{"id":698,"date":"2026-07-10T04:03:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=698"},"modified":"2026-07-10T04:03:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T04:03:41","slug":"graham-platners-downfall-was-all-too-predictable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=698","title":{"rendered":"Graham Platner\u2019s Downfall Was All Too Predictable"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2280200612.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Graham Platner\u2019s Downfall Was All Too Predictable\" title=\"Graham Platner\u2019s Downfall Was All Too Predictable\" \/><\/div><p><\/p>\n<div xmlns:default=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" id=\"\">\n<div id=\"article-title-block_e0022483660deb14eff5e117b912f16d\" class=\"article-title \">\n<div class=\"article-title__container\">\n<div class=\"acf-innerblocks-container\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-the-nation-dek article-title__dek\">\n<p>Inexperienced and improperly vetted, the candidate was a disaster in the making.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<aside aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"ad-block ad siderail-ad float-r-w-3 break-r-4\">\n<p>                                    <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/advertising-policy\" class=\"ad-policy\" target=\"_blank\">Ad Policy<\/a><br \/>\n                                    <\/aside>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Graham Platner speaks at an event in June 2026 in Blue Hill, Maine.<span class=\"credits\">(CJ Gunther \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"is-style-dropcap\">Anthony Weiner must be gnashing his teeth. Al Franken too. Weiner lost his political career for sexting while married (he went to jail for sexting with a 15-year-old girl, but that came later). Franken fake-groped a sleeping woman as a joke, and was then credibly accused of groping numerous women for real. Away with him! But that was before Democratic dude-bros decided the party was dominated by \u201cHR lady politics,\u201d as Matt Stoller memorably put it, and that white working-class men were the real Americans, having absolutely no political experience kept you pure of heart, and that being \u201crough around the edges\u201d (Stoller again) was a testament to your authenticity.<\/p>\n<p>Graham Platner shows us how that works out in practice. First, freelance progressive strategists Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan recruit him after a single meeting. They\u2019re smitten: He\u2019s the real deal, a former Marine who after some years of PTSD and heavy drinking has settled into small-town Maine life as an oyster farmer and married man. He\u2019s got a \u201cgravelly voice\u201d\u2014always a plus. Joined by Morris Katz, the man who brought Zohran Mamdani to the world, they commission a quick vetting on the cheap. It doesn\u2019t hurt that Platner is good-looking, charismatic, a great public speaker and energetic campaigner, competing in the primary with 78-year-old governor Janet Mills, aka the Establishment, in the race to unseat longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins. And so the legend of Platner, man of the people, is born.<\/p>\n<p>A great deal of ink has been spent debating what it is to be working-class. Non-college-educated? Brought up low-income? Sells his labor to a boss? Works with his hands? None of these are perfect\u2014a housepainter works with his hands, and so did Picasso. I\u2019m not sure Platner meets any of these criteria\u2014his family was educated and middle-class; he went to private schools and got into (but dropped out of) George Washington University. He owns a business\u2014the main customer for which is his mother\u2019s restaurant. Platner was a political consultant\u2019s idea of a working-class man, a profanity-spewing bro you\u2019d want to have a beer with.<\/p>\n<p>It was a bit of a grift, but for a long time, it worked. Platner had a huge following in Maine among fed-up workers and idealistic progressives alike, including lots of women enraged by Senator Collins\u2019s vote for Brett Kavanaugh. He won the primary. People loved him so much, and were so eager to beat Collins they excused flaws that would have sunk an ordinary Democrat: the tattoo he claimed not to know was a Nazi symbol but probably did, the misogynistic Reddit posts, bad behavior with some\u2014but not all!\u2014girlfriends, sexting with multiple women after the marriage that was supposed to have turned his life around. It was all down to PTSD or alcoholism. Each thing was supposed to be the last\u2014he swore it\u2014but it never was.<\/p>\n<p>Dude-bro pundits\u2014Stoller, Ryan Grim, Ken Klippenstein, Glenn Greenwald\u2014doubled down: What about Trump, the rapist in the white house? What about Gaza, and AIPAC and the oligarchs funding the Dems? They shredded Lindsay Fifield, an ex-girlfriend who told <em>The New York Times<\/em> Platner had twisted her arm and locked her in a room. Fifield was a \u201crepublican operative\u201d who had helped orchestrate Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s Supreme Court bid\u2014obviously she\u2019s lying. It was only when another ex, Jenny Racicot, told <em>Politico<\/em> and Jake Tapper that he had raped her after invading her house while drunk that the handwriting was on the wall. But, really, it had been there all along. As Maya Angelou said, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. His endorsers\u2014Bernie, Warren, Ro Khanna, Planned Parenthood\u2014dropped him; his volunteers turned against him, and on Wednesday Platner withdrew from the race with a bitter speech blaming the media and the Establishment for tanking his campaign.