Graham Platner Tests My "Vote Blue No Matter What" Limits

Graham Platner (D-ME)

When I was in college, I was involved pretty heavily with College Democrats, even serving as my school's College Dems president at one point (people frequently ask if I'll ever run for office-being President of College Dems and on Student Congress are the closest you'll ever see me do that as I don't want that kind of pressure).  Being president of a liberal university's College Dems chapter means that you are oftentimes being asked to throw campaign events, for free & usually little time, as politicians stop by in hopes of drumming up support before a major election.  There is usually at least some press involved, and it's a lot of work-you have to convince frequently apathetic people to come, listen to a politician (or pretend to listen so the press sees a crowd and runs with that as the photo op), and work with the campaigns to give them a good experience.  After all, we are essentially on the same team-we want to ensure that this candidate wins.

One of those events I remember distinctly.  It was right before election day, and the politician was stopping by with little notice.  It was an important race (trying to be vague here so as not to totally out who I was working for), enough so that I knew that there would be press, including probably television crews, and so it was important to get people there.  It was 8 PM when I found out, and they'd be there at 7 AM.  I knocked on every door, begged people through every dorm, not doing my homework that night even though I should've been, and got him a very big crowd, enough to fill the law school lobby where he'd be doing the event.  I showed up, exhausted but proud that we had gotten him an important sendoff to his big day...and he treated me like garbage.  He totally made a joke when meeting me off-stage that made the entire endeavor feel terrible.  Some of the other politicians (they usually travel in packs) were kind, but the guy I'd been organizing it for had been pretty much a jerk...

...but I still voted for him.  Politics is occasionally about being a grownup, and I knew that (jerk or not) he was going to be better for my state than the other candidate.  And my misgivings about what he was like as a person were less important than the greater good.  I have done that a number of times through the years.  With the exception of Lori Swanson in 2006, I've never voted for the eventual nominee in a competitive statewide DFL Primary in Minnesota.  You have your moment to vote for whom you wanted in the primary, and then you suck it up in the general if you lose, even if you're apprehensive about the nominee.  That's what I am guessing I'll be doing later this year with Peggy Flanagan, whose campaign I've been unimpressed (and oftentimes turned off) by compared to Angie Craig.  Flanagan is in the lead, and seems likely to win, and while I'll vote for Craig in the primary, I'll cast an unenthusiastic (but very real) vote for Flanagan in the general, and will encourage everyone I know to do the same.  I'm a "Vote Blue No Matter What" voter.

Or at least I thought I was, until Graham Platner came along.  The behavior from the Platner campaign has been shocking & disturbing to me, particularly his tacit endorsement of Nazism.  It is not entirely clear to me whether or not Platner is a Nazi, but his behavior is of someone who is not disturbed by being associated with Nazism.  Platner has a tattoo of the Totenkopf, which is a Nazi military symbol, one that he said he got while in the Marines in Croatia in 2007, but wasn't aware until the media during his campaign that it had Nazi associations.  I will be honest, I find this impossible to believe.  For starters, other people have stated that Platner knew of this.  An acquaintance of Platner's claimed that in 2012 he heard Platner say that this was "his little Totenkopf" and Genevieve McDonald, a respected state legislator involved with the campaign before she resigned, said the campaign knew of the tattoo prior to the media reaching out.  You also cannot make me believe that in 18 years Platner had never once encountered someone who pointed out that he had a very visible symbol of the Nazi regime on his chest, or that Platner, who has been described as a "military history buff" didn't come across it on his own.  That strains credulity, and that he kept the tattoo makes me assume he didn't care.

It would be one thing if you could just put this in the bucket of "strange political behavior" which occasionally you have to deal with from politicians to get to the point of "Vote Blue No Matter What."  But that's not really where this ends.  Platner recently retweeted avowed Neo-Nazi Stew Peters on Twitter.  Peters tweet, admittedly, did not have any inherent Nazi connotations (it was about the Iran War), but it also was very clearly from a white nationalist account.  Platner sat down for a lengthy podcast with Nate Cornacchia, a former Green Beret who has promoted numerous antisemitic beliefs on his podcast, a podcast which Platner has said of which he is a "longtime fan."  At some point, it seems very clear that Platner is either very, very, very stupid, to the point where he is dangerously persuadable and would make a truly terrible candidate for a long-run political race (and being in one of the most powerful offices on earth), or he's clearly comfortable with antisemitism.  Combine with some of the racist stories that Platner has shared on Reddit in the past, as well as comments about rape that are abhorrent, and that Platner is bizarrely comfortable lying in public (he recently made a video claiming that Susan Collins voted to send him to Iraq, which is not even a little bit true-Collins did back the Iraq War in 2002, but Platner voluntarily joined the Marines in 2003, which means he chose to go to war...also, he has publicly stated that he voted for her in 2008 & 2014 after this so it's clear he didn't have a problem with it until he needed to prove a political point), and you get maybe the worst candidate for a major party office I've ever seen from the Democrats if he gets the nomination.  Honestly-Platner voters are proof that there are Democrats who would've voted for Donald Trump in 2016 had he run on the left instead of the right, even with a thousand blaring red flags.

Platner's opponent is regularly demonized by his supporters, but honestly the only real issues with Mills are that she's older than any candidate we want to be running right now and that Democrats really hate that Chuck Schumer got her into the race because the base hates Chuck Schumer right now.  But that's it-Mills is a proven vote-getter, the only statewide Dem to win since 2006 (she'd beat Collins in the current environment, I can pretty much guarantee it), and she's a left-of-middle Democrat who has stated she'd only serve one term so the left can get a better candidate in 2032 if that's really important-it's not a long wait, particularly given Angus King will also retire in 2030.  She'd basically just be a Maria Cantwell or a Richard Blumenthal-a reliable Democratic vote, one who is pretty comfortable standing up to Trump (she literally said to his face, in the White House, she wouldn't back down on transgender rights, and she won).  She would not be exciting, but she's a good person, would win the race, and flip the seat blue after us trying to do so for decades.

No amount of Senate endorsements (from Ruben Gallego, Martin Heinrich, Bernie Sanders, and for all intents and purposes Chris Murphy given how often he defends him) for Platner will make me feel better about this.  I have heard Democrats criticizing Brandon Herrera the past few days since he'll be the GOP nominee in TX-23 (and they should), but it's a truly awful look that we are going to be calling this guy (correctly) a Neo-Nazi in Texas but the party is going to have to rally around the guy with the Nazi tattoo in Maine?  Come on now...this is a step too far.  I am actively hoping, praying, and contributing money to Mills at this point, as it's too late for another candidate, so it's going to be one of the two of them at the end of the day.  But I am also thankful I don't live in Maine, because while I could never vote for Susan Collins, I'm going to be honest-Graham Platner might be my limit...I don't think I could vote for him either.