I haven’t read the entire thread yet, it’s been very busy since yesterday for obvious reasons. (I’m around post 360 right now.)
But I just want to say I am bookmarking this thread for the next time some right winger comes along and tries to claim that the SDMB is an “echo chamber.”
In an attempt to try and wrest control of this thread away from Smapti and turn our attention to other Platner defenders who are pathetic and intellectually bankrupt, Ken Klippenstein is an independent substack journalist formerly of The Intercept who I’ve loved and hated in equal measure for the stuff he writes. He’s done some amazing journalist work around important topics where the mainstream media refuses to go: He was the first to point out that the UHC CEO wasn’t some angel and was has published the manifestos of various shooters and actually bothered to talk to their friends to understand their true politics and motivations.
OTOH, he’s notoriously thin skinned, unwilling to accept any form of criticism and learn. He was an absolute dumbass who was financially illiterate enough to publish The Biden CIA director had a totally normal retirement portfolio as if it were some kind of bombshell.
Anyway, he was all aboard the Platner train, calling establishment politicians “smoothgroins” for some bizarre reason. His response to the latest news has been absolutely appalling.
I posted all the way back in May a roundup of all the public allegations From October, 2025 that he had told other people the tattoo was a totenkopf prior to him starting his political campaign.
In particular:
In a Tuesday interview with the Bangor Daily News, former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, who resigned Friday from serving as Platner’s political director, said the campaign has been aware of the tattoo since she joined the campaign in August. Platner himself told her roughly a month ago he had a tattoo that “could be problematic,” she said.
The campaign denied that, calling it “a lie from a disgruntled former employee.” In a statement, Platner said he didn’t know until last week that his tattoo had a Nazi affiliation in any way.
In the Politico reporting of Racicot’s rape allegations, Platner responds with:
In a statement, the Platner campaign reiterated his denial and accused critics of trying to drive him out of the race.
“These allegations are very serious and Graham vigorously denies them. They are also coached and coordinated by out of state establishment operatives. For a year, opponents of this campaign have thrown everything they can at Graham –– calling him a Nazi, a war criminal, and a communist. None of it has been true and this is no different. It is not a coincidence that this story comes a week before the ballot deadline, just as the previous false allegations came a week before the primary. Graham began this campaign to fight for a Maine where everyone is treated with dignity and where Mainers are put first, and no amount of desperate smears will stop this movement from seeing that vision through.”
So you either have 3 options you can believe in here:
To me, it’s simply impossible to hold position #2 intellectually honestly.
I’ll reiterate what I said back in March:
The last one is what moved him into the “this dude really fucking sucks” column for me. Trotting out the tired “disgruntled former employee” line and willing to deliberately destroy the reputation of someone who was formerly close to him just so he wouldn’t have to suffer some blowback or tarnish his reputation. I don’t care to what extent he does or does not hold Nazi views because it’s irrelevant, he does not care about his principles and he does not care about the people of Maine if they at all come into conflict with his own personal prospects which, if you’re coming in remotely from the left, it’s a guarantee that your personal comfort will be tested by your beliefs.
This is reminding me of Eric Adams all over again when people on this board, the voters in New York and prominent political pundits were all gaga for him and were violently hushing down any suggestions that this guy might fucking suck. I was looking at this in incredulity and being like, “guys, how the fuck are you not seeing how much this guy sucks?” and he proceeded to be the complete disappointment that exceeded even how much I could have predicted he would suck. (In all fairness, Fetterman totally fooled me and I was the one dismissing the people who were predicting all the ways he would suck).
This just feels like Lucy and the football all over again when everyone’s going to be surprised all over again when he doesn’t turn out to be the leftist champion people are desperately trying to stuff him into being. He’s a cynical grifter that’s riding an opportunistic wave and will turn on this dime as willingly as he’s turned on all of his previous dimes and you can’t say you weren’t warned.
He writes: “People were right to give him a chance before; and they’re right to drop him now.”
What’s so appalling about that?
Shalmanese will have to answer, but just having read the Klippenstein piece, I’d venture to guess that the quote you offer is NOT the appalling part. It might well be Klippenstein’s rapturous description of his ideal candidate:
…combined with his cartoonish contempt for any candidate who is “squeaky-clean.” He also uses “fake, plasticy” to describe candidates who fail to make enough offensive Reddit posts or fail to display tantalizing clues about possible anti-Jewish sentiment (which apparently is vital to Authenticity).
Klippenstein stands firm for his conviction that American voters WILL NOT STAND for candidates possessed of decency and self-control…because decency and self-control are NOT AUTHENTIC. Or something.
I fear it’s missing because it never existed.
But when has non-existent personal experience stopped folks from claiming personal experience anyway?
Looking for a job with a future? Join the Platner campaign and help take on the billionaires! Something to do with “vetting” and “strategic intelligence”.
Proven ability to neutralize “bimbo eruptions” is a plus.
Smoothgroins (??!!) need not apply.
There is a lot of it in this thread.
But not about Platner.
Blind squirrel, stopped clock.
I think I got McDonald conflated with the Project 2025 ex. The quote from a staffer who said he’d told her earlier that his tattoo could be problematic is damning.
OK, now in light of this, how do you re-answer your 1,2,3 questions?
The new information for me is McDonald’s testimony. My answers are: yes, almost, and no. New information (or better-understood information) changes my answers.
See, I do believe the testimony of his fellow soldier. And i still believe he didn’t know what it was when he got it. At least, i still think that’s the most likely scenario. But I’ve never believed that he had the tattoo for all those years without learning what it meant until right before he had it covered up. That’s the part i think he’s lying about. But the rape allegation doesn’t change my judgement of that, because i thought it was about 100% likely he was lying before the rape came out. (And, fwiw, her testimony is that he was blind drink, so i think it’s entirely plausible that he doesn’t remember raping her. Not because he didn’t do it. The evidence he did it is very strong. But because blind drink people often have holes in their memory. He still shitty for accusing her of lying, but he might honestly not remember it.)
But anyway, there are two important claims he made about the tattoo, and they are separable:
I still give him the benefit of the doubt on 1, mostly because i think it’s a pretty obscure symbol, and he was in a foreign country where, even if the place did a lot of Nazi stuff, it would be easy for a non-native to not understand the implications of what designs were where. But once he had the tattoo, surely he would have noticed other things that looked like it. And as a WWII history buff, surely he would have run across it, and it would have jumped out at him.
Most of the evidence that he’s lying about the tattoo is weak evidence.
But then:
Rereading that last piece of evidence, I find it strong in a way that the other pieces were not. Without it, the story “I got a tattoo of a skull when drunk, and it was so shitty that it was borderline unrecognizeable, and I never really thought much about its meaning until I ran for office and got much-increased scrutiny and someone figured out what it was, and then I got it covered up” is plausible to me. With that piece of evidence, that story is not plausible.
I don’t think WWII buffs necessarily recognize it. But i do think that a WWII buff who is wearing that symbol on his skin would eventually notice it and recognize it. In less than 20 years, or whatever the time is supposed to have been.
If it had been a crisp, clear tattoo instead of a blob, sure. But it’s so blobbish, and he’s such a dumbass with so little evident capacity for self-reflection, that I’m willing to attribute this to stupidity rather than malice–except, again, for McDonald’s statement.
That said, as I type this I realize it’s the mootest of moot arguments, so I’ll probably let it lie.
It was a blob last year. Tattoos always get less crisp with age. It was probably a lot clearer when he got it.