Yeah I over-read the part “But he also said he was taking time to “reflect on the best path forward” for his campaign and the best way to defeat Susan Collins. Much of the video was phrased in the past tense.” I feel kind of dumb about that.
Okay I’m here ready to eat my hat. I commented last time saying there’s no way he drops out so why even write about the possibility, and now it sure seems feasible.
I take serious umbrage with associating hasan piker with the left, and I’m left af, but that guy is just the left’s version of tucker Carlson. A total nut job troll.
Solid post besides that. Let’s get rid of the guy already
I doubt Platner remembers what happened. His accuser said he was blackout drunk, and others have said they saw him drink heavily on a routine basis. Blackout drunks don't form memories.
The obvious point being that, in 2026, supporting a candidate who was KNOWN to have a drinking problem was DUMB.
That’s the truly baffling part. At some point ALL skeletons come out of the closet in a political campaign. What the heck, did he not think this far ahead or what? Most allegations at this level are not able to be sidestepped, DJT being the exception.
My comments much earlier in the year about this clown look pretty good. He is a complete nobody. This was before the Nazi tattoo talk, before the sexting and before this latest. He was a low quality candidate with no significant accomplishments who was trying to get into a place way above his grade (at this time in his life) and what made it all so cringey, was how obvious it was. If it takes a sexual assault to get him out, so be it. Maine Democrats really dropped the ball on this by nominating him, but better getting him out late than getting clobbered in November.
People keep trying to make this a “progressive vs. establishment” thing, but really it’s a “don’t run candidates with next to 0 prior political experience or vetting for crucial Senate races” thing.
I couldn’t agree more. There is a place for the more “colorful,” inexperienced individuals such as Platner who want offices in federal government - the House of Representatives. The House has a long history of having people from all walks of life, with all levels of experience, and encompassing a broad spectrum of “sketch.” It’s also a pretty good proving ground for political mettle - running every 2 years in either competitive or quasi-competitive districts builds valuable campaign experience (the only way to learn how to win elections is to go out and win elections); winning the nomination for a noncompetitive seat gives the office-holder time to build a resume for legislation sponsorship and consolidate a base of political allies. The Senate is a different story entirely; the lights can get pretty bright and parties need to be careful about who they allow to get nominated for competitive seats, especially for unknowns trying to cut the line like Platner. Maine dropped the ball here.
I may also be showing my age, but I don’t understand why it can’t be possible to be an “anti-establishment” Democrat without being hard-left. The opposition (Trumpism) should be easy to run against from the perspective of crafting what I would think would be a broadly palatable “preservation of American institutions” and “non-fascist/non-corruption” angle, especially after Trump’s second term, which has been very different from the first. Championing specific ideas to address “affordability” can be done without being part of DSA. Trump was supposed to fracture the Republican party, not the Democratic party.
You didn't even mention Lyndsey Fifield. If people hadn't disregarded her allegations about Platner because of her political alignment they would have been in a better place to admit now that he's not a good guy.
Best commentary I’ve seen for those who can actually analyze with a shred of honesty:
“Set aside the sexual assault for a moment. A man walks into your party wearing the emblem of Hitler’s murderers on his skin. That is the first clue. That is where a serious party stops and asks questions. Democrats did not stop. They pressed forward with Bernie Sanders at his side.”
And that just barely scratches the surface…and the NYT covering for him all along. America will be lucky to survive the Marxist infection.
Kudos to Nate Silver, with one little ding. His June 10 column: no reason to expect the scandals to end with sexting, a campaign behaving in untrustworthy ways, the observation that threatening former staffers is what you do when there's something worse in the vault. His "vet the hell out of us" test was exactly the right one, and Platner's campaign flunked it in four weeks. That's genuine analytical work, on the record, before the fact.
But I'd gently note that the June column's headline read "toss-up, or maybe still tilts Platner," and its arithmetic walked through how a D+14 state and a -17 favorability opponent gave Platner room to bleed and still win. The skepticism was in the prose; the implied trade was buy an out-of-the-money put, not sell short.
This column recapitulates the thoughtful analysis without mentioning the cautious conclusion.
In a comment on the June column, I argued scandal tolerance isn't linear — that after supporters have rationalized three scandals the fourth one can flip them to impassioned repudiation. I cited Weinstein, Cosby, Madoff, Enron: years of rationalized warnings, then unraveling in weeks, with former defenders becoming the loudest accusers.
