Moral Priorities
Democrats are protecting Capital, not women, by taking out Graham Platner
If the exact same allegations (drunken sexual assault) with the same substantiation (contemporary reporting, corroborating witnesses) were presented at a Republican Graham Platner’s Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing, Susan Collins would vote to confirm him. I say this because I have witnessed her do that.
If Platner had been adjudicated a rapist with a string of sexual assault allegations prior to and following said rape, Susan Collins might not campaign for his re-election, but she would support his Presidency, if he won. I say this because I have witnessed her do that, too.
Maine Democrats have executed their purge of Senate candidate Graham Platner a mere six days before the deadline to replace Platner as a candidate. Susan Collins, and the violators she has enabled and defended are laughing at the Democrats’ silliness at prioritizing a woman over the party. I say this because I have witnessed them do that.
This is real politics (realpolitik); there are always those whose dignity, security, and even lives, must be sacrificed for another’s good (be it The Greater, or merely the politician’s own). To the cool, calculating Republican operative, Maine Democrats—and most all of the rest of the party—are unwilling to do what it takes to win.
Had Platner instead taken his military and small business owner record into the Republican Party, showed the same charisma, presence, and in-person political skills, tailored his message for Maine (not MAGA) Republicanism and be running for office, the state party would be defending him from those same allegations, right now.
It’s not that Republicans don’t care about women. It’s just that they care about their own interests much more, and the party is dominated by white men.
It’s an old cliche, but holds more than a kernel of truth: Republicans do not care about the suffering of others, until it begins to happen to them, personally. The party has assumed the sociopathy of its leadership—empathy is a mysterious condition, suffered only by the Woke.
Anyway, Maine Democratic party leadership will now pull a 2024 DNC move and select a candidate who was not proven popular enough through winning a true primary race. It will most likely either be party warhorse and late-septuagenarian, Janet Mills, or this guy—the one who could not beat Platner, head-to-head, in the state primary.
DAVID COSTELLO
Old Town native David Costello served several roles working in Maryland government. After returning to Maine, he ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for independent U.S. Sen Angus King’s seat in 2024.
I have seen the suggestion that Maine Democrats draft popular historian Heather Cox Richardson for the race. She has spent the past several years building the most important credential for winning political office in the U.S.: Name-recognition.
She would likely make a better showing than Costello on that aspect, alone. On the other side, she’s an academic who has spent her professional life playing a game that is run inside very different parameters. Several fundamental survival skills of an American politician are poison to one academically trained: Manipulating data to make it say what one would like it to say; Ignoring truths that run counter to one’s desired goals; and Lying in order to get what one wants.
Both careers path are built upon one’s reputation, but as we can see from outcomes, the qualities of the respective reputations need not morally match. Dr. Richardson has a good enough reputation, but like with Kamala Harris in 2024, the Democrats are “discovering” too late that they committed to the wrong candidate.
As with Harris, Richardson has never won a primary. Unlike with Harris, should Richardson run against Collins and lose, the baked-in excuse of a sexist electorate will not suffice for a deflection from the real reason for losing the race. The DNC’s decision to lay blame upon the voters for not choosing Harris is cover for their own failureship.
Claiming the voters are too sexist to have voted for Her Turn or Harris insulates the Democrats from having to take responsibility for their increasingly unpopular and oppressive Neoliberal economic policies. As we have seen, Democrats have become vicious defenders of their economic politics, attacking “Socialists” with far more vituperation than they attack the Fascists, whose fundamental economic form they share.
Platner was running too economically progressive for the DNC’s liking, so they tapped Janet Mills to challenge him, but what she represented found insufficient backing and she quickly withdrew from the primary. Now that the allegations against Platner have resurfaced with more substantiation, establishment Dems are vigorously chasing him away. It should not surprise anyone, if we find it was DNC operatives who pushed for the further disclosure.
In terms of timing alone, the Democrats’ Maine Senate race looks a lot like the Biden campaign, with the candidate forced out with just enough time remaining to post up a sure loser.
Pro Tip: Unless there is collective ownership of the Means of Production with full democratic governance, it’s not Socialism.
Corporations are Bourgeois, fascistic institutions, dictating the lives of those who fall under their domain. They control a worker’s daily life, assigning where, when, and how people must assemble, what they are to wear (uniforms are common, dress codes universal), how they are to decorate the world (advertising/publicity images), what they are permitted to say and what emotions must be apparent when saying it (SMILE and say, “Welcome to McDonalds! May I take your order?”). Corporate owner-sponsored Democrats have no problems with such social arrangements, and have shown thirty years of willingness to allow what state-issued employee protections remain, to erode.
Karl Marx believed that the contradictions he identified in early industrial capitalism were endemic to that mode of production and would force social class conflict to become more direct and obvious, over time. The current politics of the Democratic Party, both nationally and in Maine, are pounding an aspect of that contradiction right between everyone’s eyes.
The Democrats claim to represent the People first, and demonstrate through action that they support diversity (gender, race, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, etc.) of identity and social equity. They are willing to confront and reject figures such as Platner and Al Franken, knowing that it will do nothing to eliminate equally bad or worse offenders from Republican ranks. As noted, Susan Collins has supported and enabled those who have assaulted women—and her Supreme Court confirmation votes came to further deny them bodily autonomy—and she is going to continue.
Graham Platner appears to be an alcoholic veteran with PTSD who committed a sexual assault. Was it a one-off? In all likelihood, no. Does it disqualify him from serving in elected office?
Not in the judgment of the majority of American voters, from recent election results.
Establishment Democrats who never liked Platner are glad to see him go, with some having expressed months ago that it “wouldn’t matter” if Susan Collins won re-election. Her enabling of Trump, with his long line of victims, matters less than making sure the party is not pulled back into a Roosevelt-Kennedy style of “Socialism.”
Not that Platner compares, but if JFK were to be the man he was, running today, the Democrats would take him out of the race themselves.