” The reason Mills dropped out is because she was losing (which is because she’s also a bad candidate).
Agreed that Maine primary voters bear much responsibility, but I also want to point the finger at the state and national parties for not doing a better job recruiting better candidates.
Platner just seems like a weird moron. In a better world this would be disqualifying. In this world we get Platner and Paxton
Fetterman should be a warning to Dems about getting behind someone too weird. Best case scenario, Platner wins and he votes like Angus King and doesn't rock the boat. More likely he's going to break with the caucus at inopportune moments and cause headaches for six years (or just loses outright to Collins, which should cause Chuck Schumer to resign his leadership role).
The funniest outcome would be if Platner switches parties.
Best case scenario, he behaves like Bernie Sanders, a leftist team player. Worst case scenario, he behaves like a left-wing version of MTG, votes against party both from the left and the right from an anti-establishment perspective.
But IMO it will be closer to the best case scenario than the worst.
This may be irrelevant to your point, but didn't Schumer back the other primary option?
He did, albeit somewhat half-heartedly. But that's kind of my point; he really couldn't have recruited anyone better than a 77-year old former governor in a heavily blue state?
Matt went through the choices. A year ago Collins looked unbeatable, and no serious Maine dem wanted to spend 18 months bashing their head against a wall. Trump being so blatantly terrible in every possible way and with every decision he makes is why Collins looks beatable today, and the person available today to beat her is Platner.
Seeing the top comments here, I have to take the other side.
I'm genuinely mystified why people care so much about the tattoo. I have to ask the people who say it's disqualifying- do you not know any military veterans? Any men who work blue collar jobs? I don't like Platner and probably wouldn't vote for him but geez what a complete non-issue!
Calibration- I work in the mining industry. Getting an offensive tattoo because you're on a bender and it looks cool on the wall then keeping it because it's a wild story? I know approximately 1 million dudes who would do that.
Because this isn't an application for a mining job, it's for the US Senate? I'm getting tired of people repeating this dumb 'don't you know blue collar guys' meme over & over again in this thread. A Senator is not a blue collar job. The Senate is not a mine. Platner can be a miner or an oyster farmer or a trucker or a bouncer or hang drywall with his Nazi tattoo. What he can't be is 1 of 100 people in the more powerful chamber of the world's superpower- the standard for that job is higher than that of a miner. Is that really hard so hard to understand?
He’s obviously not one of the top 100 people I’d pick for the job. But if the alternative is someone who votes for basically anyone Trump nominates, isn’t he still better?
1. It hurts the Democratic Party overall, makes us look like gigantic hypocrites, and worsens our chances of winning future elections. Please try to have a time horizon beyond 1 election
2. It greatly increases the odds of whacko candidates from both sides- it'll be easier for them to win the nomination after 1 has broken through
Kenny we're going to end up like Argentina (or worse) if voters can't block obvious demagogues. Weimar collapsed because voters split themselves between the far right and the Communists. You know 'ever wondered what you'd do during the rise of fascism? Now's your chance' has become popular on the left? Well, ever wondered what you'd do if a Trump-like figure was running for your party's nomination? Now's our (well, my) chance to do the right thing
>It hurts the Democratic Party overall, makes us look like gigantic hypocrites
Hypocrisy is dead. Dead and buried, next to irony.
Besides, if I had a dollar for every time I was told "Democrats come across as too preachy, scolding, holier-than-thou, they think they're better than the rest of us," I could fund my lab for the next ten years. Say what you will about Platner, he does not come across as a pearl-clutching, holier-than-thou elitist!
No but he does come across as an antisemite
Wait, is he a demagogue? That didn’t seem to come through in anything. He’s not trying to be an executive, as most demagogues do.
You have a more exalted view than I do of the job 'politician'.
Working class or at least working-class-conversant (which is really what Platner is) politicians are absolutely vital to any governing coalition that could be called in any sense 'left'. People who don't follow a well-manicured path to public office. People like Shaun Fain or Chris Smalls. Have your gripes with Platner by all means (he seems like a major knucklehead), but I dislike this implication that people from certain career backgrounds haven't earned the dignity of being elected to represent their fellow citizens.
Just as an example- Platner couldn't become a cop or even rejoin the military with that tattoo. Law enforcement has tattoo policies, straight-up Nazi shit is an absolute no-go anywhere in the country. Obviously being a cop is a blue collar job. If his tattoos are totally unacceptable on the paradigmatic licensed blue collar job...... isn't the bar for US Senate *at least* as high as being a cop?
