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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?
On a somewhat related note, I remember reading one of Steve Sailer’s posts ages ago in which he made a claim that was only tangentially related to his main argument that the Democrats’ best chance of winning the presidency is by fielding as a candidate an older African American man with a military background who’s from a working class or lower-middle class background and is center-left. If we accept this as valid I guess it means that the main disadvantage Platner has in this case is that he’s white.
Also that he isn't lower-middle class (his father was a lawyer and his grandfather was a starchitect with his own Wikipedia article) and he isn't centre-left (he was explicitly the far-left factional candidate in the primary, supported by the usual suspects). If you think that being uncouth in public makes someone "centre-left" and pro-working class despite their support for open borders and trannies, you don't understand working-class politics.
If he thinks Steve Sailer is offering a realistic model of the Democratic Party, he probably didn’t understand working-class politics anyway.
Sailer plays to his audience, which is very much inclined to frame everything as racialist spoils systems. He’s going to ascribe that to the Democrats no matter what they say.
Are you telling me the Dems don’t advertise racial spoils?
Uh, I don’t think I said such.
Botond described Sailer’s model as
I think this is wrong, and that more or less none of those categories matter if the guy runs on vibes. Democrats have awful, cringe-inducing vibes. They need to present an aura of charismatic competency to contrast with the Trump campaign. No, I don’t have much confidence that will happen.
But I guess I think claims of racialist spoils are overstated, too. Shit’s still politically toxic.
Which is why there's an entire industry to manufacture consent for it - the entire battle against "systemic racism" is a justification to provide racial spoils even when it doesn't make sense. It's why "white supremacy" never ends even as white hegemony is ending and there's always a new calumny - like the claim that black babies are more likely to die under/because of white doctors, which was then cited by KBJ in a SCOTUS judgment on affirmative action - to allow calls for more "justice"
That or deny it's happening. I suspect this is part of the reason affirmative action is both pervasive and polls very badly: the public dislikes it, and they don't know enough to know how much of a finger is on the scale (so they take claims like "it's a tie-breaker" seriously). As a result, they don't think it's necessary. Admins know better.
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You said: Sailer plays to his audience, which is very much inclined to frame everything as racialist spoils systems. He’s going to ascribe that to the Democrats no matter what they say.
The last sentence implies that the democrats don’t do racial spoils systems.
But they do. What do you think supporting affirmative action is? Or saying you will pick a certain color for scotus or VP? Why defend minority majority districts? There use euphemisms but at its core it is racial spoils
I chose “say” in hopes of avoiding this exact conversation. What people say and do are not, in fact, the same thing.
But I suppose that was foolish of me. If I claim Sailer’s audience is wrong about Democrats, I’m basically signing up to defend anything Democrats have done since LBJ. I think this is a dirty motte and bailey, but one that sees a lot of use, so I ought to be more explicit.
The motte is that Democrats absolutely do things which implement or at least hint at a racial spoils system. This is obviously true.
The bailey comes when using those things as evidence for a specific model of the Democratic Party, one where the minorities are all ganging up to shake down white Americans. This is senseless and hyperbolic. It assumes away the prospect of white people choosing to benefit non-whites, because that’s how Sailer thinks.
I actually think Sailer would include white people (women specifically) that have a large out group favorable bias as consistent with dem racial spoils
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Democrats do not need to project charismatic competency. That shit seems fake. Look at Trump- he changed national politics by seeming like your drunk uncle at thanksgiving(after he won the powerball), because that's what Trump is. Bill Clinton seemed like your mildly sleazy brother in law you who always had a beer for when the women were getting too overbearing. These guys are recognizable as real- but not especially competent. Our politics don't reward that. If we cared about competence there'd be a bunch of accountants and engineers getting elected, instead of lawyers and car dealership owners.
That’s exactly why.
A long time ago, one of our users wrote about a sneer-state-debate theory of politics. The idea was that high-level bureaucrats are pretty good at debating. That works against other bureaucrats and against their natural prey, the idealists. But it leaves them completely unprepared for a sufficiently charismatic asshole. Somebody who can just show up, ignore the home turf, and shove that nerd in a locker.
This is how Trump wiped the Republican field and eventually Hillary. In doing so, he basically realigned the party under his “sneer” strategy. It didn’t matter if they had a working plan so long as the other guy’s plan looked worse.
The Democrats absolutely walked into it, too. First they tried debating Trump on his policies. Loser move. Then they experimented with sneering, which was never particularly convincing. They didn’t have the charisma, and Trump had a serious first-mover advantage, anyway.
So what actually works against a “sneer” strategy? AshLael suggested it was back to the idealists. Run somebody with a winning smile who can just “state” a simple position. It doesn’t have to be well-considered; the other guy is never going to call you on it.
I always thought this was plausible. Maybe that was just a sense that Obama would have wiped the floor with Trump, but I felt like a positive vision would preempt a lot of Trump’s support. Frame him as the grumpy old fossil instead of the dynamic one.
But then the Democrats shambled over to Biden. If there was a central vision for 2020, it was “anything but Trump.” COVID made that extra-appealing, winning exactly one election. By the time Trump got back from Butler, it was completely out of gas.
Thing is, Trump will be out of the picture in ‘28. He has no obvious successor, but there is a bumper crop of populists and pundits who want to sneer their way into politics. I think Democrats could clean house if they dug up someone with enough style to play the “state” card. Ditch the baggage, pretend it’s not about Trump. Campaign on single-payer healthcare or UBI. Something else with a one-line explanation. Take no questions on the details.
Each day I find it slightly less likely that they’ll manage it.
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