Thoughts on the Graham Platner Saga

I have many.

(image credit: Photo by Joe Raedle // Getty Images)

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I personally don't trust Graham Platner. With what we’ve seen so far, I don't think he belongs in the U.S. Senate versus Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign back in April and whom I like quite a lot.

I used to like Mr. Platner. In fact, I briefly supported him early in the campaign, mostly because I was annoyed that the DSCC and Chuck Schumer were openly meddling in the primary, which I thought then—and still believe—was an incompetent failure to read the room.

But I was also impressed by his messaging and views. He didn’t mince words on his support for LGBTQ rights (particularly trans rights) and opposing stupid wars and fighting predatory billionaires, etc.

Then the oppo started dropping. At first, it was his horrific online comments in the past, and like many folks, I thought his response was heartfelt and vulnerable, albeit perhaps a bit incomplete.

I feel that Democrats need to be leading the country toward redemptive politics—all folks are imperfect, make mistakes, should grow, etc.—and I believed Mr. Platner was attempting to model that path forward. Life is messy. People can change. Let’s figure out how to bring folks together. Water under the bridge, etc.

Not long after that, I was at a conference, and a friend mentioned to me in passing they’d seen a headline that Mr. Platner had a Nazi tattoo.

Now, in that moment, my brain landed on the initial assumption that it had to be some kinda situation in which Mr. Platner unknowingly got a tattoo with a seemingly benign design that also happened to be appropriated by Neo-Nazis.

I figured it was probably an honest mistake, he got it removed, and the world is now hearing about it years later. This was the scenario going through my mind as I walked back to my hotel room. It was the only thing that made sense.

So, when I started reading the details, the first thing that made my stomach drop was seeing that it was the Totenkopf.

That is not a seemingly benign symbol, nor—as some of Mr. Platner’s more ardent defenders have attempted to claim—is it some little-known iconography.

If you’ve seen a World War II movie with SS officers, I guarantee you have seen a Totenkopf. It’s literally the insignia on the SS officer cap.

And while I can certainly imagine many civilians may not immediately recognize it, there is no way on God’s green earth that a former combat arms Marine or soldier wouldn’t recognize it. We’ve watched a lot of war movies. We were briefed a number of times on prohibited tattoos. We’ve heard stories of dipshits being barred from enlistment or discharged for such tattoos. It’s a big no-no in the military.

Okay, so, then I figured: well, he definitely knew what it was, but he probably got drunk with some other Marines one night and made a very stupid mistake. Maybe it was an incredibly dumb bet or dare that went terribly sideways.

I mean, I personally can’t imagine getting so plastered that I accidentally ink a Totenkopf on my chest, but you know what? I can see a scenario in which a drunk young Marine makes an incredibly stupid mistake and regrets it the next morning.

My space for rationalizing all this came to a dead stop—full pull brake—when I read that he still had the tattoo on his chest. Eighteen years later. No attempts to get it removed. No attempts to alter it with more ink. The same Totenkopf had been on his chest all this time.

That’s when I got off the Platner train. It was a little too weird for me.

Mind you, it wasn’t that I believe he’s an antisemite or has Nazi sympathies. I personally don’t think that Mr. Platner is some secret Nazi, and the antisemitic conversation on all this feels like a time to listen to what Jewish folks think about it.

When this news popped up in October, I had Jewish friends and colleagues who accepted Mr. Platner’s explanation and were willing to move past it, and I had Jewish friends and colleagues who were deeply troubled and felt it’s disqualifying. I also learned that Mr. Platner has extended family who are Jewish.

Anyway, that part of this whole discourse isn’t my lane.

The reason I could no longer support Mr. Platner back in October is that, bare minimum, keeping a Totenkopf on your chest for 18 years—again, no attempts to get it removed or altered—struck me as extremely poor judgment and a severe lack of common sense.

I believed then—and still believe—that he was lying about not knowing what it was in the days after he got it (assuming he was plastered the night he got it) and that he somehow hadn’t figured it out in the intervening 18 years and that no one in his life had asked him in all that time: “Hey, what’s that tattoo?”

There are a number of accounts of folks in his life claiming he referred to the tattoo specifically as “my Totenkopf” and maybe they’re all lying or misremembering.

But even if they’re all lying, the man still kept this obvious Nazi symbol on his chest for 18 years and didn’t get it covered or altered. Getting it removed after it’s publicly revealed—months after announcing his candidacy—isn’t worthy of partial credit.

