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What are the Democrats’ carrots & sticks for pushing Graham Platner out of the campaign?
If you follow U.S. domestic politics (or if you’ve just read the thread below), then you’ll know who Graham Platner is. He’s the young-ish politician who won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate from Maine, in the process attracting attention for combining liberal political positions with some elements of a blue collar background. In my view, he received a tremendous amount of scrutiny for being at the intersection of 3 significant stories: (1) the Democrats’ struggles to attract rural male voters; (2) the importance of Maine as a toss-up Senate seat in 2028 for deciding the balance of the U.S. senate; and (3) the adoption of certain leftist political positions by new politicians (broadly economic populism and antagonism towards Israel) that are seen as breaking from norms and potentially as a marker of future political currents.
More recently, Platner has also attracted attention for a series of scandals. First, some of his early, intended-to-be-anonymous internet postings were identified, and they were both unseemly and promoted ideas in conflict with his current public political positions. Then, it was revealed that he had a Nazi-symbol tattoo from his time in the military (Platner denies knowing that the tattoo was Nazi imagery when he got it; some people find this explanation believable and others don’t). Then, it was revealed that he’d recently pursued extra-marital relationships through some kind of seedy dating app. Then, some of his ex-girlfriends came together alleging that Platner was volatile and had been trouble towards them in various ways.
Through all this, the Democratic establishment had mostly defended Platner. Then, a few days ago, one of Platner’s exes came forward alleging treatment by Platner that would seem to satisfy the legal standard for rape (some disagree that the alleged conduct would constitute rape - see the discussion below for details).
Anyway, I’m not really interested in re-litigating any of these items. But what really fascinates me is that the Democratic establishment now seems to have arrived at a consensus that Platner’s campaign needs to end so that another candidate might be selected (Platner has essentially lost all prominent public-backing over the last 48 hours). But ultimately, it seems that procedure requires that Platner himself formally resign his campaign in for this to happen. My question is, how can Platner be influenced to abandon his campaign?
Normally, you influence with carrots (rewards for good behavior) and sticks (punishments for bad behavior). Democrats can appeal to Platner’s sense of dignity (such as it is), patriotism, and desire for the common good. But what other levers do they hold?
I doubt that Democrats would just concede Maine if Platner were to remain in the race. If he drops out now, he’ll always be remembered for this last week. But if he stays in the race, then I assume he'll benefit from 4 months of Democrats campaigning for him, seeking to rehabilitate his image. Even if he ends up losing the Senate race badly, that seems like a better outcome for Platner individually than the alternative of dropping out now.
What am I missing here?
I'd just add that Platner was seen as a left factional candidate from the get-go. He was recruited by a set of campaign consultants who worked for Sanders and then Fetterman. The Democratic Establishment candidate was Janet Mills, the 78 year old Governor with a 51% approval rating. The insider take I've read is that most of the young up and coming Dems in Maine wanted to duck Susan Collins and opted for lateral or incremental career moves (Hannah Pingee going for governor) so as to stay on track rather than running in the primary.
If you follow left vs center left online debates every new indication of Platner's poor judgement that leaked was declared an establishment ratfuck and when he overcame them to win the primary this was celebrated as the end of "HR lady" politics by Matt Stoller (iirc, not totally sure it was him). Today Ryan Grim was still fighting about how dishonest the media was for omitting that Platner's accusers sent a message that she needed a glute massage before telling him not to come over.
The establishment never wanted Platner, once he won the primary they were stuck defending him because they don't want to hurt his chances of beating Collins. With the assault allegation they're convinced he's going to lose no matter what so then they have to do everything they can to force him out. If we're being conspiratorial though why leak this stuff after the primary, but before the deadline for changing the ballot line. If the establishment had the allegations in their back pocket ready to leak to the medi they could have dropped it earlier and gotten Janet Mills vs. Susan Collins like they wanted.
Too soon indeed.
Never again back a Democratic candidate that isn't an HR lady because a heterosexual male with any semblance of sexual history is at risk of getting MeToo'd just before the election.
There's a reason why none of these accusations are ever about something that happened last night, and there's always some string of enthusiastic text messages that are totally at odds with the way the accuser currently remembers things. Yet we're expected to accept unverified SA allegations influencing politics and woe be on he who dares question the word of Her Holiness, The Victim™.
This guy is probably the most obvious sexual assaulter we've had in recent memory, even more obvious than some of the people who have previously down weird sex stuff.
The guy has posted about fantasizing about raping and killing people...and joined the military to do that (in how own words!), claimed to be a huge WWII buff but got a Nazi tattoo, has significant infidelity problems that aren't contested, and I'm not even sure that's all of it.
