It’s hard to know how voters will react to inexperienced candidates like Graham Platner. But that’s what makes them high-risk choices in must-win races.
It just seems like he is a shitty candidate that no one really knew anything about, and now the left is all in on him because they think he can appeal to the yokels (and because they are chronically incapable of backing down and admitting mistakes).
This is an incredibly hilarious statement, considering the absolute insanity of Trump's behavior over the last decade and at the same time MAGA has completely supplanted any coherent platform of the GOP.
He’s polling better than Mills and Mills has the second worst approval out of any governor in the US. So, he seems like a better candidate than Mills. The issue is the voters get to decide who is and isn’t a good candidate and the DSCC weighing in just looks bad and is more of the same problem democratic voters have been complaining about for a long time now.
The Democratic base badly wants people who "fight". And they probably need people who command attentional salience (on platforms that matter). Boring old Dems don't do this right now.
Maybe that's not Platner, but I believe they'll forgive a lot going for people that fit this mold.
To command this attentional salience IMO comes with a lot messier communication. You need to take risk to command this attention. So I think we'll see candidates that fit this style that turn out to possibly become unpalatable.
Off topic but as a subscriber Nate can you PLEASE put up some post(s) about a scandal that involves (a) sports (b) gambling which I kind of feel you are better qualified to write about than anyone else
My only problem with Planter is his groveling apologies.
IMO, he has absolutely nothing to apologize for. He made some crude jokes. Reading what he actually wrote, I do not pick up on any actual animosity towards anyone. E.g., "I proudly withdrew our team on the grounds that one cannot play gay chicken if one is actually gay." Sorry not sorry, but that is fucking hilarious!
Too bad for the Ds, Collins will now cruise (wait, is that an anti-gay slur???) to another win.
Having a nazi tattoo is weird though? Like if my friend said hey I've met this great guy and he has a nazi tattoo I'd be EXTREMELY concerned. wouldn't you?
The SS-Totenkopfverbände were specifically the division that ran the concentration camps, so if anything, it should be *more* concerning than a swastika. It's like identifying with the Nazis isn't enough - you have to clarify that you specifically identify with the people directly responsible for active "final solution" participation.
Graham Platner surges in poll amid ‘Nazi’ tattoo controversy | RISING
A new poll shows Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner is more than 30 points ahead of his closest rival, Governor Janet Mills (D – Maine), in the Democratic primary race, amid multiple major scandals in recent days.
Yeah, I didn't think people would buy all that cancel everyone stuff. Even I think the tattoo attack on this guy is stupid and wrong, and I'm hoping people will vote for Susan Collins.
Dems may have to give up the strategy of trying to cancel all their opponents with stuff in their early lives 20--30 years before.
This poll was only partially conducted during the Platner revelations, right? Might want to wait and see what happens when they've had a chance to be fully received by the public.
Who are you to say whether people "should" be concerned about X, Y, or Z? Don't "should" on my life or my thoughts, as a famous psychologist in another millennium used to say.
"He's doing well in the polls" means most people plainly don't agree with you. Nor do I: I study WWII a lot and never heard of this "Totenkopf" thingy. From the photo, it just seems to be a skull and crossbones like they used to put on poisonous substance bottles when I was a child so kids wouldn't drink them. This is not Nazi insignia: it's just attack ads by Gov. Mills campaign Internet scrapers with no morals whatsoever. In my opinion.
Seems unlikely to be true given that (a) he's a military history buff according to his own (former) political director and (b) there's someone with a claim that he referred to it as "my Totenkopf".
From the WSJ's editorial on this yesterday:
[begin quote]
"But an acquaintance of Mr. Platner told the Jewish Insider news site that the candidate explained the tattoo’s Nazi connection to him “in a cutesy little way” at a Capitol Hill bar in 2012. “He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf.’” That’s German for the “death’s head” symbol of the SS unit that ran the concentration camps.