The dam broke on schedule, so I'm tempted to take a bow. But honesty compels half credit at most. My model predicted collapse from one more marginal scandal — the straw that breaks the rationalization. What actually arrived was a categorically graver allegation. Even a linear response model predicts big effects from big causes.
What I'll claim is the character of the break. Under proportional updating, you'd expect Platner's defenders to demand due process on the most serious charge yet. Instead: same-day "curtains" from Hasan Piker, The Nation calling for replacement within hours, prediction markets at 3 percent before Platner had decided anything — and Democrats' odds of holding the seat improving on the news.
That's not a repricing; that's a liquidity event. The market had been holding Platner as an underwater position for weeks, and the allegation was the margin call. The speed and totality of the abandonment is the signature of my mechanism, even if the triggering event was severe enough that the mechanism wasn't necessary.
Nate Silver gets credit for the analysis, minus a small deduction for the retroactive narrative arc. I get credit for the mechanism, minus a large deduction for the fact that a dumber model predicts the same outcome. And Platner gets no deduction at all, because he started from zero.
This is going to sound very strange, and it's not that I want to defend Platner. It's very plausible he did something sketchy, at the very least.
But the bones of this story are sounding familiar to the Kavanaugh case. Incredibly unpopular choice with the Democrats. Woman pops up with story of sexual assault. Claims that she's mentioned it to therapist and friends in years preceding accusation. Only goes public now because of danger of bad guy getting into position of power.
I wonder. These kinds of accusations have been weaponised so I'm smiling wryly about "A high-prestige news outlet is unlikely to publish such allegations unless it believes they are well-supported." Think of Tara Reade and Biden, and Wikipedia tells me "Reade was one of several women who accused Biden in 2019 of "physical contact that made them feel uncomfortable, such as unwanted hugs, kisses on the head, and standing uncomfortably close", according to ABC News."
I don't believe news outlets, of whatever level of prestige, necessarily *believe* the accusations, they report them for various reasons - this is public interest, this is out there and we should cover it, everyone else is doing it and if we don't questions about our motivations will be asked, and of course, sex sells.
Did Platner do something? Possibly. Is this woman telling the truth? Possibly. Was this one of those "I consented at the time but now I regret it so retroactively I didn't consent" situations? Also possibly.
The fact that "a progressive Democrat" could replace Platner also makes me go "hmmm". Platner, as I said, is unpopular. The scandals to date have not knocked him out. Maybe someone is trying a last-gasp effort to get rid of him and get the 'right' guy elected? (In which case I do think Collins will survive another day). I'm not saying this *is* what is happening, but I do think it might not be unwelcome news for an accusation like this to appear just at the right time to knock him out of the race.
If the principal motivation is beating Collins, “anybody other than Platner,” at this stage, seems like a pretty reasonable strategy. Platner’s certainly not beating her.
I had assumed back when the last round of stories were breaking that there wasn't a smoking gun because I had assumed the Dems would have dropped it. I even stated that 'provided there was nothing else' I still saw Platner as likely to win and viable in Maine because people tend to forgive a marine for being an asshole.
But I highlighted in several posts that only held if that was the worst there was.
A dump like this from a Dem-aligned group was honestly just doing the ground work that should have been done before he ever got on stage. When I learned from a friend today that the Maine democrats accepted a basic background check for quality control, I was in shock. (As in, the same 5 day check most tellers get, versus the 21 day + follow up a vp gets.)
So you have joined the smear campaign ? Seams to me that Reps can do just about anything and receive a walk. Susan Collins gets lied to again and again and still votes for unqualified nominees and she gets a pass? IMO the charges are unverified and Platner should at least get the same consideration as people such as Ken Paxton
Ken Paxton is a terrible candidate who’s polling well below the partisan lean of Texas. The GOP would almost certainly be better off if they ditched Paxton. The democrats being willing to ditch a bad candidate prior to him becoming an electoral liability is a good thing for them.
Portraying Nate as a member of a "smear camapaign" is inflammatory language that disregards his analytical background and commitment to speaking his mind. You can disagree with him (I do often, and sort of now as well), but framing him as part of a "smear campaign" is disingenuous at best.