<\/p>\n<p>A lot has been said about the gendered nature of Platner\u2019s appeal. The working-class savior has to be a man, of course\u2014imagine a working-class woman campaigning on her years working the register at CVS or running a daycare center. Where\u2019s the romance in that? It\u2019s no accident that Elizabeth Warren called him \u201cmy kind of man\u201d and praised him for his \u201caccountability,\u201d the very quality he lacks entirely. Men get so much forgiveness for their screwups and predations. A male politician has a secret weapon, too\u2014his wife. A wife can defend her husband when no one else can, and rare indeed is the pol who says, <em>No, darling, it\u2019s my fault, I\u2019ll handle this alone<\/em>. I felt so sorry for Amy Gertner telling the world that she doesn\u2019t want a perfect marriage. When Platner introduced his wife at a rally after he confessed to the sexting, the crowd roared \u201cA-my! A-my!\u201d It was hard not to hear the voice of progressive America calling on women to stand by their man and take one for the team.<\/p>\n<p>What have we learned from this experience? Vetting is good. Don\u2019t do it on the cheap. Don\u2019t assume that a politician\u2019s autobiography is truthful. It\u2019s PR. Finally, no matter how much you want a savior, don\u2019t make excuses for a candidate like he\u2019s your boyfriend who\u2019s really sweet when you get to know him.<\/p>\n<p>Love is blind. Voters shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n<div xmlns:default=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" id=\"article-end-\" class=\"article-end \">\n<div class=\"article-end__authors\">\n<div class=\"article-end__author\">\n<h5 class=\"article-end__author-name\">\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/authors\/katha-pollitt\/\">Katha Pollitt<\/a><br \/>\n                    <\/h5>\n<p>                                            <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kathapollitt\" class=\"article-end__author-twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><br \/>\n                            <default:svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"17\" height=\"14\" viewbox=\"0 0 17 14\" fill=\"none\"><br \/>\n\t<default:path fill-rule=\"evenodd\" clip-rule=\"evenodd\" d=\"M15.2054 3.54558C15.2122 3.6951 15.215 3.84463 15.215 3.99527C15.215 8.58792 11.7194 13.8834 5.32683 13.8834C3.36455 13.8834 1.53779 13.3083 0 12.3221C0.271606 12.354 0.548252 12.3702 0.828257 12.3702C2.45677 12.3702 3.95536 11.8147 5.14483 10.8829C3.62384 10.8543 2.34085 9.84963 1.89844 8.4692C2.11068 8.51008 2.32797 8.53136 2.55253 8.53136C2.87006 8.53136 3.17695 8.48936 3.46815 8.40984C1.87772 8.09008 0.680414 6.68501 0.680414 5.00273C0.680414 4.98705 0.680414 4.97305 0.680414 4.95793C1.14858 5.21833 1.68452 5.37514 2.25461 5.39362C1.32219 4.76921 0.708415 3.7063 0.708415 2.5006C0.708415 1.8633 0.879778 1.26633 1.17882 0.753361C2.89302 2.85621 5.45395 4.23887 8.34249 4.38392C8.28313 4.12967 8.25233 3.86423 8.25233 3.59206C8.25233 1.6729 9.80861 0.117188 11.7278 0.117188C12.7274 0.117188 13.6301 0.539436 14.2641 1.21425C15.0559 1.05913 15.8002 0.769041 16.4716 0.370873C16.2118 1.18289 15.6602 1.86386 14.9428 2.29395C15.6462 2.20939 16.3159 2.02235 16.9392 1.74626C16.4739 2.44292 15.8842 3.05557 15.2054 3.54558Z\" fill=\"#666666\"\/><br \/>\n<\/default:svg><br \/>\n                        <\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-end__author-bio\">\n<p>Katha Pollitt is a columnist for\u00a0<em>The Nation<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script type=\"83611ad550021e74a84e9fe0-text\/javascript\">\n\t\t!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n\t\t{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n\t\tn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n\t\tif(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n\t\tn.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n\t\tt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n\t\ts.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', 'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n\t\tfbq('init', '233793277040432');\n\t\tfbq('track', 'PageView');\n\t\t\t\t<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inexperienced and improperly vetted, the candidate was a disaster in the making. Ad Policy Graham Platner speaks at an event in June 2026 in Blue Hill, Maine.(CJ Gunther \/ Getty Images) Anthony Weiner must be gnashing his teeth. Al Franken too. Weiner lost his political career for sexting while married (he went to jail for&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2280200612.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[1483,1196,1482,1443],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-downfall","tag-graham","tag-platners","tag-predictable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}