No, that’s at best. At worst, he introduces bills to exterminate all the LGBT folks, and the Republicans jump on it and claim it’s “bipartisan”.
But honestly, if we’re hoping for Platner to change parties and become a Democrat, then we might as well hope for Collins to change parties and become a Democrat.
And no, it’s not fine to hand the Senate to Trump. That’s why the Democratic party should have contested this seat. But the only Democrat in the race just dropped out. Not much we can do about that now.
We have no idea how he’ll vote, and he’s not a secret Nazi.
This is a complete non sequitur. You ask a smart political expert which candidate is more likely to win the general, or which ad campaign is more likely to resonate with voters. You don’t ask smart political experts whether Nazis are OK. Nazis are not OK. And anyone who thinks they are is not someone worth listening to.
Why Mills let herself get outraised, outspent, and outstumped, I can’t precisely say, but here’s my best assessment. When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was recruiting Mills in the months before her October announcement, the logic was sound. Mills’ job approval in polls was generally above water, hitting 55 percent in a June poll by the University of New Hampshire (UNH), and Platner was an unknown. She’s the only Democrat to have won statewide elective office in the last 20 years.
They think Platner is going to shake things up, something I’m incredibly dubious about. Anyway, Mills waited for the national Dems to drop a ton of attack ads on Platner and national Dems waited for Mills to perk up a bit.
Regardless, any Senator who caucuses with the Dems can give them Committee majorities and therefore investigatory powers. Any Senator who provides the Dems with a 52-48 majority rather than a 51-49 majority makes it easier to defend Democratic priorities. Typically self-styled mavericks only maverick on pet issues: if the majority is large enough they don’t make a difference. Also since Platner’s base is hard left it will be harder for him to collaborate too closely with the GOP. It can be done: (see Sinema) but in her case that strategy was electorally self-limiting.
As bad as it is that anyone would consider “strategic voting” for a Nazi in the first place, the idea that Platner is going to be a reliable part of a Democratic majority is obviously ludicrous. If he somehow manages to win the general election - which looks extremely doubtful given the stark choice swing voters in Maine will face between one of the most centrist Republicans and a Nazi - it’s going to be six years of “oh, you want my vote for that LGBT rights bill or health insurance reform or resolution against invading Venezuela? Better get behind my monomaniacal agenda about The Jew or no dice.”
The $64 question, of course, is how Platner would vote as a Senator. Is he actually a liberal, or is he running a false flag candidacy? His platform as a candidate espouses liberal stances; to what extent will he actually vote that way?
Platner’s base is hard left. Sure you can piss off your base. But then you lose your next election. See: Sinema.
Platner is more likely to stay friendly with Sanders, though there’s the possibility that he will go the Angus King moderate route. I doubt whether he will align with Tuberville of Alabama or tack to the right of Josh Hawley of MO. To the extent that he does, I suspect it will be on one issue. I’m saying this not because I know anything about Platner (I don’t) but because this is a general pattern. The constituency drives the politician, not the other way around.
ETA1: kenobi: then present me with an example of a legislator who ran a false flag candidacy. Or whatever you’re concerned about. (Counter-argument: sui generis is a thing. Counter-to-the-counter: but it’s rare.)
ETA2: Honestly Platner’s promise to change Washington without spelling out what that means seems really familiar to me. As is his alleged authenticity, which is simply a failure to self-censor reliably. Nothing new here.
ETA3: Yeah, I’m going with Loach’s the knucklehead interpretation below.
ETA4: I suspect Platner’s going for the Joe Rogan vote. Which is tricky, but has some strengths.
ETA5: We should forgive Platner’s youthful indiscretions, the ones made when he was only 40, haahahhahaha hell no.
That’s what I find to be hard to believe. I’m not in Maine so I haven’t been exposed to all the campaigning. My algorithm has thrown a bunch of Platner clips at me. In those clips he is saying all the right things. So the choices are he’s a knucklehead who is genuinely running as a democrat or he’s an evil genius running a Trojan horse campaign and will jump out as a Republican after being sworn in. I know what I feel is more likely.
That’s fair. If it had just been the tattoo, his attempt to chalk it up to being young and stupid would ring more true.
But, as more recent “knucklehead” things have come to light, and most of them pointing towards at least some sympathies with Nazis or Nazi-like ideas (or, at a bare minimum, being chummy with people with really nasty ideas), as well as him likely knowing full well why his tattoo was problematic a long time ago, it does give me pause.
Let’s not ignore the second-order effects on the Democratic brand either. Every Spanberger and Shapiro who manages to win in competitive states by presenting as the sane choice to local voters already has to fight against the initial perception of being like the Brandon Johnsons and Chesea Boudins of Democratic fief cities. The rise of the Hezbollah wing of the party is another version of that, and Platner is even worse because he’s not just cynically riding on regional demographics - of course you can be Ilhan Omar in place where Somalis are the biggest minority group or Rashida Tlaib in an Arab district and pander to those groups. But can you win Pennsylvania without Jewish votes? How about Florida?
Having to answer for Platner to the sane moderates who are the persuadable swing voters being targeted by campaigns, everywhere in the U.S. for the next six years, is an utter nightmare scenario for Democrats.
…we have prevented another catastrophic attack in the 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001. To do that, we spent more than $6 trillion fighting wars that killed over 7,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians, inflicting trauma on countless people. The destruction has displaced tens of millions; as refugees sought safety in the West, it fueled a right-wing backlash to democracy. Meanwhile, what have we built in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and now Iran? And what could we have built at home with those trillions of dollars?
So basically an antiwar Democrat who understands how to talk about this topic.
Well, he’s against some wars. Not the wars he signed up to fight in, and not the invasion of Poland in 1939, and not the 80-year attempt by the Arab world to obliterate Jews from the Asian continent. But there are other wars, besides those, that he definitely doesn’t like.
I seem to recall normal Democrats begging the left to vote for Clinton and Harris on this basis and being told it didn’t matter or wasn’t a real issue or was just not important enough to outweigh hang-wringing over the Gaza pretendicide. Now you’ve suddenly had a change of heart? That’s a lot of chutzpah especially since we have no idea if Platner would support any normal Democratic choice for the Supreme Court (a lot of prominent liberal lawyers may be a little too “east coast intellectual” for him, nudge nudge).
Cites for what you are claiming here? I would be surprised if he holds those positions but has managed to secure endorsements from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and AOC.
Seems like a perfectly reasonable position for an antisemite to take. They want the Nazi tatted guy who is a “longtime fan” of the same podcast they like, but if they can’t get him they’ll go for the Republican.
To be honest, the possibility that anyone could “support Israel” by any definition of that phrase and also vote for Platner never even crossed my mind. How does that work?
I disagree with Smapti on Platner for a number of reasons, but I think the answer to that is pretty clear: because of how ludicrously illiberal the Republican party has become. Them nominating a couple more hard right supreme court judges would indeed be disastrous.
That said, I think that the Democrats suffering the same fate as the Republicans and getting their party wrecked by a Blue Tea Party leading to Blue MAGA would be even more disastrous. You can come back from supreme court picks: impeach them, increase the size of the court, etc… If the Democrats go as insane as the Republicans, we are finished as a country, GG WP.
I don’t live in Maine, so I won’t be voting for or against him, and I would prefer that he weren’t the nominee, but since he’s going to be the nominee and we need the Senate, I will begrudgingly tolerate him. Schumer screwed the pooch by throwing the party’s support behind a 78-year-old centrist at a time when Democratic voters are REALLY fed up with gerontocracy and business as usual.