Also, the strong pivot to "whataboutisms" is famously unhelpful and counter to constructive discourse. This isn't about Susan Collins or Donald Trump. It's about setting a personal standard for what you expect in your own representatives. Again, I'm not agreeing with Nate's portrayal of Platner. But defending any politician with "yeah but the other guy is worse!", especially when there are still alternatives available is unhelpful and inflammatory. And it is the very mindset that has created this race-to-the-bottom-of-shittiness in personal character that we see in politics today.
Susan Collins doesn’t get a pass, not from me, not from anyone I respect, and definitely not from history. But we have a chance here to hold ourselves to higher standards than the people we claim to be morally superior too - which at this point means literally any standard - and Graham Platner has utterly failed to rise to the moment time and time again with regards to taking accountability to his past. Let’s not be the GOP and continue to latch onto a crap candidate and, at best, not a great person just because he hates the same people we do.
Not sure what you are trying to say however it seems to me that using the term blue maga is no different than Trump labeling those in his party that don't agree with him as RINOs. I would suggest holding off insulting other until after the Midterms
That’s not the issue. The latest is a *blessing,* from a political strategy standpoint. He’s a low-quality candidate - a complete nobody, with no accomplishments and a canned message. God knows why anybody fell for it, but thank god he’s finished. He had very little chance to beat Collins, and now the Democrats can put someone in the race who can.
Unfortunately he's busy rationalizing rape at the moment. Never advisable to place much stock in an artist's endorsement, though in this case his stubborn obliviousness is truly insulting.
Thrilled for the country that he’s out of the race. Nazi tattoos should be nowhere near the levers of power.
And now you are right. Sometimes sanity takes awhile to take hold. LOL
He has not yet agreed to end his candidacy.
Yeah I over-read the part “But he also said he was taking time to “reflect on the best path forward” for his campaign and the best way to defeat Susan Collins. Much of the video was phrased in the past tense.” I feel kind of dumb about that.
Don't feel bad. I just don't have a lot of faith in him doing the right thing.
Okay I’m here ready to eat my hat. I commented last time saying there’s no way he drops out so why even write about the possibility, and now it sure seems feasible.
My bad, sir. I missed lunch.
A very big, very strong lunch. Many people are saying they'd never seen a lunch like that before. And Dan missed it. Very sad.
I'd just like to note how cursed it is that Hasan Piker is now a "prominent voice on the left"
I take serious umbrage with associating hasan piker with the left, and I’m left af, but that guy is just the left’s version of tucker Carlson. A total nut job troll.
Solid post besides that. Let’s get rid of the guy already
you not liking Piker doesn't make him not Left any more than a righty not liking Carlson make him not Right. There is nothing to take 'umbrage' over.
As he knew this allegation was out there, going this far was a good sign of poor judgment. Selfishness is a problem with many political figures.
Altogether he seems like a total dumbass.
I doubt Platner remembers what happened. His accuser said he was blackout drunk, and others have said they saw him drink heavily on a routine basis. Blackout drunks don't form memories.
The obvious point being that, in 2026, supporting a candidate who was KNOWN to have a drinking problem was DUMB.
He’s clearly a narcissist.
He's a narcissist AND a total dumbass!
Reminds me of a classic SNL bit:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/03lLPUYkpYM
That’s the truly baffling part. At some point ALL skeletons come out of the closet in a political campaign. What the heck, did he not think this far ahead or what? Most allegations at this level are not able to be sidestepped, DJT being the exception.
Human beings are human beings.
Self delusion is a strong component typically.
My comments much earlier in the year about this clown look pretty good. He is a complete nobody. This was before the Nazi tattoo talk, before the sexting and before this latest. He was a low quality candidate with no significant accomplishments who was trying to get into a place way above his grade (at this time in his life) and what made it all so cringey, was how obvious it was. If it takes a sexual assault to get him out, so be it. Maine Democrats really dropped the ball on this by nominating him, but better getting him out late than getting clobbered in November.
People keep trying to make this a “progressive vs. establishment” thing, but really it’s a “don’t run candidates with next to 0 prior political experience or vetting for crucial Senate races” thing.
I couldn’t agree more. There is a place for the more “colorful,” inexperienced individuals such as Platner who want offices in federal government - the House of Representatives. The House has a long history of having people from all walks of life, with all levels of experience, and encompassing a broad spectrum of “sketch.” It’s also a pretty good proving ground for political mettle - running every 2 years in either competitive or quasi-competitive districts builds valuable campaign experience (the only way to learn how to win elections is to go out and win elections); winning the nomination for a noncompetitive seat gives the office-holder time to build a resume for legislation sponsorship and consolidate a base of political allies. The Senate is a different story entirely; the lights can get pretty bright and parties need to be careful about who they allow to get nominated for competitive seats, especially for unknowns trying to cut the line like Platner. Maine dropped the ball here.
