What Graham Platner tells us about the Democratic Party

On June 9, Graham Platner won the Democratic primary for the Senate in Maine with 77.7% of the vote. His only serious rival, Governor Janet Mills, had dropped out of the race in April. In November, he will face Republican Susan Collins, and Democrats are hailing him as their best chance to retake the Senate. It is worth pausing to consider what, exactly, they are celebrating.

Just a few weeks ago, the same question arose regarding Maureen Galindo, the Texas Democratic candidate who proposed imprisoning and castrating "Zionists." It was clear at the time that her case was no accident, but rather the product of a party that had abandoned its own moral watchfulness and only reacts when the scandal becomes untenable. But Galindo lost, while Platner won. And that is precisely why his case is more revealing: we are not dealing with a marginal protest vote, but with the candidate anointed by the party apparatus, by its donors, and by its national leaders. What is (increasingly) scandalous is not even what kind of man Platner is, but what kind of party chose him knowing exactly who he is.

This “neo-feminist” whom his ex-girlfriends denounce fully exposes a hypocrisy that no one is interested in hiding. For years, the Democratic Party made the #MeToo movement’s slogan—"believe women"—its identity creed. It was such an absolute mantra that the uncorroborated testimony of a few women was enough to demand the downfall of those accused. To question an accuser was tantamount to betraying all women; due process was an alibi for predators.

Let’s see how that creed applies to Platner. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times revealed that his own wife alerted a campaign adviser that the candidate had exchanged sexual messages with a dozen women (during the campaign, they made a slight concession to say there were “up to six”). This occurred shortly after they were married, in 2023 and 2024.

Then came the report by the Times on his ex-partners. Lyndsey Fifield recounted that, during an argument, Platner physically abused her in a way that, had he not been a Democratic politician, would have drawn well-deserved condemnation from all quarters. Fifield recounts that Platner twisted her arm behind her back, pushed her into a room, and locked the door from the outside so she couldn’t leave, ordering her to wait there until she “calmed down.” Another ex-girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, described his behavior as "disturbing" and cut off contact. Platner denies the physical allegations. At this point, a consistent Democrat would say: "We must believe the women."

But Fifield is not a Democrat, and we already know how the selective feminist outrage machine works when the victim is not one of their own. That was enough for Platner’s machine to dismiss her as a Republican Party activist , a fact that apparently strips her of her status as a victim, as a woman, and perhaps even as a human being.

The uncomfortable detail is that Fifield didn’t just come forward in the middle of the campaign with a story: she had saved messages and had confided in several friends years ago, long before Platner was a public figure.

Here is the double standard in its purest form. When the accuser is a Republican and the accused is the tool for regaining the Senate, the slogan is shamelessly reversed: now skepticism is a virtue, due process miraculously reappears, and the victim becomes the suspect. Added to the list was an episode that highlights the gulf between the image and the man. The Wall Street Journal verified that Platner maintained an active account on Kik (an anonymous messaging app that child protection organizations have dubbed "a predator's paradise" and which appears on lists of platforms linked to the exploitation of minors). His profile displayed a selfie of him half-naked, with a towel and his tattoos on display. His campaign claimed he had deleted the app from his phone but "forgot" to deactivate the account. A man who presents himself as a champion of working-class decency, a married man, maintained a presence for years on a platform whose reputation is known to any informed adult. That his defense is "I forgot to close the account on the predators’ paradise" is not a mitigating factor: it is a confession of the kind of judgment that accompanies him.

On the other hand, it is true that the Democratic Party no longer pretends to be a bulwark against anti-Semitism; unfortunately, it abandoned that pretense long ago, but at least with that argument, some of its leaders belatedly repudiated Galindo. However, Platner has long been seen with a tattoo, a Totenkopf: the skull and crossbones worn by the SS units responsible for guarding the extermination camps. When the image became controversial last October, Platner claimed that only then, nearly twenty years after getting the tattoo, did he discover its meaning, and he covered it up.

The explanation is implausible on its own. But Fifield makes it even more untenable, as claims that he spoke of the tattoo casually, called it "my Totenkopf," and joked about its origin with his friends. When asked how it was possible that she had described the symbol to others months before her supposed epiphany, Platner offered a convoluted answer: that in any case, no one had warned him. Apparently, the man needed a girlfriend to explain the symbol he chose to have tattooed on his skin and displayed for nearly twenty years. The excuse, however repugnant, is nonetheless surprising in its childishness; nevertheless, it did not prompt a single resignation among his supporters.

There remains another farce, as if there weren’t enough already. It is the one that claims he is an authentic proletarian confronting the system. Platner repeats that “he was never close to money and power.” The facts tell a different story. His grandfather, Warren Platner, was a world-renowned architect, the creator of furniture that now sells for thousands of dollars and the designer of the famous Windows on the World. His father, Bronson, is a Dartmouth-trained lawyer and Democratic Party donor who lent him the money to buy his house. His mother runs a luxury restaurant that happens to be the main customer for his oysters. And before her proletarian transformation, Platner attended Hotchkiss, Connecticut’s most expensive and exclusive boarding school, from which he was eventually expelled. Of course, there is nothing dishonorable about a privileged childhood.

What is dishonorable is building an entire political identity on concealing it and selling a biography of hardship to voters who actually suffer from it. By the way, in case it suits him, for large sectors of the Democratic Party, a comfortable life is indeed dishonorable—but that doesn’t apply to themselves either.

The point is that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Brian Schatz, Tina Smith, Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Ro Khanna endorsed Platner. Khanna went so far as to describe his behavior as “wrong and toxic” only to, in the same sentence, demand understanding because the candidate “sought redemption” and Maine deserves someone who will stand up to “the billionaire class and genocide.”

Far from sinking him, each revelation boosted his fundraising. That is the lesson. For a growing segment of the progressive movement, Platner’s “flaws” and personal miseries do not detract from him: they confirm his authenticity as an outsider. The abuse, the Nazi symbol, the lie about his origins, everything dissolves into the only question that matters: does it help accumulate power? If the answer is yes, the establishment falls silent, donors step up their contributions, and the party’s leaders speak of redemption.

When we spoke of Galindo, we said that the party tolerates the intolerable until it becomes too visible, and that then condemnation comes as a PR move, not as a filter. The Platner case raises an even greater moral decline, because there wasn’t even a condemnation: there was a coronation. The Democratic Party didn’t lose a moral debate. It decided that the moral framework was dispensable. And a candidate like that, a winner, ceases to be an accident and becomes a statement of principles. Or, more precisely, proof that there are no longer any.