Sorry, that’s just how I feel. I wondered if this guy just isn’t ready for primetime and just doesn’t have what it takes to oust Susan Collins.

I figured he could make his case to the voters of Maine and they would need to consider whether or not they trust him to take on Sen. Collins and they may or may not accept it and maybe he’d beat Sen. Collins and—hopefully—he wouldn’t turn out to be another John Fetterman.

But by that point, I did not feel comfortable supporting him. It just didn’t sit right with me. Nothing since then has made me feel better about his sense of judgment for navigating the general election fight against Susan Collins, even with the favorable polling.

The sexting stuff that came out recently is between him and his wife. I don’t believe it’s any of our business. That’s their marriage, and I don’t think it’s material to whether or not folks should vote for him.

Some of you disagree with me, and that’s your prerogative. But as long as he’s not campaigning on marriage lectures and infidelity, it’s really none of our business how he and his wife work through their personal struggles. Simple as that.

But also: it’s yet another thing that becomes a distraction in a general election, which is exasperating.

Then came yesterday’s oppo drop: Lisa Lerer and Katie Glueck of NYT spoke to two dozen people—including six women who have past romantic relationships with Mr. Platner—and offered what I feel is rather balanced reporting that threw his campaign back into the blender.

Three of the women had quite positive experiences while dating Mr. Platner, but three of the women decidedly did not.

Some of it is “he wasn’t a good boyfriend” in the basic sense of consideration, which is neither a crime nor disqualifying; otherwise, I imagine most men in Congress from either party wouldn’t meet that standard.

But some of it is rather disturbing to read, the bulk of which comes from Lyndsey Fifield, a conservative activist who dated Mr. Platner on-and-off for two years about a decade ago.

Ms. Fifield told NYT that Mr. Platner was openly sexist during their relationship, referred to women with degrading terminology, claimed several times he would rape home intruders (as a “show of dominance,” she claims he said) and while being clear that he never hit her, she did claim that he “grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks,” once “yanked her out of a cab by her wrist” during an argument (against her will), and most troublingly:

During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.” Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning.

“It hurt,” she said. But she added: “It didn’t cause an injury, it didn’t break my arm.”

Mr. Platner’s campaign denied all of her accusations, and NYT’s reporters are clear in pointing out that in reviewing text messages and Ms. Fifield’s diary and all the interviews they conducted, they found nothing to corroborate her claims.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean she’s lying. It means that she never texted him (or anyone else) about these incidents, never wrote them down, claims to have never told anyone else about them, etc.

To be fair, that does reflect how many women respond to such trauma: the fear of not being believed, being ostracized, etc.

But part of what complicates this is that Ms. Fifield has spent years working in Republican politics and conservative activism, including the Heritage Foundation and Independent Women, two groups which have not exactly been leaders in holding accountable men in Republican politics who have been accused of far, far, far worse than what Ms. Fifield is claiming Mr. Platner did.

For example, Donald Trump, the current leader of the Republican Party and conservative movement, is implicated in the cover-up of a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children and whose administration continues to withhold more than three million documents related to that sex trafficking operation.

Also: Trump is a rapist and protects rapists and is deeply and openly misogynistic (on live television, no less) — to say nothing of what he does behind closed doors. This is the leader of the movement to which Ms. Fifield has dedicated her career.

I haven’t had enough time to do digging into what Ms. Fifield has said about her past employers regarding their lack of public accountability—and direct enabling—of such atrocious behavior. Nor have I had enough time to look into what all Ms. Fifield has said about the political infrastructure she directly supports that has covered up the crimes and abuses perpetrated by men in Republican and conservative politics.

Ms. Fifield could be telling the whole truth about Mr. Platner; it certainly wouldn’t be a rare experience for women in this country (quite common, in fact!), and downplaying the severity of her allegations isn’t a good idea — as a few folks on the far-left have been doing over the past 24 hours. Don’t do that. It’s repulsive.

She could also be telling some truthful things while lying or exaggerating about some of it.

She could also be lying about all of it.

I don’t know whether or not to trust Ms. Fifield because she hasn’t exactly been on the level during her career on these matters broadly. Maybe she’s coming forward because she’s genuinely concerned about his character and treatment of women, and maybe she’s coming forward because she’s a Republican operative.

At the same time, I don’t know whether or not to trust Mr. Platner when his campaign denies all of this because he has already demonstrated his willingness to lie and obfuscate.

I really don’t know who to trust here.