Also not buying Mr. Platner’s excuse is his former political director, who resigned last week. “Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff,” she wrote Tuesday. “We cannot be this painfully stupid,” she wrote, referring to her fellow Democrats." "
[end quote]
Maybe the first part (the 'my Totenkopf') story isn't true or turns out not to be from a credible source, but when his own former key staff member notes he's a military history buff, I think we can say that it is unlikely he was unaware of the tattoo's meaning during the 18 years he's had it, however drunk he was when he got it.
I come back to: this is why competitive primaries are good, actually.
If Platner can convincingly explain his tattoos and Reddit posts and voters accept that, maybe he’ll win. If not, he won’t. Either way, you’ll find out about his political strength or weakness by testing it.
I do feel like "oops, I accidentally got an SS tattoo" doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his judgement. It takes a special kind of person to get a Nazi tattoo during a lapse in judgement - namely, one that has Nazi sympathies that might show up when inhibitions are dropped.
I’m sorry but if anyone truly believes a bunch of drunk marines got matching skull-and-crossbones tattoos because they are specifically familiar with and sympathetic to the aims of the SS-Totenkopfverbande - rather than thinking it’s a cool-looking tat - maybe get offline and chat with some marines in real life lmao
Relatedly, we conducted a study at work today, and 0 marines were able to correctly spell Totenkopfverbande
Maybe *YOU* need to talk with some actual marines. I live in a military town, know many people in the military in all branches - and there are an uncomfortable number of them, especially in the Marines, that have a glorified view of the German military circa 1945.
I don't have strong views about this race, but isn't the charitable interpretation that he just saw what he thought of as a cool skull & crossbones design and didn't know the association? I mean, it's embarrassing but not hard to believe, at least to me.
IMO the leftists (and the Pod Bros) are sticking with Platner because the leftist obsession right now is Israel. Platner said he wouldn’t vote for funding Israel and Janet Mills is an enthusiastic Israel supporter. At the same time, it is also why Schumer is so opposed to Platner in the first place. Schumer once said his main purpose in life is “to keep Democratic party pro-Israel.” IMO also explains his reluctance to endorse Zohran. Both sides are crazy but I wonder if Janet Mills came out for blocking weapons shipment to Israel, will the leftists be ok about her then?
I wouldn’t call the Pod Save guys leftists, though. Their personal politics are pretty left, but their general orientation is towards the practical and what is needed to win elections. That they seem to think Platner is that is interesting.
They could be wrong, of course. But it’s interesting.
I think they’re to the left of Biden on foreign policy, they’ve been consistently critical of Dem establishment on Israel. It makes sense since Israel was probably one of the only issues Obama was to the left of how Biden governed.
Yes, generally to the left of establishment Dems on foreign policy. To me "leftist" connotes something other than just having some further leftward positions and more being someone who sits well outside of party politics and wouldn't stand for being called a liberal. Pod Save guys don't seem to fit that description.
It's so commonsensical I'm not even sure it was worth commenting on....No one in his/her right mind, other than Bernie, thinks he's now a credible candidate...that is one who can win.
Maybe, but how I wish there were a moratorium on anything anyone said or posted or even did ten years or more before running for election. This opposition research has gotten way out of hand. So has #MeToo --- don't wait 30 years till the guy who behaved badly is running for Senate and then ruin him!! Bring charges that night, or it doesn't count. (Or at LEAST that year.)
But it's... not charges? There's no criminal infraction; this is all genuine, bona fide, straight from the horse's mouth communication without editorialization (aside from whether he knew his fascist genocide tattoo was a fascist genocide tattoo for the almost two decades he had it). "Bring charges that night" is insane when a person is saying heinous shit on social media without any personal import or political power.
I don't believe that cancel culture is just or good, but I don't think it's in any meaningful way regulable, nor do I think it's bad for a candidate's dirty laundry to be aired out. Not all of us are as high minded and accepting as you; some of us actually don't want to vote for senators with nazi tattoos, thanks, and it's perverse to act like truthtelling is a harm but mandated voter deception by omission is a virtue.
The problem for Platner is that while the Totenkopf has existed as a German military emblem for centuries, not all versions are equal. His tattoo appears far closer to the SS-Totenkopf than to the older Imperial designs. That matters, because the SS version wasn’t just used by a panzer division – it was the insignia of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, who operated the Nazi death and concentration camps. His tattoo is, unavoidably, steeped in the imagery of the Holocaust.
