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This is an image of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner's profile pic on the messaging app Kik. Notice anything?
I know the real story is supposed to be the fact that he was sending sexually explicit texts to women while married, but I can't stop laughing at the picture. It's obviously no coincidence that his hand perfectly covers the giant totenkopf on his chest. This is art.
It is certainly enjoyable to see a Democratic candidate get run through the wringer the way a Republican would, but I must confess that I find his scandals to be endearingly relatable in a way. Prediction market odds for Platner in the general are collapsing, but I think this is less of a reaction to this specific leak and more of a realization that he is the kind of candidate who will have a scandal every other month all the way up to election day, and then a scandal every other year for his entire term if he wins.
EDIT: Additional unverified reports that I cannot vouch for but would be hilarious if true.
Sounds familiar. If that wasn't a problem for Republicans, why should it be for Democrats?
I think Trump's scandals are different from other politicians' scandals. This is why it never works when people say, "Trump was never phased by his scandals so scandals don't matter anymore." Scandals in fact routinely destroy politicians or derail sure-thing elections all the time: Roger Moore, Mark Robinson, George Santos, Anthony Weiner, Katie Hill, Katie Porter, John Conyers, Eric Adams, Bob Menendez, etc.
Half of Trump's scandals are him saying something he's not supposed to say. Voters mostly liked it. "I like heroes who didn't get caught" is supposed to be this scandal because how could you possibly criticize a war hero? But people wanted to see McCain dragged through the mud. "Blood out of her whatever," but people were tired of these feminist HR speech codes wielded by journalists like Megyn Kelly. "Until we know what the hell is going on" -- but lots of people wanted a Muslim Ban. And etc. etc. etc.
The next half of Trump's scandals are political attack weapons and treated as such. Most of them have aged poorly. We spent years embroiled in the controversy of whether Trump colluded with Russia, which would have been a real scandal if it were true. There aren't many people willing to treat it as true anymore. Same for something like E. Jean Carroll, where she could never remember even the year in which it was supposed to happen and New York changed the law so the case could go forward. I guess that's a big scandal for a lot of people, but how the story gets interpreted is clearly very divided. Likewise Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, "Very Fine People," etc. etc. etc. We can create however many controversies we want and as long as one side is willing to fight them they are by definition controversial and therefore even scandals. But nobody would say after i.e. Brett Kavanaugh that rape scandals aren't problems anymore. Well no it's just that lots of people didn't believe in that scandal. Rape accusations are still a great way to destroy a political career.
Then there's the third half of Trump's scandals -- well, we could debate J6 and 2020 and Covid and Impeachment and Jeffrey Epstein and Iran and those things all day. Objectively these are all very complicated with lots to interpret and dispute.
These are different in kind from, e.g., Mark Robinson calling himself a Nazi or Bob Menendez having gold bars from all the bribes he's been accepting. I suppose, actually, that to a lot of liberals these are on the same level as Trump granting pardons or owning hotels that diplomats stay at and so the "complication" as I call it is that Trump supporters are actually in a cult. But I want to defend this distinction. Scandals don't just fall out of the sky as objective controversies even if it is objective that there are controversies. Scandals are first and foremost accusations. And all accusations pass through several layers of voters or other players asking, "is this bullshit?"
The first layer is, "Is it real?" The second layer is, "How bad is it really?" Objectively, a lot of Trump's scandals are filtered out as "not real" or "not important". Perhaps, after that, there's a third layer of, "So what?" Which is where we get to the meat and potatoes of whether a scandal matters.
Brett Kavanaugh was accused of raping a drunk girl at a party 40 years ago in college. This accusation caused a lot of drama and a lot of people believed it. But, realistically, quite a lot of people thought it was bullshit. The girl could not remember key details about how it happened, Kavanaugh had solid alibis and records, and she could not establish herself as having credible moral authority that could substitute for proof. A lot of people decided it was bullshit. This doesn't mean that voters and the public don't actually care about rape anymore. "Is it real?"
George Santos lied about his professional background. He didn't tell complicated lies, they were very simple lies that were simply false. Everybody knew they were false. A comparable Trump scandal is his past as a businessman. Was he really just a conman or did his bankruptcies undermine his claim to have been a successful businessman? Those are very complicated questions to discuss (well, in one sense -- I personally think they're bullshit, and I know a lot of other people do too.) "Is it real?"
Katie Porter abused her staff and threw steaming mashed potatoes at her husband. She's probably an abusive person, and she comes off very annoying and shrill in interviews. Maybe, to your taste, the things Donald Trump says are just as bad or worse. But objectively people are more willing to tolerate Trump's flaws than Katie Porter's flaws, so the revival of her scandals has effectively ended her bid for California Governor. "How bad is it really?"
Eric Adams accepted bribes from the Turkish Government. Basically everybody admits it happened. It was also relatively small potatoes stuff. And in the scheme of New York City politics, there aren't actually that many egregious favors that can be granted to the Turks. They got some expedited building permits and exceptions and special deals. The real scandal and point of contention, in fact, was Adams relationship to other politicians. There's speculation that his attacks of the Biden administration over immigration are what lead them to investigate him in the first place. There's no doubt that his willingness to then work with Trump over ICE rose his prestige with MAGA and sank it with the left. So he lost re-election. But the scandal itself, which objectively happened, was just a pretext for other political battles it represented. "So what?"
So, Graham Platner.
He's got a Nazi tattoo. Everyone knows it would be bad if he were a Nazi. But maybe it's not real. Is it a common Nazi symbol? Could he have known it was a Nazi tattoo beyond a reasonable doubt? "Is this real?"
He's cheating on his wife. Maybe he's a sexual predator or a creep. "How bad is it really?" "Does it matter?"
The actual "scandal" here that could destroy Graham Platner's political career is his image. Liberals believe that Graham Platner is a candidate who can win Maine, so they're willing to overlook faults and flaws. If he's perceived as someone who will lose because his scandals are crippling, then there won't really be much point in defending them. If it came out for instance that he killed a kid, enough supporters would break rank that the discourse wouldn't really produce a second interpretation. But if he's "just" slimy or gross, well, maybe that's gigachad. Maybe he cheats on his wife because he's a winner. That's basically how discourse works.
My read is that Platner's scandals have taken some support away and I lean toward the interpretation that Susan Collins will outperform the polls again and Platner will lose. But none of the scandals have really been a direct hit and so far don't look poised to destroy his campaign.
Yeah, that one still gets trotted out as "Trump is a convicted rapist!" even if technically the conviction was not for rape. The judge put both hands and his upper body onto the scale, never mind his thumb, about that one. And Carroll's vague story that had no corroboration would have been laughed off for anyone else (remember when 'believe all women' seamlessly segued into 'but not Tara Reade' because Biden?).
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