Thursday's Final Word

hotair.com

When I'm tabbing, well, I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man that's tabbing hard for you ...

Advertisement

Ed: Starting to look like a pattern, no? Democrats ran a senile Joe Biden in a cooked primary while withholding vital information about the candidate, and had to anoint a replacement after the voting took place. They keep perpetrating frauds on the electorate and using insiders to clean up later. One might even call that a strategy. That was part of Platner's claim to victimhood yesterday, but ...

===

Jim Geraghty at NRO: Platner departed the race exactly as you might have predicted, insisting that every accusation against him was a damnable lie, bitterly insisting that his withdrawal from the race was everyone’s fault but his, and pointing the finger at vague, shadowy “large forces” rigging things against him. It may not have been a thundering tirade out of Downfall, but it was a first-ballot Hall of Fame masterpiece of refusing to take responsibility. ...

“Those in power, who have the ability to do so, are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that 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.”

Got that? Groups like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Maine Democratic Party, and Senate Majority PAC are using a little thing like accusations of rape and physical abuse “as an excuse” to no longer support him.

Ed: I'd take this more seriously if Platner himself hadn't been the product of a bulls**t narrative creation by "those in power" on the Left in the first place. Platner knew damned well he was not a working-class stiff and some sort of tradesman-philosopher; he was an actor cast for the part. Crying about people in power opposing him now is akin to murdering your parents and lamenting your status as an orphan. 

===

Advertisement

Ed: It sounds familiar ... but I'm not gonna stop you. 

===

NBC News: While actor Patrick Dempsey saved a lot of lives on “Grey’s Anatomy,” he won’t be the McDreamy candidate to rescue Democrats in Maine following Graham Platner’s exit.

Dempsey, who played neurosurgeon Derek Shepherd on the long-running ABC medical drama, said that he will not be throwing his hat into the ring for the Senate race after his name was one of many floated as a potential replacement for Platner, the embattled Democratic nominee who ended his campaign Wednesday night.

“I kept coming back to one question: Do I truly want to serve in Congress? After a lot of thought, I realized the answer is no,” Dempsey, a Maine native, wrote in an op-ed published by the Portland Press Herald about four hours before Platner dropped out.

Ed: Not just McDreamy but also McSmarty. Both parties flirt with celebrity candidates, usually to their detriment, so this impulse from Maine Democrats isn't unprecedented. It does speak to their desperation to bury their previously wild enthusiasm for a violent Nazi-tatted Kik creeper and alleged rapist; a celebrity campaign would be a strong antidote to the poison they imbibed. Dempsey doesn't need that correlation to the putrescence emanating from Maine Democrats in this cycle.

===

Ed: Allow me to correct this headline. Democrats selling a fraud in Maine and excusing a Nazi tattoo, Kik creeping, and violence toward women have made things harder for Democrats. The "grassroots coalition" that Platner supposedly left behind was an Astroturfed movement created by socialist PR execs working for Bernie Sanders, who cast Platner in the role because he looked the part. The Atlantic still wants to sell the fraud. 

===

Townhall Tipsheet: A spokesperson for the Maine Secretary of State’s office confirmed on Thursday to Townhall that he has not filed a withdrawal yet, and he has until the end of the business day on Monday to drop out. A timely move would allow for a replacement to be chosen.

Advertisement

“As of now, no official withdrawal notice has yet been received from Mr. Platner,” the spokesperson stated. 

“A public declaration is not an official withdrawal, and a candidate must formally withdraw to the Elections office in writing, including signature (notice may be received by email, such as a scanned letter attached as a pdf, but must include a signature),” the statement continued.

The spokesperson noted that there will likely be the uncommon step of coming out with a press release once he officially drops out “due to the level of interest.”

Ed: Stay tuned. Platner could always change his mind. And after last night's "I'm the real victim here" performance, he just might. 

===

Ed: Bookmark this exchange. Both of these provide clarity about the "presumption of innocence" and its proper application. Fleischman and Esper nail it. No one owes Platner a Senate seat, and they don't even owe him a nomination that was won by deceit and fraudulent presentations to voters. 

===

The College Fix: Experts on “hate” and “extremism” have ignored numerous requests to comment on allegations that the Southern Poverty Law Center funded informants who used money to buy Ku Klux Klan hoods and cross-burning materials.

A federal indictment alleges that more than $4 million in donor funds went to pay confidential informants within extremist groups. The latest indictment alleges some money was used for “recruiting new members and purchasing materials for cross burnings and Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods,” according to CBS News.

The College Fix contacted seven university centers that study hate and extremism and asked for a reaction to the indictment, the ethics of funding Klan materials, and best practices for monitoring extremism.

None of the groups responded to emails and phone calls in the past several weeks including the University of California Los Angeles’ Initiative to Study Hate, California State University – San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, Gonzaga’s Journal of Hate Studies and Center for the Study of Hate, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Applied Research on Targeted Violence, and George Washington University’s Program of Extremism. 