That this hasn’t immediately destroyed his candidacy says a great deal about the derangement of modern politics, and just how far the Overton window has shifted.
The issue is that Susan Collins has a strong history of winning and there aren’t that many statewide elected offices in Maine. So there’s not that many people with experience and the ones with it are not wiling to risk against a strong candidate.
So that’s how we get to this where the choices are the potential oldest freshman senator in history and someone with no electoral experience.
Voters appear to want the latter over the former in that choice, all things being equal. I think Democrats are getting a little tired of being safe and losing. 3 of the last 4 democratic presidents were anomalous, while typically the candidate is a “safer” establishment choice: Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Biden, Harris. That doesn’t mean the outsiders of Carter, Bill Clinton, Obama were of a particular extreme ideology or temperament but outside of Biden’s first term democrats forfeit the presidency with “safe” and vetted choices. Carter might even fall under the same category as the other Dem nominees of being particularly weak, but character was what mattered in 76 similar to 2020 (just barely though).
Having spent many years working in blue collar jobs, unlike the vast majority of left wing pundits and political operatives, I can't stress enough how mundane Platner's reddit comments would sound in many of those types of workplaces. People talk like that *all* the time. For instance in customer service jobs where people work for tips phrases along the lines of "People from <ethnic group> are horrible at tipping" get said all the time. Certainly not everyone talks this way, not even most people, but it's incredibly common to hear coworkers talking like this amongst themselves. The threshold for getting offended by speech that's not directly trying to insult you is much higher in these communities than in very progressive circles.
I'm not talking about the deep MAGA south or anything either, I've always worked in blue leaning cities and many of the people I regularly heard making offensive statements reliably voted blue, when they bothered to vote. I'm at not at all surprised that the Dems have been hemorrhaging working class support.
Now I work in a boring office job and *nobody* talks like that, the culture is just totally different. I personally think the latter is healthier, but people are what they are and a bunch of out of touch liberals trying to shame them into changing will continue to be a massive political failure.
The Dems being a bunch of hypersensitive scolds is quite bad since I think Trump and all the Republicans who enable him are an existential threat to our democracy. Democrats are annoying as hell, but Republicans are destroying the country I love. It would be great if Democrats went back to trying to win elections outside of the most liberal areas.
This seems right to me but also there are plenty of people who don't have the sensibilities of blue collar or service workers in the electorate. Isn't the average age of a primary voter like 50?
Sure, I don't think comments like Platner's are good; I'd rather he hadn't made them. But I also don't think they should be disqualifying and that Dems have gone way too far with certain purity tests. I would bet that there are far, far more Americans who talk like Platner in their daily lives than who talk about their intersectionality or use other woke terms, and mainstream liberals have no issue pushing candidates in the latter group regardless of how off putting their language is for normal voters.
One problem with "authentic" candidates is that they are so often fake, as in this case. Platner is the grandson of a world famous architecture and son of a successful lawyer.
I don’t envy Mainers having to choose between two - to me - poor candidates. I have no doubt that Janet Mills is a sensible, reasonable Democrat and I have no problem saying she is more “electable” - but she is 77. And if she wins and is even remotely willing, there is for sure going to be pressure for her to run again. And I am sooooooo sick of very old politicians, and I am in general ready to start taking chances with people who are - gasp - in the 50’s or maybe 60’s even if they don’t have the track record. But Platner doesn’t seem like a particularly admirable character, either. And as much as the idea of voting for a good human who is quite old bothers me, electing a bad guy doesn’t feel good, either.
I think this a great walk through of the nuances in this race. Two things I’ll add:
Mills is the second least popular governor in the US. (So her having been one might come with more baggage than benefit).
The PSA guys/gals are not pro-Platner. They go into again on their latest pod, but they are explicit that they think the DSCC weighing in and telling us who think is best is bad and that they do not know who is most electable, that’s for the Maine voters to decide.
My take is that voters are really really sick of the Democratic party setting the conditions for what a candidate can and should be. 2024 is the best example of that. And the more weight they put in these races, the more pushback they may face. Mills might be the best candidate, but the DSCC may hurt her by endorsing her instead of letting voters get a chance first.