I may also be showing my age, but I don’t understand why it can’t be possible to be an “anti-establishment” Democrat without being hard-left. The opposition (Trumpism) should be easy to run against from the perspective of crafting what I would think would be a broadly palatable “preservation of American institutions” and “non-fascist/non-corruption” angle, especially after Trump’s second term, which has been very different from the first. Championing specific ideas to address “affordability” can be done without being part of DSA. Trump was supposed to fracture the Republican party, not the Democratic party.
You didn't even mention Lyndsey Fifield. If people hadn't disregarded her allegations about Platner because of her political alignment they would have been in a better place to admit now that he's not a good guy.
Defaming her based on her politics was truly one of the grossest things I’ve witnessed.
Is Golden an option?
No. First of all, he doesn't want the job. He chose to leave the DC life.
Golden wouldn’t get many votes in southern Maine (where the numbers are)
Best commentary I’ve seen for those who can actually analyze with a shred of honesty:
“Set aside the sexual assault for a moment. A man walks into your party wearing the emblem of Hitler’s murderers on his skin. That is the first clue. That is where a serious party stops and asks questions. Democrats did not stop. They pressed forward with Bernie Sanders at his side.”
And that just barely scratches the surface…and the NYT covering for him all along. America will be lucky to survive the Marxist infection.
I’m just sad to see that Hassan piker is in any way seen as a “voice on the left”
Kudos to Nate Silver, with one little ding. His June 10 column: no reason to expect the scandals to end with sexting, a campaign behaving in untrustworthy ways, the observation that threatening former staffers is what you do when there's something worse in the vault. His "vet the hell out of us" test was exactly the right one, and Platner's campaign flunked it in four weeks. That's genuine analytical work, on the record, before the fact.
But I'd gently note that the June column's headline read "toss-up, or maybe still tilts Platner," and its arithmetic walked through how a D+14 state and a -17 favorability opponent gave Platner room to bleed and still win. The skepticism was in the prose; the implied trade was buy an out-of-the-money put, not sell short.
This column recapitulates the thoughtful analysis without mentioning the cautious conclusion.
In a comment on the June column, I argued scandal tolerance isn't linear — that after supporters have rationalized three scandals the fourth one can flip them to impassioned repudiation. I cited Weinstein, Cosby, Madoff, Enron: years of rationalized warnings, then unraveling in weeks, with former defenders becoming the loudest accusers.
The dam broke on schedule, so I'm tempted to take a bow. But honesty compels half credit at most. My model predicted collapse from one more marginal scandal — the straw that breaks the rationalization. What actually arrived was a categorically graver allegation. Even a linear response model predicts big effects from big causes.
What I'll claim is the character of the break. Under proportional updating, you'd expect Platner's defenders to demand due process on the most serious charge yet. Instead: same-day "curtains" from Hasan Piker, The Nation calling for replacement within hours, prediction markets at 3 percent before Platner had decided anything — and Democrats' odds of holding the seat improving on the news.
That's not a repricing; that's a liquidity event. The market had been holding Platner as an underwater position for weeks, and the allegation was the margin call. The speed and totality of the abandonment is the signature of my mechanism, even if the triggering event was severe enough that the mechanism wasn't necessary.
Nate Silver gets credit for the analysis, minus a small deduction for the retroactive narrative arc. I get credit for the mechanism, minus a large deduction for the fact that a dumber model predicts the same outcome. And Platner gets no deduction at all, because he started from zero.
This is going to sound very strange, and it's not that I want to defend Platner. It's very plausible he did something sketchy, at the very least.
But the bones of this story are sounding familiar to the Kavanaugh case. Incredibly unpopular choice with the Democrats. Woman pops up with story of sexual assault. Claims that she's mentioned it to therapist and friends in years preceding accusation. Only goes public now because of danger of bad guy getting into position of power.
I wonder. These kinds of accusations have been weaponised so I'm smiling wryly about "A high-prestige news outlet is unlikely to publish such allegations unless it believes they are well-supported." Think of Tara Reade and Biden, and Wikipedia tells me "Reade was one of several women who accused Biden in 2019 of "physical contact that made them feel uncomfortable, such as unwanted hugs, kisses on the head, and standing uncomfortably close", according to ABC News."
