“Imagine the ecstasy Democrats felt when they first found Graham Platner,” said Carine Hajjar in The Washington Post. At last, a man who could help them win back the blue-collar vote: a charismatic, gruff-talking oyster farmer and combat veteran.
They were so excited to think his run for Maine senator might succeed, and deliver their party control of the upper chamber of Congress, that they dismissed a growing list of ugly revelations about him.
A gamble too far
That large Nazi tattoo on his chest? Platner didn’t know the skull motif had SS associations (though he apparently called it his “Totenkopf”). His history of bigoted comments on social media, and sexting of women? He’d been through a “dark period”, but had “grown”. The allegation of physical abuse from a (Republican) ex-girlfriend? Probably politically motivated. But a credible accusation of rape from a (Democratic) former partner finally tipped the balance – and, last week, Platner quit the race.
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The Platner affair was a train wreck, said Perry Bacon in The New Republic, but that shouldn’t deter Democrats from seeking unconventional candidates who will make voters give them a second look. The party has to enlist support from outside its core base.
Platner was a gamble too far, but we know from the 2016 and 2024 elections what happens when Democrats run milquetoast candidates with “Republican-lite” policy platforms: they lose. The party needs new blood, said The New York Times. More importantly, though, it needs to define what it would do with power. It needs “a purpose” more than it needs charismatic outsiders.
Selected on ‘vibes’
The Democrats must take more care with recruitment, said Christina Cauterucci on Slate. Platner was enlisted by a political strategist called Daniel Moraff, solely on the basis of “vibes”. He had no track record as an official or an activist. There was minimal vetting. Voters wanted “real human beings”, Moraff insisted, not “vat-grown people”.
Yet the joke is that Platner’s rugged image is itself confected. He comes from an affluent family and attended a fancy prep school; his oyster farm’s main customer is his mother’s upscale restaurant. Genuinely working-class voters weren’t impressed by Platner: he polled poorly among them, and did much better among college-educated voters. This is a cautionary tale about treating “class signifiers” – a dense beard, tattoos and a grimy sweatshirt – as proof “of political merit”.
