Will Platner Destroy the Maine Democratic Party on the Way Out the Door?

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Establishment Democrats breathed a sigh of relief when Graham Platner indicated that he would exit the Maine Senate race. 

We get a mulligan! Dodged a bullet! And perhaps they have. But perhaps not. 

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First of all, as many people have already noted, Platner hasn't actually withdrawn from the race, and he appears to have told people in his inner circle that he won't until Monday, the last day he can do so while allowing his party to choose another candidate. 

No doubt Democrats will be on tenterhooks until that letter is signed and delivered to the Secretary of State's office—the same Secretary of State who, coincidentally, wants to replace Platner on the ballot. 

But even once the deed is done, as we must still expect it will be, Platner's exit could still present a huge problem for the Democrats. Aside from the lost campaign time and vast sums of money already wasted, Platner had built a movement of the disaffected, mostly on the basis that the Democratic Party is corrupt and the "Establishment" (both true, of course), and that voters needed an outsider who would buck the system. 

If opposition to Republicans or dedication to progressive "values" were the basis of his candidacy, then Governor Janet Mills would have fit the bill just fine. She was popular, ferociously anti-Trump, "progressive" to a fault, and a natural choice to face Susan Collins.

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Platner won his primary race by running against the Democrats as much as the Republicans, and now the Democrats have snatched the nomination out of his hands. 

David Sirota of The Lever summed up Platner's appeal in Maine:

The attempt by national media to portray Platner as some purely hand-picked selection of out-of-state operatives is the height of elitism/narcissism that centers all things DC/NY in every story — and ignores the underlying local dynamics in places derided as flyover country.

He was recruited with the help/support of local labor leaders who were disgusted with the state Dem establishment. You can of course question their candidate vetting/selection. But the question should be: how did that Dem establishment in a blue state so alienate labor that unions were desperate for something different? 

Nobody in elite Dem media/politics wants to ask that because they hate labor and see the working class as “deplorable.” But that is a huge question.

I'm not sure I endorse his analysis, but it certainly is shared by Platner supporters and, most importantly, Platner himself, whose exit video was a double-barreled blast at the Democratic Party establishment. 

Platner made clear that he was the victim of an establishment hit job, both in timing and in content. There was nothing humble or grateful about his monologue; it was pure bile aimed at the Democrats, and an extension of the two-day spat that broke out into the open with the Maine Democratic Party making it clear that they wanted him gone. Eliminated with prejudice. 

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Progressives have a very legitimate beef, if not so much over Platner, then over the more than a decade-long conspiracy within the Democratic Party establishment to keep progressive candidates off of ballots. Bernie! supporters still smart over how he got shafted, and it's not an exaggeration to say that the last time Democratic Party primary voters got to choose their presidential candidate was 2008. And that was a close thing. 

Platner has made it pretty clear that he has no desire to walk away quietly. Jeff Blehar of The National Review absolutely savored Platner's exit because it has all the ingredients for a months-long catfight among Democrats. 

In other words, this disconsolate eleven-minute rant tailor-made to sow division and recrimination among Platner’s voters and progressives across the state is a sheer delight, a Molotov cocktail chucked through the window of the Maine Democratic Party on his way out the door. I have blissfully watched and carefully and lovingly transcribed every narcissistic second of it, a miserably paranoid stew of self-justifying excuses, continued lies, and overwhelming self-entitlement. Do you have what it takes to withstand this endurance test? Some excerpts:

I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations, before a corporate media system and the  political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end. . . .

It’s not the false allegations, though, that have brought us to where we are. It’s the fact that they are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us. We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish, that if they begin to succeed they can be crushed. . . .

I have all the faith that we could win if we could continue to harness that. But the brutal political reality is that They are going to take everything away from us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of things we need to run a campaign.

We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function. Larger organizations, the national-level party, the bigger donor networks, they have all committed to spending no money in this race if I am in it. They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine.

Platner continues to maunder for several minutes, finally announcing his campaign suspension with a breathy sigh and then working himself up to a stirring climax:

We went toe to toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the world, and we won. We beat them on June 9 in overwhelming numbers. We did it the right way. We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics, we motivated people, we banded together, we did it the way we were told we are supposed to make change. And we won, and now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me.

You hate to see it.

And, in fact, you actually do hate to see it if you’re a Republican: because anyone with a brain could have told you that Platner was already a fatally wounded horse in the race, very much the one candidate guaranteed to lose to Collins in November. Now Maine Democratic insiders will get a chance to freeze out the Democratic Socialists of America at a convention to pick Platner’s replacement later this month. For the Democrats, it’s an unexpected mulligan in a campaign that, as I suggested last night, bears as much resemblance to a Coyote vs. Road Runner short as it does to a Senate race.

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Well said, Jeff. Platner wasn't attacking Republicans. His target was Democrats, and that's true for every DSA activist who is a "Democrat" only for the purpose of ballot access. 

No doubt many Platner voters would vote for anybody with a "D" after their name, but there is a reason Platner got more votes in the primary than any Democrat before him: a lot of his voters aren't Democrats but true believers, and they will rightly feel screwed. 

Platner is stoking that anger, and since he is an angry guy with nothing to lose—every bridge to the Democratic Party is burned anyway—he has zero incentive to change course. 

Don't expect a Platner endorsement for anybody but a hand-picked successor. 

It's way too early to know if Platner's implosion will be fatal to Democrats' chances in November, which might as well be 10 years from now given how fast things move. But the potential is there, the incentives are there, and his followers just might be out for revenge. 

Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.

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