I don't believe news outlets, of whatever level of prestige, necessarily *believe* the accusations, they report them for various reasons - this is public interest, this is out there and we should cover it, everyone else is doing it and if we don't questions about our motivations will be asked, and of course, sex sells.
Did Platner do something? Possibly. Is this woman telling the truth? Possibly. Was this one of those "I consented at the time but now I regret it so retroactively I didn't consent" situations? Also possibly.
The fact that "a progressive Democrat" could replace Platner also makes me go "hmmm". Platner, as I said, is unpopular. The scandals to date have not knocked him out. Maybe someone is trying a last-gasp effort to get rid of him and get the 'right' guy elected? (In which case I do think Collins will survive another day). I'm not saying this *is* what is happening, but I do think it might not be unwelcome news for an accusation like this to appear just at the right time to knock him out of the race.
If the principal motivation is beating Collins, “anybody other than Platner,” at this stage, seems like a pretty reasonable strategy. Platner’s certainly not beating her.
I'm just surprised it came out before July 13th.
This a Dem-aligned oppo dump. The same group that took our Swalwell helped the accuser come forward.
Just because it's nasty doesn't make it untrue, right? Sorry for the... Double or triple negative in there but I'm not sure how else to phrase it.
You're not wrong.
I had assumed back when the last round of stories were breaking that there wasn't a smoking gun because I had assumed the Dems would have dropped it. I even stated that 'provided there was nothing else' I still saw Platner as likely to win and viable in Maine because people tend to forgive a marine for being an asshole.
But I highlighted in several posts that only held if that was the worst there was.
A dump like this from a Dem-aligned group was honestly just doing the ground work that should have been done before he ever got on stage. When I learned from a friend today that the Maine democrats accepted a basic background check for quality control, I was in shock. (As in, the same 5 day check most tellers get, versus the 21 day + follow up a vp gets.)
I definitely think it’s true.
Silver, solid take.
So you have joined the smear campaign ? Seams to me that Reps can do just about anything and receive a walk. Susan Collins gets lied to again and again and still votes for unqualified nominees and she gets a pass? IMO the charges are unverified and Platner should at least get the same consideration as people such as Ken Paxton
Ken Paxton is a terrible candidate who’s polling well below the partisan lean of Texas. The GOP would almost certainly be better off if they ditched Paxton. The democrats being willing to ditch a bad candidate prior to him becoming an electoral liability is a good thing for them.
Portraying Nate as a member of a "smear camapaign" is inflammatory language that disregards his analytical background and commitment to speaking his mind. You can disagree with him (I do often, and sort of now as well), but framing him as part of a "smear campaign" is disingenuous at best.
Also, the strong pivot to "whataboutisms" is famously unhelpful and counter to constructive discourse. This isn't about Susan Collins or Donald Trump. It's about setting a personal standard for what you expect in your own representatives. Again, I'm not agreeing with Nate's portrayal of Platner. But defending any politician with "yeah but the other guy is worse!", especially when there are still alternatives available is unhelpful and inflammatory. And it is the very mindset that has created this race-to-the-bottom-of-shittiness in personal character that we see in politics today.
Susan Collins doesn’t get a pass, not from me, not from anyone I respect, and definitely not from history. But we have a chance here to hold ourselves to higher standards than the people we claim to be morally superior too - which at this point means literally any standard - and Graham Platner has utterly failed to rise to the moment time and time again with regards to taking accountability to his past. Let’s not be the GOP and continue to latch onto a crap candidate and, at best, not a great person just because he hates the same people we do.
So close--if only you had read the entire article you're commenting under. This isn't a courtroom.
Blue MAGA once again leading the race to the bottom.
Not sure what you are trying to say however it seems to me that using the term blue maga is no different than Trump labeling those in his party that don't agree with him as RINOs. I would suggest holding off insulting other until after the Midterms
That’s not the issue. The latest is a *blessing,* from a political strategy standpoint. He’s a low-quality candidate - a complete nobody, with no accomplishments and a canned message. God knows why anybody fell for it, but thank god he’s finished. He had very little chance to beat Collins, and now the Democrats can put someone in the race who can.
Get Stephen King on the ballot.
Unfortunately he's busy rationalizing rape at the moment. Never advisable to place much stock in an artist's endorsement, though in this case his stubborn obliviousness is truly insulting.