What I do know is that this is yet another oppo drop on Mr. Platner and we still have five months to go until the general election, and there a lot of us who have a bad feeling there could be more to come.

But what's far more concerning to me is Trump appointing more SCOTUS justices and federal judges in the next two years. Senator Collins is a Trump lackey and she will continue to support his agenda and she needs to be replaced with a Democrat to prevent that.

There are some Democrats who claim they’ll never vote for Mr. Platner based on what we already know. That’s their prerogative. But what I would ask them is this:

“Would you rather have Graham Platner in the Senate or yet another Trump appointee on the Supreme Court?”

Or more acutely: “Would you rather have Graham Platner in the Senate or Ted Cruz on the Supreme Court?”

Yikes.

For some folks, that’s a tough question. They’ll disagree with the premise.

They might claim that Mr. Platner isn’t yet on the general election ballot and could drop out of the race before the ballot deadline to withdraw from the primary ballot on July 13th and Gov. Mills is still on the primary ballot (though she suspended her campaign in April) and maybe she or another Democrat could take his place.

Maybe!

But thus far, Gov. Mills hasn’t un-suspended her campaign and appears to be doing no active campaigning in the primary (other than reminding voters her name is still on the ballot), and no other Maine Democrats have stepped up to the plate and offered to replace Mr. Platner.

Or they might claim the premise is flawed because Mr. Platner is just going to be another Mr. Manchin or Ms. Sinema or Mr. Fetterman.

Maybe!

Let’s assume, for a second, that he will be. Let’s assume we’ll have another annoying and flawed and turncoat Democrat in that mould.

Would y’all vote for Manchin or Sinema or Fetterman versus Collins? I would. I’d do so in a second. No hesitation. And I despise all three.

With Senator Collins, I know the American people are getting next-to-nothing, just another vote for Trump’s agenda, but with a very flawed Democrat, I know the American people are at least getting a shot at taking back the Senate and controlling Senate procedure and may even get a half-reliable vote for legislation and holding Trump accountable.

Maybe Graham Platner isn’t on the November ballot, but if that ballot were asking me to choose between him and Senator Collins (to be clear: I am not a Maine voter), I’m choosing him and it would be an easy decision.

I wouldn’t like it, but I’d do it. I would choose the candidate who could do the least harm in that seat, and I know Senator Collins doesn’t give a damn about holding Trump accountable.

This is the same reasoning so many of us gave those annoying folks on the far-left who decided sit out the 2024 presidential election. They didn’t like Vice President Harris because of their anger at the Biden administration over Gaza and other issues, and they claimed both parties were the same and both candidates were repulsive.

So, they didn’t vote.

But both parties aren’t the same and elections do matter, which is why we told them that, whatever their most important issues, Trump would be a thousand times worse and that’s why voting for Vice President Harris was essential.

They didn’t listen. They were wrong. Trump did, in fact, turn out to be a thousand times worse on every issue.

Any Maine Democrat in that seat will be far, far, far more preferable than Senator Collins — for SCOTUS vacancies, for judicial seats, for legislation, for control of the Senate generally. For, you know, saving democracy.

Pretending otherwise is a bit ridiculous to me.

If I could wave a magic wand, I'd have Gov. Janet Mills as the nominee instead of Mr. Platner because at this point, I think she'd have a stronger chance against Collins. I also believe she would be an excellent senator.

I base that mostly on the dreadful feeling that there are things we don't yet know about Mr. Platner.

Maybe there aren't. I hope there aren't. Maybe this is it and he survives the primary and beats Sen. Collins and turns out to be a wonderful senator himself. Maybe he becomes a fantastic advocate for working class families. That would be a great outcome.

Ultimately, only Mr. Platner really knows the scope of challenges facing him over the next five months. Is there more possibly coming? Even more than what we've already seen? Only he really knows.

But the window is rapidly closing, and very soon, we will probably be stuck hoping the voters of Maine choose Mr. Platner over Senator Collins in the general election — and it’s on Mr. Platner to make that persuasive case to them.

I don't think anything I have to say here is going to matter one way or the other to Mr. Platner, but if he does ever happen to read this, I hope he understands how much is at stake and what he's asking of voters in trusting him over Sen. Collins.

I hope he really understands the gravity of this moment and is considering the consequences for the country that go very far beyond his own personal life.

Because if he does know, deep down, there's a significant chance of his campaign imploding after the primary, he needs to step aside for the greater good and allow Maine Democrats to right the ship in time.

Not much else to say beyond that.

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