This is the bit in this thread that’s fascinating. The dude is seriously flawed to state it charitably. But there’s like a 25-year history of progressive sentiments.
If someone wouldn’t vote for him because of the weight of his perceived flaws, I might disagree but I’d get it. But because he’s some kind of undercover Republican?
I think the reasonable distaste for what is now public is creating some bias. Let’s get a majority in the Senate if we can, even if it needs this asshole. We stick to certain standards at our peril.
I’m not saying he’s a Republican plant. I’m saying the nature and weight of his flaws suggest a weakness of character that may reveal itself in ugly and surprising ways once he’s in a position of considerable power, seen as a tiebreaking vote, and completely insulated from electoral consequences for 6 years. Being a centrist tiebreaker, the power that comes with that, tends to break people’s brains (i.e. Fetterman).
I know this is a totally wild concept, but imagine for a moment that sometimes politicians misrepresent themselves to get elected to office, so it’s necessary for voters to weigh what they do more heavily than what they say.
Endorsement from Bernie means nothing to me at all. Some of Bernie’s former staffers and/or proteges have turned out to be absolutely unhinged opportunistic sociopaths. Bernie’s a fine guy and backs some decent policies, but his tent includes people that make me see his endorsement as being greater cause for suspicion and skepticism, not less.
A much more cogent and immediate reason to vote for him, at least in November presuming that he does win the primary, is that it may well decide who controls the Senate for the next two years. Which may be crucial to a whole lot of lives.
And which has been pointed out over and over in this thread.
Josh Marshall with a great piece on how this race, and the ongoing scandals, are breaking into every little subgroup within the Democratic and progressive coalition, and everyone is using it to justify or support or rationalize their preferred narrative on party politics in general:
What’s more interesting to me than the latest scandal itself is the way that Platner’s candidacy has become a staging ground or perhaps a kind of Rorschach test for everything factional disagreement in the broad Democratic or center-left coalition.
I’m not so much judging the other viewpoints as marveling at how almost everyone with a grievance in Democratic politics has managed to find a way for Platner to vindicate their views and demonstrate the badness or fecklessness of their intra-party enemies.
And it’s him or Collins and that’s really all I need to know.
So funny to see that this thread is a microcosm of broader Democratic factional discussions.
What sort of character flaw does he possess that specifically makes him more likely to abandon all the policy goals he has consistently advocated to reposition himself as the centrist tie breaker vote, more than the character flaws of nearly every ego driven power seeking Senator? Here you are claiming some specific sort of character flaw shared with Fetterman, Manchin, and Sinema, not with many others who stay in their historic lanes, not just things like he ain’t that bright, he cheats, whatever.
Uh. His brain was literally broken by his stroke.
Fetterman is actually a great worst case comparison though, and clearly the one that gives folk the greatest pause - he was also an outsider economic populist positioned seemingly working class guy so superficial similarities abound. And he has been a horrible Senator and person. GOP voters of PA rate him much more positively than do D voters there. Really bad. Can’t get a D Senator much crappier than he has been.
And even then, having Oz in that seat would have been worse. If you knew then how worst case bad Fetterman would be, would you have preferred Oz winning? Fetterman, about as bad of a D Senator imaginable, a worst case, was still a less bad option than Oz winning. Shit, replacing Collins even with him, a worst case D senator, would be an improvement.
Mills dropped out because it was clear that despite (or maybe even partly because) of her establishment support, she had no chance to win either the primary or the general election. She’s on the ballot still in the primary but she is not going to be the Democratic nominee.
So voters in Maine can choose someone who has a proven track record of enabling Trump and his agenda, who helps the odds of a GOP majority in the Senate and any SCOTUS picks that may follow that, or choose someone who even in the fevered imagination worst case wouldn’t be quite as bad, and who actually might be someone who votes as he has presented his positions consistently through years.
I love it when I have someone I can enthusiastically vote for as a great choice. More commonly I am voting for someone that is not my ideal but is at least the better option.
Progressive sentiments like “women who get raped were asking for it” and “I like to go to war because killing people is a big fun adventure”? Yeah, OK.
What a disgusting sentiment (by Killepenstein, not you). Is this really how lowly he thinks of “ordinary people”? Disgusting.
And that’s the big question. Will be be better than Susan Collins, who voted for Kennedy, who voted for all of Trump’s SC appointees, and who voted to fund ICE with no reforms.
