They said he was a fighter, but red flags always told the truth
Graham Platner's final message exposed a lot of lies.
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Last night's announcement was whiny. It was bratty, even unmanly. That might come as a shock given that his loudest defenders, who stood on the highest social-media perches, told us that his nomination marked the end of "the era of smoothgroin politicians" and the rejection of the Democrats as the party of "HR lady politics." But crisis doesn't make a man. It reveals him. Graham Platner's stripped away the myth-making and it showed us a boy.
Yesterday, I told you about how US Senator Elizabeth Warren "koshered" Platner with language designed to minimize the impact of a slew of reporting on his misogyny and violence toward women. Backed by a cast of all-women supporters, the progressive icon told an audience in April that Platner was "my kind of man." Why? Because he's "a fighter" and because he "is a man who not only has the values, but a man who believes in accountability," Warren said, "and we need a little accountability coming out of Washington right now."
Well, good thing he's out, because there was very "little accountability" in his own words. "This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think it’s an admission of guilt and it most certainly is not," he said. "We’re not doing it because of the allegations. We're doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power" (my italics).
Much worse than that, however, was the allegation – not the suggestion, but explicit allegation – that there was some kind of conspiracy against him involving shadowy forces beyond his control that rigged the game to the point of cheating him out his birthright. A lot has been said, by Platner's critics and his defenders, but not until last night was it quite so clear that there's a dime's worth of difference between the man from Maine and QAnon.
"I also feel immense amount of responsibility to everyone who has worked so hard to get us to where we are," he said. "We went toe-to-toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world and we won. We beat them on June 9 in overwhelming numbers. We did it the right way. We built a campaign. We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change, and we won and now they are not going to let us have it" (again, my italics).
This is the full video of last night's announcement. Courtesy of CSPAN.
He's acting like he's been swindled by a conniving older brother. "But you said that if I did it exactly like you said that I would get what I want – it's so unfair!" He wasn't cheated. His campaign ended when his people left him, and they left him, because none of them could look away from his scumbaggery. It was good while it lasted. He charmed enough people into believing that he's some kind of "working-class hero." The spell has been broken, which is something he apparently cannot tolerate. It's not me, it's you – his final, adolescent message. If the system is supposed to separate the men from the boys, I guess the system worked.
In light of the allegations of rape against Platner, former backers are scrambling to put distance between him and them. But his final message brings the focus back to the reasons they supported him in the first place. They said he was what was needed in the aftermath of Donald Trump's victory. They said the Democrats must win back the working class – the white working class – with popular policies that suit their needs. For that message, they said, Platner was the perfect messenger: authentic, working class, masculine, albeit rough around the edges. But most of all, they said, he was a fighter. That's what the Democrats need.
Yet when all was said and done, Platner suggested that what he was actually fighting was the laws, virtues, norms and codes of decency that determine that a man who is credibly accused of rape has no business in the highest institution of democracy, because rape is, as Rebecca Solnit put it, "a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights" (my italics). Elizabeth Warren said Platner would fight injustice, but last night's announcement suggested that for Platner, the real injustice was the grown-ups holding him responsible.
Why "grown-ups"? Because, for a man lauded for his rugged masculinity, he acts like a boy who expects Mom to drop everything when he's upset. But also because Platner is probably best understood through the lens of gender. The most entrenched political systems in the history of the world was Maine Governor Janet Mills and "the establishment," which we already know is supposed to be full of smoothgroin men, HR ladies and assorted political eunuchs who give emasculating "purity tests" that deplete the base and risk the Democratic Party continuing to lose to a GOP that's more accommodating to men. For these reasons, we were told not to worry about Platner's red flags, because what the Democrats need is "fighters," which is often code for "real men." In reality, the offensive Reddit posts, the serial sexting, the Totenkopf, his repeated denials – all of these red flags told us everything we needed to know: Graham Platner was no fighter at all. The structures ... are being taken away from us by those in power and they are not going to let us have it. Are you kidding me? A fighter is a person who fights to win, but accepts defeat. He doesn't blame Mom for failures.
There are lots of stories about lessons learned. Most are technical, for instance, that out-of-state consultants parachuted into Maine to impose on Democrats a Frankenstein candidate who ultimately fell apart. While there's something to be said about that, let's not overlook a stone-cold truth in Platner's message, which is that populist politics too often conflates righteous fury – about injustice, corruption, abuse of power – with impunity and petulance. There was never anything especially manly about Platner. Just the opposite. In a sense, his campaign was one long playdate in which the boys were allowed to be boys, and everyone got a chance to play along, often with the encouragement of motherly women. It ended when Jenny Racicot told her story. It was real. It was painful. And it slapped progressives back into adulthood. The magic was gone. The fun was over. And they all went home.
