Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner suspended his campaign in an occasionally emotional, occasionally fiery, us-versus-them speech on Wednesday evening.
“We beat them on June 9th in overwhelming numbers,” he said on a porch as cars drove past in the distance. “We did it the right way — we built a campaign, we engaged in electoral politics, we motivated people, we banded together, we did it the way we were told we are supposed to make change, and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it — not if it’s me. So, we’re suspending campaign operations.”
The year’s most infamous campaign ended much like the world’s most famous play. In the final act of Hamlet, the titular character, Claudius, Laertes, and the rest wind up on the cold, bloody floor. This Elsinore Castle of Senate campaigns concludes with not only Graham Platner’s career occupying Hamlet’s final spot on the stage but with his friends, enemies, and frenemies strewn about the floor as well. One awaits Susan Collins, a seldom-heard player throughout this tragedy, to enter in the manner of Fortinbras. (RELATED: Maine Democrats Race to Escape Platner)
Platner’s address puts the Maine Democratic Party in an even worse place than it occupied immediately after the latest scandal hit. Either they nominate a candidate from the party establishment who squelches support from the activist base that propelled Platner, or they nominate a candidate who passes muster with Platner — a disgraced figure whose imprimatur necessarily taints any politician.
The Maine race, which included numerous sexual misconduct allegations, to include rape, recalls the 2017 special election in Alabama. There, the Republican establishment pig-piled on Roy Moore, who, like Platner, managed to emerge as the Republican nominee. The allegations against Moore, which included rape and the pursuit of teenage girls, that arose more than a month before the election, inspired many calls for him to step aside. He refused, and Democrats turned a deep-red seat blue. In Maine, where Platner consistently ran ahead of Susan Collins in the polls until very recently, the candidate dropped out, but the entire debacle makes it far more likely that Republicans retain a very losable seat.
If Maine does not spark a progressive epiphany on the efficacy of #MeToo, then it at least exposes cognitive dissonance. The very Montagnard wing of the Democratic Party that zealously pursued #MeToo against not just rapists but purveyors of unwanted propositions and even compliments now complains about the weaponization of sexual assault claims to deep-six their favored politician. (RELATED: How Long Will Democrats Keep Defending Platner?)
An accusation of a rape that allegedly took place five years ago advanced neither to the police nor by the press (despite the purported victim’s past interview that omitted any mention of rape upon publication) until the deadline for changing the nominee approached, somehow provided the coup de grace to a politician heretofore resilient, in the polls at least, to scandal. Ultimately, the controversy-plagued Platner campaign died by a thousand cuts. The final slash left a wound far more noticeable, and damaging, than any of the others — but not as damaging as all of the others.
“Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things,” Platner complained in his address, “not the end.”
Yes, but why does this simple matter of justice occur to progressives only now, about a decade into #MeToo? (RELATED: Eric Swalwell and the Decline of Media Objectivity)
A campaign need not grant politicians all of the protections of a defendant in a courtroom. But the fact that in a hyper-partisan, hyper-ideologized environment, a mere allegation can kill a candidacy perhaps suggests to some Democrats that this new age demands a rigorous vetting of not just politicians but accusations. As Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Pete Buttigieg, Nikki Haley, and other public figures smeared with dubious charges demonstrate, shady figures with political axes to grind can and do wage politics by other means through sexual slander.
Alas, numerous women accuse Platner of misdeeds. Politicians can still survive he-said/she-saids. He-said/she-she-she-she-saids seem understandably more difficult obstacles to surmount.
Platner asked his supporters to consider what they might do if “large forces were working against you personally to accuse you of the worst thing that a person could do and it was not remotely true.” Just as his address deftly allowed him to shield himself from incoming by hiding behind his wife in the incessant use of “we,” his use of “they” — in a manner effectively lampooned on The X-Files when a dismissed conspiracy theorist ranting about “They” finally reveals the photo of an actual person, “This guy — he is They” — sets up an adversarial people-against-the-elites fight within the Democratic Party that has characterized Republican Party politics for much of the last decade.
So, yes, the Democratic Party establishment, with an assist from the candidate, poisoned and slashed to death the campaign of an insurgent who challenged orthodoxies and entrenched power. They stumble from the scene of the crime covered not merely in Platner’s blood but their own.
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