It’s finally over. Graham Platner has filed papers with the state of Maine confirming his withdrawal from the race for the Democratic Senate nomination. So allow me to celebrate the End of an Error with this small coda to National Review’s recent immersion in the esoteric gnostic details of “Platneriana.” Many questions remain unanswered, alas: We will never know just exactly how he got expelled from an ultra high-class boarding school that doesn’t expel anyone, save for the gravest of violations, after his first semester in high school. (Or why his parents felt the need to send him there in first place.) Nor have we ever heard the opinions of anyone who ever served in any capacity with him overseas. Wonder what we’d find out?

I’m pretty sure that this, more than any fundraising leverage the DNC might wield, is what ultimately drove Platner out; there are still sins Platner would prefer to keep blessedly unknown. And because men without dignity are not in the habit of late-acquiring it, even Platner’s resignation was ultimately undercut by his own sheer trashiness.

When Platner announced his formal exit from the Maine Senate race last night, he also sent it out to America via tweet, as a farewell. And it was a perfectly brown note upon which to exit, yet more mush from a bleating, braggart wimp. (“On June 9, 156,084 Mainers voted for a new kind of politics,” he bleats, ignoring the reality that he was the only remaining serious candidate on the ballot by then.)

He continues on about this “new kind of politics”:

[It] is representative of people in the real world – not billionaires, oligarchs, or the political establishment. Mainers voted for Medicare for All; to ban billionaires from buying elections; and for an end to taxpayer-funded genocide and forever wars. They voted for time and dignity; for strong unions and jobs they can raise families on; for the hope of buying a home; for the chance to retire with grace.

People are desperate for change. For this broken system to be righted. For the American experiment to be furthered. Over the past eleven months, thousands and thousands of Mainers poured their hearts, time, and talent into a movement to deliver that vision. I will be forever grateful to them. And in submitting this letter today, I seek to further the movement we have built together, and the future we believe in.

My name may have been on the ballot, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine. As such, please consider this notice as my official withdrawal from consideration for this office.

All nice and reasonably professional, you might think, as far as campaign communications go. Yes, it’s larded with nonsense and cant, but such self-pitying rationalizations are inevitable in bitter defeat, and should be accordingly discounted. In fact, one might even suspect it was written for him by someone else.

Particularly because the real Graham Platner – the anti-social, privileged, communist failson mouthing slogans – finally emerges from behind all that professionally crafted guff right at the end. Platner’s final sign-off:

 “F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the hearts.”

Ah, now that’s more like the scumbag I know. Of course, because this is Platner, my first thought is: when he said “f*ck ICE?” did he mean that in a gay way, or more like a viking? And I don’t even want to know what “up the hearts” even means – no offense, but it sounds like some kind of commie gobbledygook to me. But as for “free Palestine” being Platner’s final sign-off? That’s a tell. That explains why he was recruited by his handlers in the first place. The Democratic Socialists of America may talk its programmatic game about fully automated luxury communism and whatnot, but what ultimately animates this movement, putting the steel in its spine, is the emotional charge of an enemy to unite against.