The Democrats Knew All Along About Graham Platner

United States Senate candidate Graham Platner announced he is withdrawing from the race. The Maine Democrat has moved forward despite scandal after scandal—but the recent exposure of a sexual assault allegation was too much for Platner to handle. It is a troubling look at a political party whose only moral compass is political expediency—holding a finger in the wind and seeing what voters are willing to tolerate.

Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old woman who dated Platner years ago, alleged in a Politico report published three days ago that he had raped her. Racicot previously told the New York Times she had left him after unspecified “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior. But the Politico interview is the first time she has stated that Platner had forced himself upon her. Platner has denied the accusation.

This latest scandal was evidently too much for the Democratic Party to handle. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, progressive icons Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and other leading Democrats who previously endorsed Platner withdrew their endorsements this week. Senator Schumer went so far as to announce the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee “will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.”

Where was this when all the other scandals broke out?

As Axios commented, “Graham Platner was a walking time bomb long before the on-the-record rape allegation he denied this week. … Platner’s rise and fall shows a key way President Trump has changed Democratic politics. If it means diminishing his power, Democrats are willing to surrender or temporarily ignore their own stated values.” Bluntly stated, Axios continued: “The cracks in Platner’s well-crafted image were evident from the beginning if Democrats were willing to see them ….”

Racicot was not the only woman to accuse Platner of serious behavior. The same New York Times piece that cited her earlier allegation also quoted another of Platner’s old flames, Lyndsey Fifield. According to the Times, “[S]he said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders—sometimes hard enough to leave marks—and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car. During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom, and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm.’”

Abuse like this is a serious charge. But the Times had to specify it “could not independently corroborate Ms. Fifield’s account of the altercations.” It also emphasized her connections to the Republican Party and other conservative groups. So did others who brushed off her claims. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said the Times report “seems like a lot of nothing,” dismissing Fifield as “a woman who works for right-wing political operations.” Jodi Kantor, a reporter who helped start the #MeToo movement with a 2017 report on Harvey Weinstein, called Fifield’s allegations “very sensational texts about sex” different from “classic” #MeToo claims.

These are the most damning allegations. But they are far from Platner’s only red flags.

• Platner has a long history of commenting on social media posts demeaning to women. Another anonymous woman was cited in the Times report.
• Platner also has a tattoo of a skull-and-crossbones tottenkopf, the insignia Nazi Germany’s SS wore, on his chest. The SS was the institution that implemented the Holocaust. Platner denied knowing what the symbol meant, but reports suggest he knew exactly what he was depicting. This makes Platner’s allegations of anti-Semitism more serious.
• Much of the narrative Platner built around his campaign is based on lies. When announcing his candidacy, he marketed himself as an oyster farmer. Shortly after announcing his candidacy in August, he confided to friendly media like New Republic that he doesn’t earn any income from his oyster farm and hasn’t even been doing the job for long.

All this was easy to dig up. But the Democrat establishment and left-wing media mostly brushed it aside because Platner was their best tool to attack President Donald Trump.

• Platner, while left-wing, is a populist who formerly served in the military, regularly rallies against the establishment, and wants to pull the U.S. out of the Middle East.
• He was contesting the seat held by Sen. Susan Collins, an establishment Republican in a left-leaning state.
• His campaign was designed to appeal to the anti-establishment working class who used to support President Trump but are now disillusioned with him. This platform against an establishment right-wing candidate like Collins was considered “low-hanging fruit” if the Democrats wanted to take the Senate in November’s elections.

The Democratic Party is the same party that seeks to crucify political opponents like President Trump for similar allegations as Platner’s. It claims to stand for protecting women’s rights and holding the powerful to account. The party has never been unblemished in the realm of hypocrisy. The Republican Party has its own skeletons in the closet. But the Platner saga exposes just how far one influential faction is willing to go in compromising its principles in its struggle for power.

America just celebrated its 250th anniversary. George Washington, John Adams and the other Founding Fathers built the country on the premise that it would succeed only if it was governed by the principles of private virtue. Adams famously said: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.”

The Democratic Party is America’s largest political party and one of the largest in the world. It speaks for about half the nation. The fact that the party pushed a man like Platner to be its standard-bearer shows how entrenched with rot America’s political system is.

“A White House scandal is not just about the White House,” we write in Character in Crisis. “It’s about America and Americans. It’s about all of us. It’s about you! When Americans go from proclaiming a free society can only exist when founded on private morality to thinking that character doesn’t matter, it is time to ask some hard questions about the future of this nation.”

Character in Crisis was originally written in the 1990s. But its relevance has everything to do with America’s problems today. Request your free copy.