Gov. Mills is also old: she would be the oldest first-time senator EVER. (77) And she's anti-Trump in a big way, so that won't help her with cross-over votes. I would guess some of this is going to be a reason for the surprising surge for Platner ---- after the scandal.
The Joe Biden Experience has surely soured a lot of Democratic voters on putting up another 80-year-old. Little bit surprising that the party establishment thinks they can push her as their preference.
re Tipping, ask anyone in the service industry, and for e.g. I've heard several Black sports talk show hosts discuss it, because Scottie Pippen had a nickname .. no tippin' Pippen. This clearly doesn't apply to ALL people from that particular background, but the rampant stereotype exists for reason.
re Totenkopf tattoo - should be noted he got it in Croatia, right? Well Croatia was controlled by the pro Nazi Ustashi during WW2. who put up and ran concentration camps for Serbs.
Does anybody else also feel really dumb for realizing this is the very first time you’ve ever noticed Nate state explicitly that he’s gay?
I suppose it’s interesting to consider that it’s clear in hindsight it was something I never actually cared about, but was merely concerned other people might have unfairly maligned him.
I also strongly suspect that the way he “coded” as straight in his career made his wisdom a lot more palatable to a large segment of people who otherwise almost certainly would have been irrationally resistant to his efforts to share his quantitative talents with the world.
I think there might be a lesson there in the way Platner is perceived by the Maine primary electorate. I was almost positive the recent revelations would wash him away, but perhaps they’re now realizing about him the same thing I am only now realizing was true about myself in the way I perceived “Straight Nate”:
One, that the “coding” was necessary to reach the broad levels of appeal in which their contributions to society could produce the greatest good; and
Two, the coding they felt it (correctly) necessary to use was never meant to make their ideas more palatable to *me*.
I think I may have been wrong about Platner’s seemingly most damning weakness (poor judgment to assume our side would easily forgive past behavior considered largely indefensible).
I’ve been burned a lot by hope over the past 15 years, but worse, I led others within my sphere of influence to believe like me that we were on the cusp of disempowering the toxic cynicism of the human soul.
I was right about the moral character of Barack Obama, who for better or worse, I have to credit as the fundamental benchmark for the quality of person I wanted to be, and the quality of leader I felt we as a society were now able to expect.
I was 20 years old when I was able to vote for the first time. Although my Dad had already derisively labeled me a hopelessly naive young liberal at that age (instead of the staunch evangelical christian conservative he spent my childhood raising me to be), I voted for George W. Bush.
I was never entirely sure why I did, but I suppose it was mainly because I felt he was somehow just a more…confident(?) leader than Kerry, despite it also being extremely obvious that intellectually, W was a very, very dumb man.
After a period of disillusionment with both sides immediately following his victory, I sat out the 2006 midterms. I didn’t care enough to vote at all that year, but I recall being pleased by Democrats’ massive sweep.
Barack Obama first appeared in my consciousness that year, and the more I heard him talk, the more I felt something different about him than every politician I’d ever seen before.
Although it’s pretty easy to conclude in hindsight I would have drifted to the Democrats over the course of my life anyway, at age 22 Barack Obama electrified me to *want* to help him build a better world for everyone—I felt something palpably *genuine* in his moral character, an authority he never betrayed, despite the continued moral failings of those he served.
Graham Platner is certainly no Barack Obama, but there is a feeling of genuine empathy that comes through when, for example, he’s apologizing for using slurs against others in an insulated environment that made clear that for people who looked like him, he wouldn’t face any immediate or even abstract consequences for coding like an intolerant, self centered, unsympathetic white man.
I like to consider myself to be representative of a good man. I was raised in a virtually all-white rural community, and the agreeably indefensible things he’s admitted to doing in his private life before choosing to subject himself to national scrutiny are strikingly similar to things I remember doing as well.
What I believe my experiences have revealed to me is that those things were motivated by my effort at that time to code myself as a christian conservative. Partly to avoid disappointing my father, but also because it seemed to allow me to be left alone by the sea of delusionally hateful christian conservatives that surrounded me.