While I agree with your point about working class people having a place in a left-wing political coalition, the reason Shawn Fain is UAW president is because grad student unions are part of the UAW.
Good point. Chris Smalls, then
Its fine that he's a military and oyster guy. It's just that he hasn't demonstrated any serious policy acumen. Better to elect a military oyster guy that at least sat on a city council.
Getting raked for saying exactly this up above, nice to see someone who gets it. The guy I do jiujitsu with who has tattoos on his skull? No I don’t ask him why he thought that was a good idea or what they mean. Does make me wonder if support for Platner is actually weaker than we think though and seeing all this bickering over his tattoos makes me want to put money on Collins winning yet again.
Right, even my other comment replying to LF is sort of orthogonal to the point of my comment, which is that it's weird people are making such a big deal about a tattoo. Some people just have tattoos and it doesn't mean much. And Platner is so obviously a reddit-brained shitlib (I say with affection) that it's absurd anyone would be going on about this 'Nazi tattoo' as if it says something about his politics.
I'm a military veteran, so is my brother, so is my grandpa. Needless to say I have many military friends. I also have friends working numerous blue collar jobs, including in the oil industry.
I have a problem with the tattoo because it confirms his rhetoric that at best he's an antiSemite. I don't like that.
I think we spent decades saying Jew Hatred is wrong and pushing it out of polite society. I'm aghast that many "educated" people on the left are looking at the sewer of the alt-right and saying "ooh let's do that Jew Hatred looks fun"
So, David, at this point I'm curious:
1. You don't like progressives, because they're unserious morons;
2. you don't like moderates, because they're lazy idiots;
3. you don't like the professional-managerial class, because we're entirely devoid of civic virtue and we look down on the working class;
4. and you're obviously not into MAGA/Republicans either.
Is there a group of people whom you *like* in 2026 America?
I voted for Kodos
I promise I have no problem with Platner’s criticism of Israel but I do have a problem with his Nazi tattoo. I simply don’t believe he didn’t know what it was. Do I believe he’s a “devotee of National Socialism”? No. I believe he is an arrogant, immature, aggressive edgelord with serious impulsivity problems. The texting - and being on Kik of all places! - is yet more evidence. The Reddit comments are more evidence still. I don’t know what I’d do if I lived in Maine. I do have relatives who live in Maine. They’re all old ladies (that’s who lives in Maine!) and reliable democrats. And they’re appalled and also struggling with the decision. Susan Collins is terrible for the country, but she’s been pretty good for Maine. That’s the dilemma.
Maybe he got it in a drunken stupor, but he had it on his body for two decades. There are people who came forward and said he referred to it as “my Totenkopf.” (This was reported by CNN!) He is a self-described military history buff. There’s no way he spent all that time in a state of blissful ignorance of what he saw in the mirror every day. Maybe if this were the only thing wrong with him and he truly seemed like he had become less impulsive and more stable now, I would think “ok, youthful indiscretion, people can change.” But every new thing that comes out confirms that he has issues with aggression and impulsiveness, and he’s lied about a lot. I also think Matt’s complaint about policy positioning is related to this. Why doesn’t he moderate to appeal to voters in the middle? Because it isn’t fun and edgy and gives him no outlet for aggression.
I find all this "I simply don't believe he didn't know" stuff crazy. I had no clue, and *even now* I would struggle to pick it out of a lineup of stylized skulls.
But we have his own Reddit history and his word to go off of that he knew exactly what it was! He was referring to it as “my totenkopf” long before he ran for this seat.
Right. He's just a moron
Platner is a boob. No one knows what he'd be like in the Senate. At least Susan Collins will revert to normal once the midterms are over and Trump is clearly a lameduck president. We need moderates of her caliber in the Senate, no matter what party she belongs to.
I would have clicked 'like' in 2015, alas. 2015 was a different universe.
I'm assuming that there will be a reset in the GOP -- at least in the Senate -- after the midterms. Trump is already faltering. Let's see. The only thing to recommend Platner is pure Democratic parrtisanship. I mean, don't you agree that he's a clown? We already have too many clowns in the Senate.
Yes, of course he's a clown. There are already several or dozens of extremely high-impact freakish clowns (I'm staring at RFKjr, but there are many others) in the executive branch and Collins will vote to confirm more. I wish I thought better of her, but I don't.