Advertisement

Ed: I wonder how many of these programs collaborated with the SPLC in these efforts? It's very telling that these academic organs that exist for the explicit purpose of fighting hate have nothing to say about the SPLC's funding of hate events and activities. Why, it's almost as if the SPLC's subsidies kept a closed economy in "hate studies" from withering away.

===

... "aligned with the positions of Ted Cruz dedicated to countering right-wing antisemitism." 

A source familiar tells @jewishinsider that those behind the organization have raised several million dollars to fund the operation. They have also appointed Arielle F. Klepach, a former asst U.S. attorney & senior counsel for the National Jewish Advocacy Center, as executive director.

Ed: Good for Sen. Cruz and his team. It has been long overdue on the Right, but far more needed on the Left. Conservatives have been provided an object lesson about the risks of playing footsie with Jew-haters in any form, especially from the authoritarian/delusional fringe, where they should remain corralled. The Left let them into the house instead. Jacobs has more at Jewish Insider at this link. 

===

Axios: A U.S. official said the current escalation could last a day or two, a week or a month, depending on whether Iran continues its attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

"We're going to slap them a bit so they understand we're not f*cking around," the U.S. official said. ...

Shortly after, Trump signaled the U.S. was ready to de-escalate, telling reporters on Air Force One that Iranian officials had "called a little while ago" and "want to make a deal."

Ed: And ... so? The IRGC does not deal in good faith, as their entire 47-year history shows. They will only talk when threatened with superior force, but will never adhere to any terms that put them at any disadvantage even if they agree to them. The last three months have demonstrated that spectacularly, not just in Hormuz but also in Lebanon and Gaza. 

Advertisement

===

Ed: Lather, rinse, repeat. I'd stick with the slapping around for a lot longer, and maybe Bridge and Power Day. The Pakistanis and the Qataris have yet to deliver on their promises that the IRGC is dealing honestly. 

===

Ed: This might explain why Iran wants to talk now. 

===

WSJ: The root of the dispute is Paragraph 5, which says Iran will make arrangements to restore shipping through the strategic waterway and then work with Oman to determine how to administer it in the future. But it also includes an Iranian pledge to ensure safe passage and remove military obstacles such as mines.

Trump administration officials saw that clause as unlocking the strait, the main accomplishment of the president’s deal. Iranian hard-liners, however, have used it to push a maximalist interpretation that gives the Islamic Republic exclusive control over the waterway as a key source of leverage.

The U.S. and its Arab Gulf allies don’t want Iranian hegemony over Hormuz, the lifeline for much of the world’s oil and gas supply. The language of the deal has left the two sides fighting over that point rather than making progress on a final agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program. 

Ed: Then let's make it very clear. The Iranians have no business regulating traffic in international waters. If that's a problem, then let's seize Larak and Abu Masa and hand them over to the UAE, which will redefine Iran's territorial reach into the Strait of Hormuz to about the beach. Stop playing around and put an end to this.  

===

Ed: That's Mehdi Hasan, whose determination in this exchange caught some by surprise. This is a far tougher exchange than anything Chris Hayes attempted with Graham Platner on M-SNOW last month. There may be a couple of explanations for this. First off, and not exclusive to other considerations, Hasan may have wanted to conduct a real interview with some integrity, which we can and should applaud. Second: Hasan may have figured that El-Sayed could defend himself better than Platner, which turned out to be true. It's also possible that El-Sayed really wanted to answer this point to defuse it ahead of the primary, which is now more of a binary election against an establishment-backed opponent. Before now, El-Sayed counted on an establishment split between Stevens and McMorrow, but McMorrow withdrew this week in a surprise move. That will make this a toss-up with less than four weeks to go. 

Advertisement

===

Jeffrey Blehar at NRO: 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.

For the DSA and Republicans alike (who share an interest in destroying Democrats, albeit in different ways), it’s an opportunity to drive the wedge deeper: What Collins needs most acutely is for Platner and his embittered DSA cohort to crush any chance at Democratic Party unity, de-motivating voters in what remains a very blue state.

As we can see, everything seems to be proceeding nicely on that front. Platner apparently recorded his video four hours before he released it and sat on it until “prime time.” According to Politico, Platner’s advisers told him to “focus on ‘gratitude’” as his overarching theme, but he chose grievance instead. May he continue to fulminate in public about the wretched failure he brought on himself — as loud and as long as he wants. I’m here for every minute of it.

Ed: Platner did everything but call for a walkout on the Left in his alleged valediction last night. That's another parallel to Texas, where Jasmine Crockett explicitly accused Democrats of running a "racist" primary and has suggested that black voters focus on down-ballot races rather than support James Talarico. The socialist-intersectionalist crisis has finally begun to emerge, albeit in different contexts ... and I'm here for that, too.  

===

===

Last night's lyric: "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive. 

 

Editor's note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you're digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments -- and support independent platforms -- why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!