I am not the same person today that I believed I was supposed to be back then. And the change didn’t come simply because I noticed any specific injustice for the first time, or because my “cool” friends supported any particular liberal cause, or least of all, because I felt any “guilt” toward my existence as a white man.
The difference today is that I no longer consider hope to be a virtue in isolation. I think the implicit truth that we understand needs to remain unspoken is that among the masses of people in this country who look like me, he represents a person who has morally internalized the need for societal change.
Like Barack Obama, he also faces the reality that he needs to code himself in a way that doesn’t cause those only capable of surface-level moral judgment to reflexively fight against his efforts to create that societal change.
It might be a little too soon for such a sweeping conclusion in Platner’s case but I have seemed to feel a bit of a shift recently in the way the Democratic coalition is willing to engage in its damning judgment of situations like his.
Perhaps we are closer to once again uniting around the qualities of genuine moral character, as we found it very easy to do when inspired by guidance from leaders like Barack Obama. I no longer engage in the act of hope as an emotional control, but I can say that the recent developments involving Platner’s uncomfortable history have given me a glimmer of light in the distance—a gladly welcomed reprieve from the unbroken darkness that’s surrounded us for years.
I listened to Nate on the 538 podcast for years and he was pretty explicit about being gay, whenever it happened to come up as a relevant topic (obviously this was not the focus of the show).
I think he alao did a "Nate Silver is a non-stereotypical gay guy" profile once around 2012. Back when he charactetized his politics as more libertarian. Or maybe that was an angle in a general piece about him.
It just seems like he is a shitty candidate that no one really knew anything about, and now the left is all in on him because they think he can appeal to the yokels (and because they are chronically incapable of backing down and admitting mistakes).
This is an incredibly hilarious statement, considering the absolute insanity of Trump's behavior over the last decade and at the same time MAGA has completely supplanted any coherent platform of the GOP.
He’s polling better than Mills and Mills has the second worst approval out of any governor in the US. So, he seems like a better candidate than Mills. The issue is the voters get to decide who is and isn’t a good candidate and the DSCC weighing in just looks bad and is more of the same problem democratic voters have been complaining about for a long time now.
People have known about him for months. He made (good) press early in his candidacy.
Incapable of admitting mistakes? Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me.
Isn't the consensus on the left that supporting Fetterman was a mistake?
The Democratic base badly wants people who "fight". And they probably need people who command attentional salience (on platforms that matter). Boring old Dems don't do this right now.
Maybe that's not Platner, but I believe they'll forgive a lot going for people that fit this mold.
To command this attentional salience IMO comes with a lot messier communication. You need to take risk to command this attention. So I think we'll see candidates that fit this style that turn out to possibly become unpalatable.
Off topic but as a subscriber Nate can you PLEASE put up some post(s) about a scandal that involves (a) sports (b) gambling which I kind of feel you are better qualified to write about than anyone else
My only problem with Planter is his groveling apologies.
IMO, he has absolutely nothing to apologize for. He made some crude jokes. Reading what he actually wrote, I do not pick up on any actual animosity towards anyone. E.g., "I proudly withdrew our team on the grounds that one cannot play gay chicken if one is actually gay." Sorry not sorry, but that is fucking hilarious!
Too bad for the Ds, Collins will now cruise (wait, is that an anti-gay slur???) to another win.
Having a nazi tattoo is weird though? Like if my friend said hey I've met this great guy and he has a nazi tattoo I'd be EXTREMELY concerned. wouldn't you?
Naaaah, only a swastika would worry me. He said it was drunk Marine stuff, and of course it surely was.
The SS-Totenkopfverbände were specifically the division that ran the concentration camps, so if anything, it should be *more* concerning than a swastika. It's like identifying with the Nazis isn't enough - you have to clarify that you specifically identify with the people directly responsible for active "final solution" participation.
But, as of today 10/24:
Graham Platner surges in poll amid ‘Nazi’ tattoo controversy | RISING
A new poll shows Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner is more than 30 points ahead of his closest rival, Governor Janet Mills (D – Maine), in the Democratic primary race, amid multiple major scandals in recent days.
