Brianna Lyman writes for the Federalist about one significant lesson from Maine Democrats’ nomination of Graham Platner as their preferred US Senate candidate.
Since he came down the escalator 11 years ago, Donald Trump’s personal conduct made him uniquely unfit for office and Americans had a moral obligation to oppose him, so said Democrats. Character mattered in politics, they told us.
But on Tuesday, nearly 150,000 Mainers sent a different message. Democrats handed Graham Platner a landslide primary victory, a decisive win for the man who had a Nazi tattoo. And to be clear, Platner wasn’t the only candidate on the ballot. Incumbent Gov. Janet Mills and former Democrat Senate nominee in 2024 David Costello were on the ballot as well. And yet it was a landslide victory for Platner.
Platner spent 18 years bearing a Nazi tattoo and only had it removed when it became ever so slightly (emphasis on slightly) politically inconvenient. He also said women worried about rape should not “get blacked out, f*cked up around people” they aren’t “comfortable” with. He also allegedly said that if someone ever broke into his home, he would “rape them … [but] not in a sexual way, not in a gay way.”
The Nazi tattoo alone would have been career suicide if it belonged to a Republican candidate, let alone all the additional scandals surrounding Platner. And yet the same people and party that spent years insisting that Trump’s personal behavior (which really isn’t comparable to a literal Nazi) made him uniquely disqualified from holding office just elected Platner to be their nominee.
If character were truly the defining issue as we’ve been told for a decade, why didn’t the standard apply here?
The answer is obvious if you just look at some of the very same Democrats who spent years lecturing Americans abut decency standards.
