ISTM he’s winning because of rage against the institutional parties - both of them. On the Maine subreddit, criticism of Platner is largely dismissed as Democratic party leadership panic-induced lies. They know about the tattoo, but the other stuff is not breaking through. I’m sure Collins’ team is saving everything they can find for the general election campaign, but I don’t know if it will be enough. I think lots of voters are enraged by Trump but see the mainstream Democratic party as completely useless at best and functionally complicit at worst, and simply will not vote for any “mainstream” Democrat. But we’ll see.
It’s less that they’re Nazi sympathizers and more that Nazis don’t bother them all that much.
If Collins paints him as a Nazi, she’ll lose her MAGA base to him 
Nah, MAGAts minds do not work that way, a Republican Nazi is good, a Democrat Nazi is bad. The important thing is not their adherence or lack of it to the National-Socialist ethos, the important thing is the letter next to the name.
I don’t disagree, but I’m wondering if democrats are that different. We have plenty of people even here who would support Platner over Collins. I’m not saying Platner is a Nazi, but he’s got some red flags we’re willing to overlook for the sake of a D instead of an R.
Well, that’s what I’m wondering. Do most voters actually know about the tattoo? Is this something the Mills campaign is playing up? Skimming the internet, there does seem to be a belief that Mills was recruited into the race by Chuck Schumer, which people are upset about because they believe a) Washington politicians shouldn’t be interfering in State primaries, and/or b) Chuck Schumer fucking sucks. This also seems to remind people of Collins’ last election, when the Democratic nominee was another moderate woman perceived as having been “anointed” by the Democratic establishment.
Here is an article by a guy who read all 1800+ of Platner’s Reddit posts, and concluded that he clearly isn’t a Nazi.
I certainly hope we don’t have many people here who WOULDN’T support Platner over Collins! Arguing in the primary is fine, but afterwards, it’s gotta be Blue no matter who.
Platner vs Collins? We know Collins is a Nazi. Platner might be too, but maybe he’s just a total idiot. I’d probably vote for the maybe Nazi over the definite Nazi.
It’s less that they’re Nazi sympathizers and more that Nazis don’t bother them all that much.
It’s troubling to me that some of the people most loudly accusing Platner of being anti-Semitic also have a history of weaponizing false accusations of anti-Semitism against anyone opposing Netanyahu’s mass slaughter of civilians or Trump’s illegal attacks on Iran.
If the Democrats are nominating Nazis, what makes them better than Republicans?
The strongest argument for ‘vote blue no matter who’ is ‘the other guys are literally Nazis’. Way to ruin that, Platner…
If you’re questioning accusations of Anti-Semitism directed at a guy with a Nazi tattoo, I really don’t know what to tell you.
The fact that this is even up for debate is deeply troubling.
I assumed that he was an ignorant dimwit who thought it was badass similar to the early punk rockers (not the later actual Nazis who infested the scene)
Maybe when he got it, but then he kept it for 20 years while referring to it as “my totenkopf”
It does seem a bit unlikely that a guy who was so deeply devoted to Nazi ideology that he’d deliberately get a Nazi tattoo wouldn’t have a whole lot of other really obvious Nazism in his background.
Yeah, besides the tat- what else jumps out as bigoted or nazi or Anti-Semitic?
If he got a tattoo of a Klan hood, we wouldn’t be having this ridiculous discussion, we’d just ostracize him from our party.
“Klan hood? It’s just a ghost!”
So do I understand this correctly? You aren’t arguing that Platner is confused, or stupid or whatever; you aren’t claiming that he has shown poor judgment which should exclude him from high public office…your claim is that he is actually a literal neo-Nazi, and his long history of making explicitly anti-fascist and anti-racist posts on Reddit dating back to 2009 are just part of some long con? In which case he’s been planning this move for years, and didn’t bother to remove the tattoo in preparation for same?
Regarding the tattoo, I find it completely plausible that he didn’t know what it was. In post 27, needscoffee posted pictures of a totenkopf next to a picture of Platner’s tattoo. They don’t look anything alike to me, other than having approximately the same silhouette. One looks like a skull and crossbones, the other like a Rorschach blot of a melting bowling ball. AFAIK the only evidence that Platner knew what it was until recently is the statement of a single anonymous person.
Again, is there more than one person claiming to have heard him doing so?
There’s also the Nazi podcast appearance, plus the Nazi re-tweet. Could be explained by total idiocy, not that that’s much of an excuse. Really sucks for Maine voters - Mills sucks too, though I’d vote for her over the maybe Nazi.
What? First of all, he doesn’t have a long history of making explicitly anti-racist posts, he has plenty of racist posts of his own. Are you sure you aren’t thinking of posts where he attacks Republicans for being racist? Because plenty of racists do that.
Platner seems to be a left wing populist of a flavor that’s racist in its own right, as well as antisemitic. He’s not a fan of blacks, wealthy elites, or Jews (and likely views the last two as interchangeable). Not what we traditionally think of as a Neo Nazi but not particularly opposed to the Nazis either. He’s further from establishment Dems than he is from right wing neo Nazis, which is why he retweets them and goes on their podcasts and poses for pictures with them in their Heil Hitler shirts.
It’s a form of politics that has historically not found much of a grasp in America, and the success of people like Platner is deeply disturbing for that reason.