*****************************************************************
Yeah, I didn't think people would buy all that cancel everyone stuff. Even I think the tattoo attack on this guy is stupid and wrong, and I'm hoping people will vote for Susan Collins.
Dems may have to give up the strategy of trying to cancel all their opponents with stuff in their early lives 20--30 years before.
This poll was only partially conducted during the Platner revelations, right? Might want to wait and see what happens when they've had a chance to be fully received by the public.
That said, that's a pretty big lead for Platner.
In what world is "he's doing well in the polls" in any way related to how concerning an SS tattoo should be?
Who are you to say whether people "should" be concerned about X, Y, or Z? Don't "should" on my life or my thoughts, as a famous psychologist in another millennium used to say.
"He's doing well in the polls" means most people plainly don't agree with you. Nor do I: I study WWII a lot and never heard of this "Totenkopf" thingy. From the photo, it just seems to be a skull and crossbones like they used to put on poisonous substance bottles when I was a child so kids wouldn't drink them. This is not Nazi insignia: it's just attack ads by Gov. Mills campaign Internet scrapers with no morals whatsoever. In my opinion.
If this were a Republican would you feel the same…
Yeah, the tattoo is weird. Planter’s story that he didn’t know its meaning when got it might be true though.
Seems unlikely to be true given that (a) he's a military history buff according to his own (former) political director and (b) there's someone with a claim that he referred to it as "my Totenkopf".
From the WSJ's editorial on this yesterday:
[begin quote]
"But an acquaintance of Mr. Platner told the Jewish Insider news site that the candidate explained the tattoo’s Nazi connection to him “in a cutesy little way” at a Capitol Hill bar in 2012. “He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf.’” That’s German for the “death’s head” symbol of the SS unit that ran the concentration camps.
Also not buying Mr. Platner’s excuse is his former political director, who resigned last week. “Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff,” she wrote Tuesday. “We cannot be this painfully stupid,” she wrote, referring to her fellow Democrats." "
[end quote]
Maybe the first part (the 'my Totenkopf') story isn't true or turns out not to be from a credible source, but when his own former key staff member notes he's a military history buff, I think we can say that it is unlikely he was unaware of the tattoo's meaning during the 18 years he's had it, however drunk he was when he got it.
It doesn't matter, Planter is toast now whatever he says or does going forward.
I come back to: this is why competitive primaries are good, actually.
If Platner can convincingly explain his tattoos and Reddit posts and voters accept that, maybe he’ll win. If not, he won’t. Either way, you’ll find out about his political strength or weakness by testing it.
I do feel like "oops, I accidentally got an SS tattoo" doesn't give me a lot of confidence in his judgement. It takes a special kind of person to get a Nazi tattoo during a lapse in judgement - namely, one that has Nazi sympathies that might show up when inhibitions are dropped.
I’m sorry but if anyone truly believes a bunch of drunk marines got matching skull-and-crossbones tattoos because they are specifically familiar with and sympathetic to the aims of the SS-Totenkopfverbande - rather than thinking it’s a cool-looking tat - maybe get offline and chat with some marines in real life lmao
Relatedly, we conducted a study at work today, and 0 marines were able to correctly spell Totenkopfverbande
Maybe *YOU* need to talk with some actual marines. I live in a military town, know many people in the military in all branches - and there are an uncomfortable number of them, especially in the Marines, that have a glorified view of the German military circa 1945.
I don't have strong views about this race, but isn't the charitable interpretation that he just saw what he thought of as a cool skull & crossbones design and didn't know the association? I mean, it's embarrassing but not hard to believe, at least to me.
IMO the leftists (and the Pod Bros) are sticking with Platner because the leftist obsession right now is Israel. Platner said he wouldn’t vote for funding Israel and Janet Mills is an enthusiastic Israel supporter. At the same time, it is also why Schumer is so opposed to Platner in the first place. Schumer once said his main purpose in life is “to keep Democratic party pro-Israel.” IMO also explains his reluctance to endorse Zohran. Both sides are crazy but I wonder if Janet Mills came out for blocking weapons shipment to Israel, will the leftists be ok about her then?