So what you're saying is that a wild-card Democratic clown is better than a serious, moderate Republican. We really need to start thinking beyond Trump but many Democrats can think of nothing else. Anyway, nice chatting.
Bruce, you profoundly waste my time. Be gone.
Your snark speaks volumes. Is it a substitute for thought?
There's not going to be a reset. As long as Trump has the ability to end Senator's careers by endorsing primary opponents they'll bend the knee. While Trump is faltering among the electorate at large, a majority of GOP primary voters still have an almost cultish devotion to him.
Trump is an old man. He'll leave the White House in January 2029, if he's still alive. My deepest fear for Democrats is that they'll blow 2028 by not having any message for the country beyond opposition to Trump. There are signs of that already, such as the willingness to put a Democratic version of Tommy Tuberville into the U.S. Senate simply because he's anti-Trump (for now).
Anyway, we'll see. Nice chatting.
I don’t assume a reset and can’t see why you do. The GOP is pure MAGA now, with or without Trump. The
Trump has already lost a midterm and a general election and this didn’t happen. I could maybe believe this in 2018 but it seems like wishful thinking now.
Pure Democratic partisanship is the noblest of ideals
She may be moderate but has a reputation for giving in to the worst tendencies of the GOP and ultimately has little of a spine.
What are the worthwhile outcomes that her caliber has produced?
I’m not a Mainer, and I don’t pretend to know what’s best for your state. So I am sincere in my question.
See the link for some biographic information on Collins. She's not right on everything -- not by a long shot -- but I've never heard anyone question her seriousness, ethics, or intelligence. Normally I'd vote for a Democrat -- but Platner really does seem like a boob.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Collins
Didn’t she vote to confirm RFK and Kash Patel?
She does a lot of work at the committee level that's very bipartisan. She's a good chair on approps.
There is absolutely nothing that Susan Collins could do on the committee level that would balance out the damage she causes simply by caucusing with Republicans. Control of the Senate would be _huge_ toward minimizing the damage that Trump can do in the second half of his term, but if we can't flip Maine, there's roughly 0% chance it'll happen.
The last time I can remember Collins casting a maverick vote that was of any consequence was in 2017 when she, Murkowski, and McCain prevented ACA repeal. That's great, but a replacement-level Democrat in her seat would blow it out of the water. Even another Fetterman would be an improvement over Collins because Fetterman votes with Democrats a healthy amount of the time.
To continue the Fetterman comparison: I understand why Democratic voters feel burned, and if I were a Pennsylvanian I'd vote for Literally Anyone Else when he gets primaried in a couple years. But Fetterman is _miles_ better than Oz would've been in the Senate.
Much like Manchin/Sinema: it'd be annoying if we couldn't get something done because a dingus like Platner decided to be a maverick. But the only way that could happen is if Platner were the deciding vote. And if Platner were the deciding vote, it means that the alternative would've been Collins in that seat and Republicans in control of the Senate.
This isn't even a close call. Hold your nose and vote for the guy with a D next to his name. Don't talk yourself into the idea that it's important to keep one of Trump's biggest enablers in the Senate.
This is all true, but conditional on the seat being held by a Republican, I would prefer that Republican be Susan Collins.
…I agree, but I don't know what we're comparing it to. (I mean, it's good that Tommy Tuberville doesn't have a brother who lives in Maine, I guess?)
When the Senate picks a majority leader, who is Collins going to vote for, do we think? A moderate?
The Senate doesnt do that. The House elects the Speaker. The Senate Majority Leader is chosen by his party only. He's not the Presiding Officer.
Fair enough! Hopefully my point was clear, though.
He wouldn't be "very concerned"... not being "very concerned" and giving Trump the finger instead is the only thing that matters.
This was a case of bad recruitment by establishment Dems as mentioned. Mills was the easy button but never made sense for the reasons stated. People complain all the time about Schumer for ideological reasons but I think the strongest case for new leadership is he has lost his political touch.
What’s most disqualifying about Platner is the very fact that he wants to be a Senator. The combination of Platner’s delusion and the cowardice of other Maine Democrats who chose not to run creates a toxic brew and gives Collins an opening she shouldn’t have had. I’m glad not to be a Mainer faced with this awful choice.
Edit: This was meant as a main-thread comment. But since it didn’t land there I’ll respond thusly to MikeV: We should at least give credit to Schumer for recognizing that Platner was a uniquely bad candidate, even if he didn’t respond appropriately by press-ganging Mills as a lousy opponent.
