How best to describe Graham Platner’s 11 minute diatribe last night dropping out of the race for Senate in Maine? I said ‘crying game’ others said ‘pity party,’ ‘off-putting,’ ‘unapologetic,’ ‘alarmingly narcissistic,’ and ‘angry.’
All are accurate.
Platner talked about being a “regular person” - without acknowledging that regular people are not often credibly accused of breaking and entering and rape, amongst the many other allegations against him. Regular people don’t have Nazi tattoos and then claim not to know what they are, post anti-semitic, homophobic, and other offensive messages on Reddit, the list goes on…
He said he was unfairly targeted. He blamed everyone from the “corporate media” to the “Democratic political establishment” for acting as judge, jury and executioner and ripping the rug out from under him. What he didn’t do was take an ounce of responsibility for his actions or the multitude of controversies that have dogged him for months.
He warned that they (presumably the media/establishment types) are going to take everything away from Maine residents. Once they have him out of the race, he said, Mainers will not be properly represented. What he didn’t do was try to ease the path forward by talking about the fact that there are other viable populist and progressive candidates in the state promoting the same issues he was running on or the fact that the state party has a process in place to help select a viable replacement candidate.
What is clear from his apologia is that he is blaming establishment moderates/Democrats for his predicament. As he said, the Democratic establishment would rather see Susan Collins (R) re-elected than have him win. Another bit of nonsense because Democrats would nominate Attila the Hun if they thought he could beat Collins.
On top of it all, Platner slow-rolled the release of the video as he and his team tried to exert pressure over the Maine Democratic Party and put their thumb on the scale regarding who will be his replacement. Thank goodness the party, led by an excellent Executive Director, Devon Murphy Anderson, pushed back, making it clear in no uncertain terms that the decision belongs to Maine Democrats, not to the remnants of Platners’ campaign or Platner himself. It was a final, galling display of machismo that would have been unbelievable if it wasn’t so on point given what we know about the candidate. Imagine if Eric Swalwell tried to pressure the California Democratic Party to have a say over who replaced him in the gubernatorial race?
There is going to be a lot of soul searching over how the Democratic Party let this occur in a race this critically important to the future of the party, Senate, Congress, and nation as a whole. Preliminary assessments suggest blame lies in various sectors from the DSCC, Senator Chuck Schumer and others who, in their quest to get Governor Janet Mills, on the ballot pushed aside other viable candidates who might have been equally or more attractive to progressive voters than Platner. Second, the contingent of NYC/WDC consultants who went into Maine looking for a progressive to counter the establishment. While they have every right to do this, their failure to vet him properly was political malpractice. And if you don’t believe how much they missed, listen to the interview the Wall St Journal conducted with his campaign manager Daniel Moraff on this very issue.
While time is short, it is a blessing that the Maine Democratic Party has time to replace Platner on the ballot and a strong bench of potential candidates to take on Collins. They have already laid out the process for choosing a replacement by the July 27 deadline - it will consist of holding a special nominating convention made up of delegates selected through a process involving local county committees and the state committee.
Amongst those on the short list as potential replacements are: Shenna Bellows, David Costello, Valli Geiger, Troy Jackson, Dan Kleban, Paige Loud, Nirav Shah, and Jordan Wood - among others.
You can read more about each here. One person who will not be seeking the nomination is actor Patrick Dempsey (AKA McDreamy of Grey’s Anatomy fame) who published an editorial in the Portland Press Herald explaining why he is not running for the office.
As I reflected on all of this, I kept coming back to one question: Do I truly want to serve in Congress? After a lot of thought, I realized the answer is no. Not because public service isn’t honorable — it absolutely is. But because I believe I can contribute more effectively through the life I’ve already built.
Whoever the candidate is, Dempsey continued, he hopes they offer “a new approach to how we govern ourselves…. Most of all, I want integrity. That may sound idealistic today, but it shouldn’t.”
