I’m pretty sure that I was the very first person on this board to bring up Platner’s tattoo.
At the time, I considered it absolutely disqualifying. If I were a Democratic voter in Maine, I wouldn’t have voted for him in the primary.
That being said, it seems the people of Maine didn’t consider it disqualifying, and he was leading Mills in the polls by 35 points before she dropped out. He’s gonna be the nominee and there’s no relitigating that at this point.
He has definitely exhibited poor judgment in the past, but people can change. I myself, though I’ve always considered myself a far-left socialist, have had opinions about trans issues and police power that I now regret and have changed my mind about. Being about the same age as Platner is, he probably grew up in the same media environment as I did, and I’m willing to believe that his beliefs have evolved over time in the same way that mine have.
I’m also willing to concede that there are certain subcultures in which Nazi symbols are used as a way of saying “look how badass I am” without actually endorsing the philsophy they represent. Lemmy of Motorhead wore a Confederate cavalry cap and an Iron Cross medallion around his neck because he thought they looked cool, while nonetheless absolutely loathing skinheads and racists and saying the only woman he’d ever truly loved was a black girl he’d known as a teenager. In the neighborhood where I grew up in San Diego in the '80s, a hippy-dippy enclave on the beach largely populated by beach bums and old stoners and a homeless prophet who sold t-shirts with his face on them and told my mother I’d be president one day, there was a motorcycle shop whose logo was an SS rune painted eight feet tall on the side of the building, owned by a biracial black-Italian guy.
If it’s him vs. the woman who voted against impeaching Trump because she thought he’d “learned his lesson” after agitating a mob to attack the Capitol and murder Congress, then I’ll go with the guy with the stupid tattoo.