I wouldn’t call the Pod Save guys leftists, though. Their personal politics are pretty left, but their general orientation is towards the practical and what is needed to win elections. That they seem to think Platner is that is interesting.
They could be wrong, of course. But it’s interesting.
I think they’re to the left of Biden on foreign policy, they’ve been consistently critical of Dem establishment on Israel. It makes sense since Israel was probably one of the only issues Obama was to the left of how Biden governed.
Yes, generally to the left of establishment Dems on foreign policy. To me "leftist" connotes something other than just having some further leftward positions and more being someone who sits well outside of party politics and wouldn't stand for being called a liberal. Pod Save guys don't seem to fit that description.
Plainly commonsensical
It's so commonsensical I'm not even sure it was worth commenting on....No one in his/her right mind, other than Bernie, thinks he's now a credible candidate...that is one who can win.
Maybe, but how I wish there were a moratorium on anything anyone said or posted or even did ten years or more before running for election. This opposition research has gotten way out of hand. So has #MeToo --- don't wait 30 years till the guy who behaved badly is running for Senate and then ruin him!! Bring charges that night, or it doesn't count. (Or at LEAST that year.)
But it's... not charges? There's no criminal infraction; this is all genuine, bona fide, straight from the horse's mouth communication without editorialization (aside from whether he knew his fascist genocide tattoo was a fascist genocide tattoo for the almost two decades he had it). "Bring charges that night" is insane when a person is saying heinous shit on social media without any personal import or political power.
I don't believe that cancel culture is just or good, but I don't think it's in any meaningful way regulable, nor do I think it's bad for a candidate's dirty laundry to be aired out. Not all of us are as high minded and accepting as you; some of us actually don't want to vote for senators with nazi tattoos, thanks, and it's perverse to act like truthtelling is a harm but mandated voter deception by omission is a virtue.
The problem for Platner is that while the Totenkopf has existed as a German military emblem for centuries, not all versions are equal. His tattoo appears far closer to the SS-Totenkopf than to the older Imperial designs. That matters, because the SS version wasn’t just used by a panzer division – it was the insignia of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, who operated the Nazi death and concentration camps. His tattoo is, unavoidably, steeped in the imagery of the Holocaust.
That this hasn’t immediately destroyed his candidacy says a great deal about the derangement of modern politics, and just how far the Overton window has shifted.
The issue is that Susan Collins has a strong history of winning and there aren’t that many statewide elected offices in Maine. So there’s not that many people with experience and the ones with it are not wiling to risk against a strong candidate.
So that’s how we get to this where the choices are the potential oldest freshman senator in history and someone with no electoral experience.
Voters appear to want the latter over the former in that choice, all things being equal. I think Democrats are getting a little tired of being safe and losing. 3 of the last 4 democratic presidents were anomalous, while typically the candidate is a “safer” establishment choice: Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Biden, Harris. That doesn’t mean the outsiders of Carter, Bill Clinton, Obama were of a particular extreme ideology or temperament but outside of Biden’s first term democrats forfeit the presidency with “safe” and vetted choices. Carter might even fall under the same category as the other Dem nominees of being particularly weak, but character was what mattered in 76 similar to 2020 (just barely though).
Having spent many years working in blue collar jobs, unlike the vast majority of left wing pundits and political operatives, I can't stress enough how mundane Platner's reddit comments would sound in many of those types of workplaces. People talk like that *all* the time. For instance in customer service jobs where people work for tips phrases along the lines of "People from <ethnic group> are horrible at tipping" get said all the time. Certainly not everyone talks this way, not even most people, but it's incredibly common to hear coworkers talking like this amongst themselves. The threshold for getting offended by speech that's not directly trying to insult you is much higher in these communities than in very progressive circles.
I'm not talking about the deep MAGA south or anything either, I've always worked in blue leaning cities and many of the people I regularly heard making offensive statements reliably voted blue, when they bothered to vote. I'm at not at all surprised that the Dems have been hemorrhaging working class support.
