Tuesday's Final Word

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Jenny was sweet, she always smiled for the tabs that she'd meet ...

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Ed: Maybe the ending of “It” was less of an anomaly than we thought. King apparently retracted this later, but this is precisely the reaction I suspected we’d get from the Left when more emerged about Platner. And if he refuses to withdraw, we may see this reaction return. 

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NY Post: Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday said Graham Platner should drop his bid for a Maine US Senate seat after a bombshell rape accusation against the scandal-scarred candidate.

“I believe that it’s time for him to drop out of the race,” said Mamdani — who shares a key progressive strategist, Morris Katz, with Platner.

“I think the focus of today should be to respond to the gravity of what so many of us have read and I think the only appropriate response is for the campaign to come to an end,” he told reporters in City Hall.

Ed: Really? Why now? Why not five weeks ago, when Lyndsey Fifield revealed Platner's domestic violence in their relationship, as well as stalking behaviors after it? No enemies to the Left, eh?

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Ed: I think Katz knew that Platner had these skeletons in his closet. I also think it was part of the calculation – to appeal to the so-called “red pilled” male community, like those who follow people like Andrew Tate. That is the kind of “masculinity” that the Left thinks will sell on the Right. 

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Jim Geraghty at NRO: On Monday night, Favreau was singing a dramatically different tune. “Platner needs to drop out ASAP — these are awful, credible allegations. Said on the pod after the (also credible) June NYT story that his biggest problem going forward would be credibility. It’s now abundantly clear that he just hasn’t been honest about his past and can’t be trusted as a candidate for office.”

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Why did people trust Platner, Favreau? Because you told them he was a good and decent man!

This morning, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg concedes she was completely fooled by the hype around Platner:

Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.” If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.

I do not say this lightly: If Platner fooled you, maybe you should find something to do with your life besides writing columns about politics. Because the U.S. political landscape is full of creeps, cretins, con artists, crooks, and cads of every kind, and it always will be. If the media has any useful role to play in our system, it is to look beyond the spin and the campaign-crafted image and to tell the world who these candidates really are, warts and all, so the electorate can make an informed choice.

Ed: I call BS. Platner didn't fool anyone. His supporters made calculated bets that the worst of his past had already come to light and that his candidacy could survive it. Goldberg is no political naïf, and asking us to pretend otherwise is an insult to everyone's intelligence. 

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I hope everyone with reservations takes a little time to get to know the real life version of him, not what the algorithm throws in our faces. Clearly, that’s what so many people in Maine have done - from all different walks of life and political persuasions.

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Ed: The same applies to Favreau, in spades. He's a hardball player at the major-league level, not a starry-eyed grassroots podcaster. Favreau tried to pass off a ne'er-do-well violent Kik creeper as the Face Of Our Generation, gaslighting voters while blaming the "algorithm" for Platner's real back story. 

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Ed: The View is now ... pro-rapist? Say what?

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Punchbowl: Much of the discussion about possible replacements for Platner is currently focused on other failed 2026 candidates.

Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, epidemiologist Nirav Shah, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former congressional candidate Jordan Wood are all options, according to multiple sources. Jackson released a statement saying he believes Racicot and urged Platner to get out of the race.

“There is no place in our politics for sexual violence,” Jackson said. “Not in our party, not in any party. Graham Platner must withdraw from this race today.”

Retiring Democratic Rep. Jared Golden would be the top choice of many Democrats. But the four-term lawmaker has made clear he wants to leave Congress at the end of this year. Maine Gov. Janet Mills, whom Platner decisively defeated in the Democratic primary, is extremely unlikely.

Ed: I find it fascinating that the one person available who has actually won a statewide election – two of them, actually – is "extremely unlikely" to be considered as an option for this nomination. Mills, let us not forget, was one of the first Democrat governors to tangle with Trump when he started his second term, over the issue of boys poaching into girls' sports. This smells like a backdoor way of justifying the unjustifiable embrace of Platner in the primary over two-term Gov. Mills. 

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Ed: Is that so? Well, Hayes could have tested that hypothesis by asking Platner some tough follow-ups. Instead, he threw softballs, and then squirmed when Platner couldn’t handle them. Maddow is delusional in characterizing that as some kind of adversarial interview. She’s not the only delusional host on M-SNOW today ...

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“Given the very high standards Politico has before they write something like this and publish it, what aspects of this story brought it to the level of publishable?”

Ed: So we've gone from "believe all women" to "Where's the police report”? That’s certainly a change in application… presumably a new standard when the candidate is a Democrat. 

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Glenn Reynolds: America’s commies — spearheaded by the Democratic Socialists of America — are running the same play across the nation that they’ve run in New York.

Even in places you’d never expect, like my home in eastern Tennessee. ...

Avila Chevalier, for example, drew about 33,000 votes from her House district’s 449,000 active voters.

Winning with 33,000 votes out of 449,000 seems crazy — but it’s still winning.

And there’s nothing illicit about it. 

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Ed: This was AOC’s playbook a few cycles ago, too. She’s another socialist who ran against a Democrat incumbent who wasn’t paying attention, and ended up losing in a safe district where voters rarely engaged in primaries. Either the DSA learned a lesson from AOC or they have been organizing on this strategy for longer than people realize. AOC isn’t explicitly DSA but she’s certainly DSA-adjacent. Every state has urban centers with safe and sleepy Dem districts where the DSA can keep poaching seats, unless Democrat leadership wakes up and starts imposing some discipline. 

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Ed: Lotsa luck with that, Chris. 

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Lyndsey Fifield on X/Twitter: I actually understand why Democrat leaders didn't take our stories seriously when the Times reported them in June but are taking them seriously now.

It was by design.

The line most shared from the piece was the claim that the Times “could not corroborate” my story despite talking to two of my friends.

I gave them the contact information for five friends.

They called the two who I clarified would not know about the abuse but would be able to affirm our relationship timeline, events, etc.

They simply did not call the other three.

Ed: Read it all to see the anatomy of a corrupt mainstream-media narrative. Lyndsey wrote about this earlier too, but with the inevitable implosion of the "grace and redemption" narrative for Platner, it's good to have this on the record. 

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Ed: Historically speaking, protecting Stalin is another career path at the NYT. Just ask Walter Duranty and the Pulitzer board. 

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Politico: U.S. forces have launched new strikes against Iran, placing further strain on a ceasefire that has been under increasing strain in recent days.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement Tuesday that the attacks were launched in response to Iranian forces attacking three commercial vessels. The Defense Department combatant command accused Iran of “targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” saying Iranian actions in the Strait of Hormuz were “unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.” ...

The latest strikes came hours after President Donald Trump revoked a license that allowed Iran to sell oil, a permission granted as part of the memorandum of understanding that kickstarted peace negotiations with Iran last month.

Ed: As of this afternoon, the strikes are reportedly heavier than the previous round after the IRGC attacked shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The targets seem to be the same type, though: operational rather than command and control assets. Perhaps I'll revisit this tomorrow, but for right now, this looks like the status quo in the Hormuz crisis – a few days of normal shipping, followed by attacks from Iran, and then retaliation from the US. If that changes into real strategic targeting and operations, that'll be news worth analyzing. 

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... make a reasonable decision to stand down on this candidacy. What deserves scrutiny is why so many supposedly smart and savvy people decided to ignore the red flags and plow forward anyway.

Ed: Exactly. And because that is the real question, that's why all these "smart and savvy people" want Platner to withdraw ASAP. 

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Last night's lyric: "Every Time I Think of You" by The Babys.

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