Dems Only Ditched Platner Because He Was Going To Lose

The Maine Democrat Party successfully pressured Graham Platner to step down. Not because of his Nazi tattoo or his alleged physical abuse of a former (Republican) girlfriend. It’s not even because he mocked a teenager’s failed suicide attempt. Heck, it’s not even because he suggested women who don’t want to be raped should “take some responsibility for themselves” and not get too drunk.

It was only after a second ex-girlfriend (this one left-wing) came forward to allege a break-in and rape that Democrats suddenly decided he was not fit to represent their party.

The ousting says less about Platner, however, and more about Democrats.

Platner won the Democrat primary with 72 percent of the vote despite the mounting controversies. Democrats like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, and others continued to endorse Platner despite the fact that almost all allegations, except for the latest rape accusation, were public before the primary.

In fact, a New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll found Platner was leading the race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins by 2 percentage points just days before the latest allegation broke. In other words, Democrats could look past all the other abhorrent alleged conduct because they didn’t threaten the party’s chances of taking a Senate seat.

But once Democrat leaders decided that Platner had become a political liability, the calls for him to withdraw came immediately. The issue wasn’t just another accusation; it was that an accusation finally seemed like it could hurt their chances of taking a Senate seat.

That is to say, Democrats deserve no accolades for now pressuring him to step aside after accepting all his other serious flaws and problems. Their sudden outrage doesn’t erase the fact that they accepted, defended, or just ignored behavior now implicitly acknowledged as being disqualifying.

Perhaps what’s even more concerning is that Platner is not an isolated case of Democrats accepting and even endorsing candidates who are deeply problematic.

Virginia Democrats elected Jay Jones as attorney general last November after private messages leaked showing he once fantasized about the murder of his Republican colleague Todd Gilbert and Gilbert’s children.

Adam Hamaway won the June Democrat primary for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District despite having volunteered and interned in Bosnia with the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF). The 9/11 Commission and U.S. authorities later described BIF as providing support to al-Qaida. Hamaway also testified in the defense of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Ethiopian-born Melat Kiros — who won the Democrat primary for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District in June — blamed America for 9/11, calling it “inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East, that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response. … Our responsibility is to getting rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place.”

Aber Kawas, who won the Democrat primary for a New York State Senate seat, once claimed, “The system of capitalism and racism and white supremacy et cetera — and Islamophobia — have all been used to colonize lands, to take resources from other people and so this is a long trajectory and we’re just seeing the manifestations of that continuation with 9/11.”

Or take Darializa Avila Chevalier, a socialist who won the Democrat primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District. She founded the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group that called for the “eradication of Western civilization,” she claims she wipes her hands on the American flag, and she has advocated for “seiz[ing] the means of production” (like a good Marxist).

In accepting these candidates, Democrats have made clear they are willing to overlook otherwise entirely disqualifying and career-suicide actions so long as the political cost of doing so does not come at a steep price.

Platner may be gone, but the party is still happily elevating elected officials and candidates who fantasize about murdering their opposition, who justify terrorists’ terrorism, and who openly call to end America as we know it. The only thing Platner’s withdrawal confirms is Democrats have extremely low “standards.”

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2