Candidates with Poor Excuses

If you look around Maine right now, everyone is on fire for Graham Platner, an oysterman, harbormaster, veteran, and all around earthy everyman, to displace Susan Collins as our Senator.

The problem is, the guy is a bucket of unqualified. He dropped out of GWU. He’s never held an elected office.

And now, we find out he’s posted some seriously troubling things on social media across a few years. First it was that he identified as a Communist, next it was that he believes in political violence, and the most recent jaw-dropping revelation is that he posted both racist and “blame the rape victim” content.

He claims it’s PTSD and disillusionment with the United States at work here. He offered a heartfelt apology, but I want folks to think a little bit about this.

I use myself as an example, I’ve served from 1994, retiring in 2024, with breaks in service for college and graduate school. I have three years overseas time. As I testified to a committee in our legislature a few years ago, I was also violently sexually assaulted as part of a hazing ritual when I first arrived at the 101st 30 years ago.

I’ve lost friends to Iraq and Afghanistan, both during and after deployments.

I protested the war in 2003, and then was mobilized for it. I was on the streets of Rochester, NY, in February, and in the words of Bad Religion, not even 10 million could stop the worst. I turned my back on Bush at his second inauguration. I made noise about the border mission back in 2006. I’ve stood up for what I believed for most of my military career.

I’ve been disillusioned. I left the Democratic Party in 2016 over Clinton’s vote for the Iraq War. I know what he was talking about, to feel like your country savaged a part of the world for the most tendentious of reasons, and to feel like no one has ever been held accountable for it. Americans were told going to the mall was patriotic, while people like Graham Platner and myself served.

I found a salve for my soul over the years, and my wife can tell you just how difficult it was.

You know what I never did? Posted racist or misogynistic content in the midst of all of my mental health issues.

Like Platner, I serve on my town’s planning board. I’ve even actually run for office a few times, state and municipal, and actually, unlike Platner, held an elected office as a judge of elections in Pennsylvania. I lost narrowly in my last election, for the legislature here in Maine.

I would note that again, I’ve never posted racist or misogynistic content in the midst of all of these things.

This exposition galls me for several reasons:

1. I have people very close to me who were sexually assaulted in circumstances that involved alcohol. I, like Platner, tended bar while I went to college, and in addition to receiving tips from Black people, I never would have blamed inebriated survivors of sexual assault for what was done to them. I vehemently don’t want that bullshit representing me in the Senate.
2. Not being from a state that’s 98% white originally, in fact, being from a very diverse city in Pennsylvania, I am shocked how forgiving Maine progressives are of racism when it comes from their side.

I believe Mr. Platner’s heartfelt apology. I think he probably means it. I think he also went to considerable effort before his campaign to scour these old posts and conceal them, knowing full well what they would do to his campaign, and hoped for the best.

It’s insulting to our intelligence.

It’s insulting to veterans like myself with lengthy service and have never been racist or disgusting.

It’s insulting to voters that he and his campaign tried hiding it before they tried accountability.

It’s insulting to assert that this is far enough in the past that we ought not question his bonafides. His resume is not that fucking interesting when you get past the “lookit! authenticity!” schtick. Maybe he should have tried to primary Jared Golden, because this does not belong in the august upper chamber of our bicameral federal legislature.

The problem is, his progressive supporters in Maine are disturbingly willing to tolerate this manifestation of racism and misogyny in a way they would never tolerate from a Republican, or even a moderate Democrat. For years, we’ve rightly heard disdain for how Donald Trump communicates…”locker room talk.” In background, we’re all aghast at the Young Republicans and their antisemitism and misogyny and racism…but Platner gets a pass because he tickles the progressive fancy? We simply must hold our candidates to the same standards that we hold others to, and if that were the least of the problems manifest here, dayeinu.

In any state that wasn’t lily white like Maine, he’d be sent packing. Where I come from, he’d have been driven from the field immediately.

If you’re complaining about the inevitability of opposition research…I want you to pause and think REALLY HARD for a hot minute. Is the problem here that someone found that your saltwater messiah said deeply troubling things, or is the problem that your saltwater messiah demonstrated he’s unfit for office?

Yeah, about that.

I admire anyone willing to stand up and run, for sure, but opposition research is a fact of life. When I ran for state house in Pennsylvania as a Democrat, I was thoroughly vetted by the local county Democratic committee. I ran in an R+11 district where every Democrat and registered independent could have voted for me, and I still would have lost, as I did, by a 70% to 30% margin, as I did, and I was still vetted more than it seems Platner was.

Do we not do that sort of vetting in this state? This should not have been a surprise to anyone…and a good candidate would have been prepared for these things to emerge. Now we can see his campaign, and the candidate himself, is not prepared be it with temperament or competency, to take on a well-oiled and well-supported machine that Senator Collins has at her disposal. A vote for Graham Platner in the primary assures us of six more years of Senator Collins. And it’s too bad, the energy was something for a minute. I like voting for veterans, but I will not be able to vote for him in a primary or the general election. I will not be lonely in that.

And now we get to see who makes fools of themselves on behalf of someone who made a giant fool of himself.

UPDATE: Nazi tattoo! https://boingboing.net/2025/10/21/progressive-populist-graham-platner-has-nazi-totenkopf-tattoo.html?

We have to upgrade Platner, who never fails to blame AIPAC for issues facing rural Mainers, to crypto-Nazi.