Politico, which I understand is closely tied to the Democrat party, just released a report alleging that Graham Platner, the Democrat Senate candidate for Maine, raped a woman in 2021. Cynically, I believe that the reason it did so is that the mainstream Democrats have grown frightened of the Jacobins in their midst. They’re beginning to hear the whoosh and thunk of the guillotine blade falling.

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What I find more interesting is the woman behind the allegations. If her story is indeed true, this woman—a stalwart Democrat—is a disgrace to her sex. She’s more to be censured than pitied for her silence until political expedience drove her to act.

Here’s what I gleaned from the Politico report: Jenny Racicot, 41, had an on-and-off relationship with Platner beginning in 2018 or 2019. She first entered the spotlight a few weeks ago when she backed up Lyndsey Fifield, who alleged that Platner had mistreated her. Democrats denied Fifield’s allegations because of her ties to the Republican Party, which they said made her unreliable.

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However, Racicot apparently had to think long and hard about the ties of sisterhood before deciding to support Fifield:

Racicot said she was torn over coming forward in part because she agrees with Platner politically.

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“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

Let’s put this in perspective.

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The #MeToo movement began in late 2017, roughly three years before the alleged rape. It came with a catchphrase: “Believe all women.”

However, I do not believe all women. I’m very troubled by women suddenly announcing that this political figure or that political figure sexually assaulted them years before.

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Some, like E. Jean Carroll and Christine Blowsy Fraud, let decades go by before speaking up, and their narratives didn’t match objective facts. That’s why we have statutes of limitations: so that men have some due process rights before hard evidence and fragile memories vanish.

Of course, sometimes, old sins do cast long shadows, as was the case with the allegations that Tara Reade brought against Joe Biden in 2020 regarding an alleged sexual assault in 1993. While it was true that she remained silent for almost 30 years, her story got some corroboration from the fact that, in 1993, an unnamed woman from San Luis Obispo, where Reade’s mother then lived, called Larry King Live and talked about her unnamed daughter being sexually assaulted by a “prominent senator.” It’s not proof, but it’s something.

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In the same way, Racicot’s allegations have some contemporaneous corroboration. Per Politico:

POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.

So, think about this: By the time of the alleged rape in 2021, the #MeToo/Believe All Women movement had been a fixture on the Democrat side of the aisle for three years. Had Racicot made her allegations against Platner, she would have been believed, unlike past generations of women who were sometimes doubted and shamed. Indeed, she would have been honored for speaking truth to male power. The presumption of innocence that exists in a courtroom would have been reversed in the public sphere. Platner would have been excoriated and, if Racicot’s facts were strong enough, tried for rape.

But for political reasons, Racicot kept her mouth shut, doing nothing more than warning a single acquaintance to stay away from Platner. She allowed someone she believed was a dangerous predator to walk the streets because she agreed with his politics.

Where have we heard that before? Does the name Nina Burleigh ring a bell?

Back in 1998, it emerged that Bill Clinton had inveigled Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old White House intern, into performing oral sex on him. Burleigh, a committed Democrat activist and, presumably, a feminist, was unmoved by his predatory, unseemly, and adulterous behavior. Instead, she told Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post that she would be happy to perform oral sex on Clinton “just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

Leftists have no principles other than power. Assuming that Racicot’s allegations are true—and contemporaneous evidence suggests that they might be—she kept silent to protect a political ally. And then, when it became apparent that Graham Platner, with his history of fetishistic, ugly remarks, abusive conduct toward women, and a Nazi tattoo, might be a problem, she finally spoke up.

Looked at from that perspective, none of what she’s now alleging has to do with truth and the sisterhood or with #MeToo and “believe all women.” It’s just a cynical move by Racicot and the Democrat establishment to push back that seemingly inexorable guillotine, with Platner as the first victim of the Democrat counterstrike.

Image created using AI.