This is such fucking pretzel logic
Wouldn't any veteran without a ton of skeletons in the closet be better? How hard is it to regurgitate Bernie talking points from a teleprompter? This is not that hard!
Sure but we can't magically enter a new candidate into the race. The bed was made, a competitor was recruited, she got her teeth kicked in, we are where we are. I don't have to like it but can only chart a path forward.
I’m inclined to believe that Platner may in fact be the right candidate to challenge Susan Collins even though he wouldn’t be correct in a different race. The usual playbook for winning tough races - run a nice, clean moderate whose issue positions appeal to the median voter - will not work against Collins because that is exactly what she herself is. The voters who could normally be won over by a clean moderate candidate are loyal to her.
The way to peel voters away from Susan Collins is to appeal to anti-establishment, anti-system voters. She cannot avoid being coded as an establishment candidate. Platner’s issue positions are on the left but his vibes are about as anti-establishment as it gets, and that can win him votes that Sara Gideon couldn’t get.
This seems like a very important point, and very different from what everyone wants to talk about.
Matt has made this point before—that people like an outsider but with the caveat that they typically do not want a radical
usually not, but I suspect this year is different. Platner won this election on the day that the US attacked Iran.
Unlike a moderate Dem who gives a mealy mouthed opposition to Iran on Congressional power, Platner has been very clear and blunt about his opposition to these Middle East wars. And that probably resonates with the majority in Maine.
That doesn't mean Platner would work in most years though. My guess is that he would have been a bad fit in 2024.
I don't really understand point 2. I don't think he wants to bring back the Third Reich or make trains run on time, but it seems pretty coherent to me to see a guy with a Nazi tattoo and hostility to Israel to think "Irrespective of whether or not this guy subscribes to the tenets of national socialism, I wonder if what appeals to him about national socialism is also what appeals to him about opposition to Israel."
Thank you. If someone has a Nazi tattoo for twenty years, plus racist social media posts, plus doesn’t like the only Jewish state, it’s rather suggestive. Why are we automatically giving him the benefit of the doubt? He hasn’t earned it.
The good news is that this sexting thing, the eighth incredibly dumb thing we’ve found out about Platner, is surely the last.
Exactly. There are about a million blazing red flags about this guy’s temperament and judgment.
What’s wild is that I haven’t seen a single commenter here bringing up his 20 years of disability fraud, because there are so many other even larger red flags to argue about.
The problem with Platner is that he has no discernible virtues whatsoever. He is a crook and a sadist. He has accomplished nothing of note, produced nothing, done nothing but feed on the efforts of those who toil and work and earn bread. He should shame and terrify us, because he is that who we could all become if we gave in to sin and vice. So no, I do not care for him. The sexting scandal, to be frank, is nothing at all — it’s everything else that’s the problem.
I actually think only an infinitesimally small number of people could become at all successful by giving in to sin and vice, certainly we couldn't become Senators. Most people who give in to sin and vice end up in the street or in jail.
I would have hoped that the people of America were more discriminating, yes.
No, you're just repeating your point and ignoring mine. Since almost no one could "give in to sin and vice" (which I think overstates the case quite a bit, but then I don't hate government benefits and you do) and have a chance to get elected Senator, something is distinguishing Platner, not just Americans'/Mainers' lack of discrimination. (Doesn't mean it's something *good* that distinguishes him!)
I do not hate government benefits. I believe redistribution is important. I simply think that Mr. Platner faked his conditions in order to get benefits.
Sorry for misstating your beliefs. But I just don’t believe that’s so horrible as to be disqualifying, and very few people think so either (which is why tattoo + sexts has gotten a million times more attention as an issue). That doesn’t mean we’re right, but it means you’re just bound to be spitting into the wind when you talk about it like it’s self-evident.
What did he do that was crook-like or sadistic?
1. Platner is defrauding veterans’ disability. By his campaign’s admission, he has qualified for enhancements which preclude being able to work, which he has avoided losing by having his wife be the recipient of income earned through his business.
2. He enlisted in a war he hated because he wanted the opportunity to kill people. Upon doing several tours, he went back for a private company. Sometime after this, of course, he developed whatever PTSD was necessary to qualify for benefits — I guess he could point toward his alcoholism as support.
I was not aware of 1 but 2 was over 20 years ago, Platner has not been accused of any war crime or excessive violence to my knowledge, and he seems reformed there and is now anti-war—that seems like a forgivable yellow flag.