She did vote against the one big beautiful bill. She’s far from the worst Republican senator. But ..?
Define “Leftism”. Americans use the term so flippantly that it’s impossible to determine what you mean.
Liberalism is obviously compatible with like, a higher minimum wage, a robust safety net, progressive taxation, etc., so if that’s what you mean by “Leftism”, I agree. But I wouldn’t call liberal policies like that “Leftism”.
Liberalism is not compatible with the abolition of capitalism. So whenever a politician like AOC starts talking about how they believe capitalism is “an irredeemable system”, it tells me that they are not Liberals like myself and that our ultimate political goals are very much not in alignment.
Now, that’s OK; as a Liberal, I support the right of other people to express opinions that I disagree with. That’s Liberalism’s greatest strength. So when it comes to someone like AOC, I’m willing to hear her out, internalize some of her critiques (the reason that Capitalism and Liberalism aren’t in fact irredeemable is that when met with valid critiques, such as some of the critiques raised by socialists at the beginning of the prior century, they can adapt - unlike illiberal ideologies).
But I’m never going to forget that at the end of the day someone like AOC or Platner has fundamentally different goals for society than the goals that Liberals have. Which is why I’m find with letting them “in the tent” as long as they support Liberalism against Fascism, but I’m not willing to let them steer the ship. Where they want to go and where I want to go are not the same and never will be.
Is the abolition of Capitalism an “evil” idea? Yes, absolutely. Capitalism, for all its flaws, has produced enormously beneficial increases in the well-being of people across the world, and the ideologies being suggested as a replacement by people like AOC have a horrific track record. So yes, I’d say abandoning capitalism and moving to those other systems is an evil idea. That doesn’t mean that anyone who wants to do it is evil themselves; capitalism, especially as we practice it today, does have numerous flaws and it’s very important to point those out, and it’s natural that some people might look at those flaws and say “maybe we should replace the whole system”. But those people are wrong, and if their ideas are carried out, it will cause enormous suffering and death.
You are trying to sell the idea that The Boy With The Nazi Tattoo is a progressive despite his attitudes towards wars, women, and Nazi tattoos because what, he says that billionaires are bad? What “progressive sentiments” does he actually hold? “Billionaires Bad” is not progressive, it’s populist. Cadance Owens and Nick Fuentes agree that “Billionaires Bad”.
What progressive ideals does Graham “Puts Grown Women In Shut Rooms If They Date To Disagree With Him” Platner actually hold?
The point he makes is that if you are not the kind of guy who shoves his girlfriend into a closed room when she pisses him off, you’re not a real man with a swinging dick and balls, you’re a plastic Ken doll and probably a homosexual. And that “ordinary people” identify more with Platner than with Newsom specifically because they can’t relate to Newsom’s impeccable grooming and respect for the autonomy of women.
It’s a disgusting way to view both people like Newsom or Buttigieg as well as “ordinary people”.
He’s pointing out this weird trend where some people (mostly younger upper or upper middle class white guys, who Platner is most popular with; in other words, people like Ken Killepenstein) are doing this weird Orientalism/Noble Savage thing with working class white men, where they’re like “you have to understand, if we want to appeal to those sorts of people, we need someone who’s rough around the edges, like they are. They’re not like us*, they like it when a guy is big, poorly groomed, and violates consent; that’s the only sort they respect as a real man”.
*This is what they say, but I suspect that the real thing that’s happening here is that this imagined idea of what working class men are like is actually what they are like. Ken Klippenstein likes his men hairy, burly, and lacking in respect for consent. He wishes that was him.
She is far from the worst Republican, but the worst Democratic Senator is better than her.
Long term this is the most damning:
We don’t have any Trump SCOTUS picks to rank even the worst D Senator, and I hold Fetterman to that spot, but he has voted against Trump’s judicial nominees 95% of the time. Not always, true.
Sinema, also up there for the worst podium, voted against Trump’s picks.
Even Manchin, worst on the SCOTUS scorecard, did not vote for every one of them like Collins has.
Now I believe he will fall into a line taking cues from the established Progressives in the Senate with some nods to specific issues of Maine Independents in particular. More to the left than my ideal but fine. But worst case D is not below the bar of being better for this country and the world than Collins winning with Senate control possibly in the balance.
She’s only opposed Trump when it hasn’t mattered. Collins is a Trump Republican trying to pretend she’s not. That’s what she’s shown, over and over again.