Hearing that he was a rapist or a sex pest is more unsurprising than anything.
Would you be shocked if President grab-her-by-the-pussy is outed as a rapist tomorrow? And would you be shocked if those allegations were then found to be fabricated next week? There's always nebulous "signs" that seem obvious in hindsight, especially when characterised with a more "flexible" personal ethics than what's normal. But the allegations need to stand on their own legs as well. Or we could simply chuck legal procedure, cede to the court of public opinion (read: mob rule) and do only what's optically feasible.
I'm personally of the opinion that Trump has probably had sexual encounters that would be considered rape by median 2020 peak woke values of such, however I don't think he's likely to have committed anything especially vile by standards of his immediate cultural standards. I'm sure Platner got laid a bunch for tweaking the right signals that'd kill it with a Tumblr chicklit enthusiast, but 'manly takechargey man' is a role that is always going to be dancing on the line of consent. Especially when consent can be assigned and retracted retroactively at any time for any reason
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No, and no, respectively, and that's the fault of his brag-about-sexual-assault behavior and of his attackers' throw-mud-and-see-what-sticks behavior, so neither of my "no"s is wrong in either the positive or normative sense.
Are there, though? Politician is a pretty awful job for people who aren't attracted to power, which might correlate with sexual force kinks and probably correlates with being willing to lie for power, but even vague signs aren't "always" there. It's not a wacky coincidence that we've been talking about Platner pretty exclusively before this final straw. Cory Booker might be a contributor to federal gridlock, but do you think he might be a rapist? John Cornyn might lie about how partisan his Supreme Court confirmation behavior was, but do you think he'd lie to frame someone for rape?
In this case in particular, we're in theory talking about a candidate who was head-hunted by party insiders, not somebody whose drive to power led him to start a campaign on his own initiative. If we're already widening the search that proactively, couldn't we just have found someone with no Nazi tattoos, no public statements of bloodlust, no reports of abuse from exes, no violations of wedding vows, and no accounts on creepy sites famed for underaged sexting? This is not actually a big ask! There are loads of normal people out there, some of whom would probably agree to run for Senator anyway!
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Shocked? No.
But Trump is vulgar, being a sex pest makes sense, rapist maybe less so but not shocking. This guy is HEINOUS. He bragged about having thoughts of raping men for dominance, like it makes more sense than not!
Vague, nebulous post-hoc signs are a problems but this guy is not that!
If you had to make a most Sus guy in a lab it would look like this guy.
I followed it up with another question.
You know why MeToo ran out of mileage?
The signal-to-noise ratio of the allegations was probably the worst we've ever seen at the time. Becky accuses Brad on twitter, incident happened somewhere in LA several years ago so no evidence exists, she was super scared so no police complaint was filed, you know the drill. And she's definitely not lying because "you don't lie about these things and it's hard to lie about it rape".
Except, it's the digital age. It's never been easier to lie! People lie, casually and often, about far more outlandish things than SA. And the online mob will reliably follow her word to lynch Brad.
You can't reason with the mob, why allow them to get involved at all?
There are people who want Trump gone, we know that. We have precedent within the decade for smear campaigns (see Russiagate) to delegitimise his Presidency. An unverified rape charge at a politically critical moment? Is that not Sus?
Two things can be true at the same time.
MeToo involved a bunch of bullshit.
This guy is by his own uncontested words a huge shit bag in multiple ways, including in ways that would make you think he's the likely sort to commit sexual assault.
The contested stuff is just a cherry on top.
Additional process information includes the fact that this stuff was out their for months and then held back by various individuals, it wasn't fabricated right now, and the fact that the people who vetted him found and knew about a lot of this and admitted it.
It's blowing my mind that people are defending this guy.
Progressives are defending this guy because Platner's just the top image in hello_human_resources.jpg
I defend this guy because I want a candidate (who has politics I don't even agree with) to win an election regardless of how much female-privilege-associated (re: "consent violations") dirt appears, so that people stop listening to women when they invoke it.
We are not the same.
(What your mind is being blown by are conservatives who don't understand this, so they're all busy debating whether it was or wasn't consensual because that's the framework they use to Protect Women. They don't understand that the entire concept of "consent" was destructive from the start and that women don't need that protection in an equal world.)
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I mean I agree it's sus and this wouldn't likely be platformed as enthusiastically if it wasn't otherwise convenient to do so, but also Platner's whole existence is prettymuch 'overly horny man who tiptoes on the line of consent' and with that established it's hardly a massive stretch that he's fallen across the foul line at some point. Especially with modern conceptions of consent where it's entirely vibe-based and can be switched on and off retroactively whenever suits.
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