Democratic leaders have rightly lost credibility. But that is no excuse for political adventurers to take advantage of the opportunity to promote false saviors.
Video of Graham Platner dropping out of the U.S. Senate race in Maine.
(Graham Platner/X) The least surprising news about Graham Platner is that his Senate bid in Maine crashed and burned. The really surprising news about him is that he made it this far. He won the Democratic primary by a landslide (receiving 72.1 percent of the vote in a high-turnout election). Some of Platner’s staunchest admirers, such as his political consultant Morris Katz, were even while boasting the idea that if the candidate won the Senate race, he would have a chance to become the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee.
This is despite the fact that during his rapid rise and equally rapid fall from political stardom, Platner waved more red flags than the track marshals in a hundred auto races. Among the major scandals he endured were: the Nazi tattoo on his chest; six years of employment as a private defense contractor (in other words, as a mercenary) for the company then known as Blackwater; a history of lurid, misogynistic, and generally inflammatory Reddit posts; a recent trend of sexting other women when married; and allegations of abusive behavior towards women.
Democratic voters have largely forgiven Platner for all this. Many accepted his account that his behavior was due in part to severe post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his military service as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. He presented himself as an imperfect person who was changing and struggling to get his life on track. And after winning his primary, it seemed like he might have successfully overcome all of his baggage.
That was until Monday, when a former associate, Jenny Racicot, alleged to Policy and CNN that Platner had raped her during their relationship. Racicot’s horrific and believable story made it clear that Platner’s flaws went far beyond the realm of forgiveness. Another sign of this came in Platner’s video announcing the end of his political campaign. He didn’t seem at all contrite for the damage he had caused, but rather aggrieved and feeling sorry for himself.
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It is now up to Democrats to pick up the pieces, and up to all of us to see what lessons can be learned from this debacle. Here’s an important lesson: Platner’s story is about more than the downfall of a deeply damaged and flawed man. Rather, its real significance lies in the fact that someone with as many glaring flaws as Platner managed to win over so many primary voters who had lost faith in the Democratic Party establishment.
The emerging story is that Platner was not properly vetted by the political consultants who managed his cause. This is only partially true. The rape allegation is new (although it had already been circulating as a rumor for weeks), but many of the other discreditable facts about Platner were well known. But Maine voters weren’t just willing to ignore these facts: They overwhelmingly supported Platner, who came virtually from nowhere, in a primary race against their state’s two-term Democratic governor. For what?
David Axelrod, former advisor to Barack Obama, raised the essential point:
Lost in the recriminations about Platner is the most essential question that runs deep behind Maine: How could a deeply flawed but gifted candidate build such a devoted following? It was a vote of no confidence in policies and a policy that many Mainers say is failing them. So Dems, you might not have liked his [solutions] but you better have real, meaningful answers to these concerns.
Axelrod is right to suggest that Platner would never have exploded like a rocket if there had not been widespread discontent with the political status quo. But Platner and his team also took advantage of this desperate desire for change in ways that deserve examination.
It is a drama with two significant acts. The first part of the story is the failure of the Democratic Party establishment over the past generation to push back against the far right – culminating in Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024 – which has left a cohort of disillusioned voters hungry for an alternative. The second act involves the rise of political adventurers who seized the opportunity to brandish a false messiah.
These two plot points should not be considered separate. A sclerotic party deeply allergic to voter turnout and the rise of anti-system demagogues prone to chaos and who thrive on the cult of personality are not opposing trends but two sides of the same crisis of democracy (and the crisis of the Democratic Party).
The many sins of the Democratic Party have been repeated many times, dating back at least to Barack Obama’s disappointing response to the global economic crisis caused by the Republican Party. In a recent article in its newsletter Message disabledjournalist Brian Beutler paints a bracing overview of all the reasons Democratic voters have been sour toward their leaders over the past two decades. The insufficient response to the Great Recession was part of a more cautious, non-turmoil policy that failed to take into account the growing radicalization of Republicans, who over the same period became increasingly undemocratic.
After Trump went unpunished for his role in inciting the 2021 riot and then won back the White House, the die was cast. Voters who oppose Trump – the majority of the electorate over the past decade – no longer trust party leaders to act as an effective opposition.
In Maine, party leaders displayed their typical recklessness. To oppose Susan Collins, the Republican senator known for caving to Trump while expressing false concerns, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer attempted to clear the field on behalf of the state’s governor, Janet Mills, an uninspiring 79-year-old centrist. Accusing Mills of running a zombie campaign would be generous. Zombies are at least half-alive and, although brainless themselves, capable of eating brains. The Mills campaign only had a theoretical existence.
Aware of the weakness of the party establishment, a group of political consultants decided that the state party, gutted, was ripe for a takeover. Unfortunately, their solution was to make a savior. As The New York Times reports:
Last July, in a small town on the coast of Maine, two so-called progressive recruiters of economic populists showed up at the blue-shingled house of Graham Platner, a little-known oyster farmer and Navy veteran who lived largely on government benefits.
They knew his name from local union organizers and activists, and they had watched a video on the Internet he talks about oysters. Struck by his left-wing ideology, his working-class influence and his deep voice, they became convinced that he could win a Senate seat in Maine — and quickly persuaded Mr. Platner of the same.
The first headhunters, Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan, and then a third out-of-state agent they called in Maine — Morris Katz — told Mr. Platner that he was “the one,” a “hero of the movement,” “a historical figure” who could “lead a revolution,” according to a half-dozen people with knowledge of their conversations.
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As this over-the-top flattery makes clear, the campaign aimed to sell Platner as a messiah – both to voters and to Platner himself. This turned into a disaster, not only because Platner revealed himself to be a false messiah, but also because messianic politics is a dead end.
In a democracy, it is fatal to transform any candidate into “the chosen one”. Effective political change involves building movements much larger than any one person, so that if one candidate fails, the organizing work can continue.
Morris Katz, at the very least, should have known better. He was involved in a very different type of left-wing politics as a consultant to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. While Mamdani is undeniably charismatic, his rise has been fueled not only by his personal charm, but also by the organizing strength of the Democratic Socialists of America, who have won a series of victories in municipal elections and congressional primaries. The DSA model has parallels in organizing groups such as the Working Family Party and Run for Something. This is a political left that does not seek “the right one” but rather cultivates a wide range of candidates resulting from continuous mobilization.
In the wake of Platner’s implosion, establishment figures, including Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, are trying to exploit scandal to tarnish other progressive politicians with sordid guilt-by-association rhetoric. (This line of attack is particularly heinous because of Tanden’s long history of supporting questionable figures such as Bill Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, and Larry Summers.) This is a despicable and likely ineffective tactic. After two decades of disappointment, it will take more than one scandal to rehabilitate the establishment.
But Katz’s model of parachuting into a local election to elevate a telegenic figure to movement leader is also discredited. The only way forward is the DSA model: the hard work of organizing a mass movement from the ground up.
Damn Lord Jeet Heer is national affairs correspondent for The nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, Time of the Monsters. He also writes the monthly column “Morbid symptoms.” The author of Art lovers: the adventures of Françoise Mouly in comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: reviews, essays and profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American perspective, The guardian, The New RepublicAnd The Boston Globe.
