The Platner wreckage was bad enough. Now, Dems are tallying up everywhere else Sanders & his orbit bet wrong.

FEEL THE BURN 🔥— For years, establishment Democrats have quietly grumbled about BERNIE SANDERS trying to play kingmaker in primaries he has zero personal accountability for — parachuting in, cutting a video, headlining a rally, then moving on to the next fight while some hapless nominee is left holding the bag in November or the party is forced to pick up the pieces.

This week, the grumbling is reaching a fever pitch behind the scenes in Washington’s Democratic circles.

The trigger, obviously, is GRAHAM PLATNER — the Mainer whom Sanders transformed into a rising star, headlining his Labor Day rally in Portland and standing by him through a Nazi tattoo, ugly Reddit posts and multiple women’s accounts of his misbehavior — only to watch it all collapse this month over a rape allegation. Sanders turned the oyster farmer with zero political experience into the presumptive Democratic nominee in a state Democrats NEED to flip the Senate — a candidate some even whispered for a hot second could be a future presidential nominee. Now that bet is in ashes, and Maine Democrats are in chaos trying to replace him.

But Democrats are grumbling that Platner isn’t a one-off. Many who’ve spent the cycle biting their tongues are now running the tape on every other Sanders pick — and they don’t love what they’re finding.

MIX RECORD — Sanders has endorsed more than 15 House candidates this cycle, and — credit where due — a chunk of them have actually won their primaries. Call it a coin flip with a decent tailwind: roughly half of his House bets have paid off so far in places like New York, New Jersey and California — even red states like Montana.

But Dems argue that’s only half the story, because when you sit with the list of Sanders picks who’ve gone down, you find that several didn’t just lose; they lost embarrassingly, dragging Sanders’ credibility into the story right along with them. While Sanders can point to real wins this cycle, the losses, these people argue, reveal a concerning pattern of elevating untested, unvetted candidates with skeletons nobody bothered to check for — a pattern that’s starting to look less like bad luck and more like poor judgment.

Let’s unpack…

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EXHIBIT A: ILLINOIS. Sanders endorsed ROBERT PETERS in the deep-blue IL-02 primary. Peters didn’t just lose — he got blown out, finishing a distant third with just 12% of the vote as DONNA MILLER cruised to the nomination. Over in IL-08, Sanders-backed tech businessman JUNAID AHMED came closer, losing by about 3,300 votes and five points, but a loss is a loss.

EXHIBIT B: NORTH CAROLINA. Progressive favorite NIDA ALLAM — endorsed by Sanders along with Justice Democrats, Sunrise and the Working Families Party — came within a single point of knocking off Rep. VALERIE FOUSHEE in NC-04, then conceded. Close doesn’t count in this business.

EXHIBIT C, AND THE ONE PEOPLE ARE REALLY MAD ABOUT: UTAH. This is the one Democrats keep bringing up in the same breath as Platner. Sanders endorsed state Sen. NATE BLOUIN, whom he called “a fighter,” in the primary for Utah’s brand-new 1st District. Then in April, Punchbowl unearthed Blouin’s old, ugly Reddit and other online posts — jokes about filming “porn with your underage sister,” repeated slurs, a “skull f—k” threat, and posts trashing Mormons as “bigoted assholes.” Salt Lake City’s mayor called on him to drop out. Blouin apologized, stayed in and got crushed anyway;BEN MCADAMS won with 60% to Blouin’s 24%. Sound familiar? Warning signs, ignored, followed by a wipeout. It’s Platner in miniature.

EXHIBIT D: THE BILLIONAIRE BET. Sanders may have spent a career railing against billionaires supposedly “buying” elections — but then his outside mega group Our Revolution turned around and endorsed one of them: TOM STEYER, in the California governor’s race. Steyer poured more than $215 million of his own fortune in and still finished third in the jungle primary, missing the runoff entirely before conceding and endorsing XAVIER BECERRA. Progressives still can’t quite explain that one to me.

EXHIBIT E: THE FIGHT AGENCY PROBLEM. It’s not just Sanders’ own endorsement list. Democrats are also sneering at FIGHT AGENCY — the Bernie-orbit consulting shop committed to elevating anti-establishment progressives — for some of the candidates it chose this cycle. In Iowa, the shop’s client NATHAN SAGE never even made it onto the ballot, dropping out of the Senate race over fundraising struggles before he could face voters. In the swingy, GOP-held 17th district in New York — ground zero for Dems’ effort to flip the House — its client PETER CHATZKY self-immolated after the New York Times unearthed old lewd Facebook posts — crude jokes about paying Melania Trump for sex, or sleeping with hypothetical interns.

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER and you get why establishment Democrats are starting to “feel the burn” — though NOT in the way Sanders’ followers use that particular phrase... What they feel, frankly, is piping hot fury. It’s not that every Sanders or Sanders-Orbit candidate has been a disaster, but when those endorsees did implode, they did so in the ugliest possible way, leading to questions about judgment and strategy.

THE NEXT TEST: There’s a fear among some of these Dems that Sanders Orbit’s damage may not be done… All eyes now turn to the August 4 Michigan Senate primary, where Sanders has endorsed progressive ABDUL EL-SAYED over centrist Rep. HALEY STEVENS, who has Chuck Schumer and AIPAC money behind her. El-Sayed, who campaigned with HASAN PIKER, has been leading in recent polling and picked up the UAW’s backing along with Sanders’ — though the recent exit of MALLORY McMORROW is likely to help Stevens.

If El-Sayed wins the primary, establishment Dems worry that retiring Sen. GARY PETERS’ Michigan seat could be entirely lost to the GOP. And if that happens, dreams of a 2028 majority are likely gone as well — and you can expect the “Bernie’s judgment” conversation to crescendo even more.

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