The Platner Predicament

Democrats are hell-bent on picking a hell-raiser in Maine - at the steep price of giving up the drug of self-righteous indignation

It today’s column we will take a quiz. The first question is an evaluation of a U.S. Senator. Tell me whether liberal voters would approve of the following voting record:

• No on confirming Pete Hegseth

• Yes to Impeach President Trump on Ukraine

• Yes to Impeach President Trump on January 6th

• Yes to confirm Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

• No on confirming Justice Amy Coney Barrett

• Yes to confirm Justice Elena Kagan

• Yes to confirm Justice Sonia Sotomayor

• Yes to the Affordable Care Act

• No on repealing the Affordable Care Act

• Yes to the Obama Stimulus Law

• Yes to the Biden Infrastructure Law

• Yes to both big gun control bills in 2013 and 2022

• Co-sponsor of a law to codify Roe v. Wade

That is not the record of a sitting Democratic Senator. It is the voting transcript of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Democrats say they want every Republican to be exactly what Collins is, yet she is Public Enemy Number One for the left in this year’s mid-term elections. Worse, they are lining up behind a despicable lunatic, privileged-prep-schooler-turned-oysterman Graham Platner, to beat her.

Journalists report Platner has a history of racist, anti-gay, morbid rhetoric online. He’s had to apologize for slurring the mentally disabled. He has been linked to the hookup site Kik, which a convicted child molester called a “predator’s paradise” in an interview with CBS News. Platner’s former campaign director says he sexted with a dozen women via Kik; his current campaign confirmed only “as many as six.” The Wall Street Journal reported “Platner’s campaign said the candidate had long deleted the app from his phone but hadn’t deactivated his account.” Does that not make one think he wants to use the app again later?

Platner has previously admitted “I’ve got a pretty flexible moral compass,” which would be necessary to keep a Nazi death squad symbol, the Totenkopf, tattoed on one’s chest for 18 years before covering it up, only after it became a political liability in this campaign.

Platner’s professional life ought to be equally unappealing to Democrats. Other than a stint working as a bartender at The Tune Inn, one of the best dive bars on Capitol Hill, Platner has mostly done things Democrats hate. He volunteered to go to Afghanistan as a Marine to “have an adventure and kill some people.” Once mustered out, Platner signed up to go back to war as a mercenary, working for Blackwater, the defense contractor reviled by liberals. Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders even wrote a bill to outlaw Blackwater’s contracts – but of course now Sanders is endorsing Platner.

On June 9, Platner will become the Democratic nominee for Senate in the number one target race in the country. The paradox is that Platner is not the only choice on that Senate ballot.

Maine Democrats will pick him over the two-term incumbent governor, Janet Mills, a perfectly normal politicians who also did two tours as Attorney General. Mills, who shot into the national news last year sparring with President Trump at a White House governor’s luncheon, flopped in the Senate race and got so broke she had to suspend her campaign.

Question Two in our Quiz: Is Platner the stronger candidate against Collins?

Collins has won five elections in Democratic Maine as a Republican. The state has one of the highest voting participation rates in the country. She cannot be defeated by merely turning out irregular Democrats; they do not exist. To beat Collins, a chunk of her long-time loyalists must be flipped - and many have already voted for Mills. Normal political logic would tell you Mills is hands-down the more electable option.

Question Three is what is Platner’s Appeal?

Voters do not always choose based on electability – as Texas Republicans demonstrated last week in elevating scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton over proven winner Sen. John Cornyn. Sometimes they pick on pique.

As I said on CNN this weekend, Platner’s badness is a feature, not a bug, for grass roots Democrats. They are not turned off by his Nazi tattoo; they see it as a badge of ruthlessness, and they are hell bent on sending ruthless mercenaries to Washington to do combat with Trump. The more awful stuff they learn about Platner, the more they see him suited to the task. When Platner calls on lefties to shut down society to protest political positions, they get goose bumps, as I wrote last November in CODE RED IN MAINE.

I have seen this movie before. In 2015, I watched hours of focus groups of Iowa caucus goers come to grips with the need to embrace a candidate whose moral compass they found lacking. “I think maybe he might give Hillary all she can handle,” I recall one Des Moines man saying of Donald Trump. Trump, for many Republicans, was a contract political hit man – an outsider to conservatism, a foreigner to the culture war, a gold-plated populist conundrum, but a brawler of the highest pedigree. Though his relationship with the ideological right has deepened over the years, his highest and best use remains thwarting the left.