Now I work in a boring office job and *nobody* talks like that, the culture is just totally different. I personally think the latter is healthier, but people are what they are and a bunch of out of touch liberals trying to shame them into changing will continue to be a massive political failure.
The Dems being a bunch of hypersensitive scolds is quite bad since I think Trump and all the Republicans who enable him are an existential threat to our democracy. Democrats are annoying as hell, but Republicans are destroying the country I love. It would be great if Democrats went back to trying to win elections outside of the most liberal areas.
This seems right to me but also there are plenty of people who don't have the sensibilities of blue collar or service workers in the electorate. Isn't the average age of a primary voter like 50?
Sure, I don't think comments like Platner's are good; I'd rather he hadn't made them. But I also don't think they should be disqualifying and that Dems have gone way too far with certain purity tests. I would bet that there are far, far more Americans who talk like Platner in their daily lives than who talk about their intersectionality or use other woke terms, and mainstream liberals have no issue pushing candidates in the latter group regardless of how off putting their language is for normal voters.
One problem with "authentic" candidates is that they are so often fake, as in this case. Platner is the grandson of a world famous architecture and son of a successful lawyer.
How does that make him fake?
Makes him smart: good genetics.
THIS is what an authentic candidate looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i739SyCu9I
I don’t envy Mainers having to choose between two - to me - poor candidates. I have no doubt that Janet Mills is a sensible, reasonable Democrat and I have no problem saying she is more “electable” - but she is 77. And if she wins and is even remotely willing, there is for sure going to be pressure for her to run again. And I am sooooooo sick of very old politicians, and I am in general ready to start taking chances with people who are - gasp - in the 50’s or maybe 60’s even if they don’t have the track record. But Platner doesn’t seem like a particularly admirable character, either. And as much as the idea of voting for a good human who is quite old bothers me, electing a bad guy doesn’t feel good, either.
Ugh.
I think this a great walk through of the nuances in this race. Two things I’ll add:
Mills is the second least popular governor in the US. (So her having been one might come with more baggage than benefit).
The PSA guys/gals are not pro-Platner. They go into again on their latest pod, but they are explicit that they think the DSCC weighing in and telling us who think is best is bad and that they do not know who is most electable, that’s for the Maine voters to decide.
My take is that voters are really really sick of the Democratic party setting the conditions for what a candidate can and should be. 2024 is the best example of that. And the more weight they put in these races, the more pushback they may face. Mills might be the best candidate, but the DSCC may hurt her by endorsing her instead of letting voters get a chance first.
Gov. Mills is also old: she would be the oldest first-time senator EVER. (77) And she's anti-Trump in a big way, so that won't help her with cross-over votes. I would guess some of this is going to be a reason for the surprising surge for Platner ---- after the scandal.
The Joe Biden Experience has surely soured a lot of Democratic voters on putting up another 80-year-old. Little bit surprising that the party establishment thinks they can push her as their preference.
re Tipping, ask anyone in the service industry, and for e.g. I've heard several Black sports talk show hosts discuss it, because Scottie Pippen had a nickname .. no tippin' Pippen. This clearly doesn't apply to ALL people from that particular background, but the rampant stereotype exists for reason.
re Totenkopf tattoo - should be noted he got it in Croatia, right? Well Croatia was controlled by the pro Nazi Ustashi during WW2. who put up and ran concentration camps for Serbs.
Does anybody else also feel really dumb for realizing this is the very first time you’ve ever noticed Nate state explicitly that he’s gay?
I suppose it’s interesting to consider that it’s clear in hindsight it was something I never actually cared about, but was merely concerned other people might have unfairly maligned him.
I also strongly suspect that the way he “coded” as straight in his career made his wisdom a lot more palatable to a large segment of people who otherwise almost certainly would have been irrationally resistant to his efforts to share his quantitative talents with the world.
I think there might be a lesson there in the way Platner is perceived by the Maine primary electorate. I was almost positive the recent revelations would wash him away, but perhaps they’re now realizing about him the same thing I am only now realizing was true about myself in the way I perceived “Straight Nate”:
One, that the “coding” was necessary to reach the broad levels of appeal in which their contributions to society could produce the greatest good; and
Two, the coding they felt it (correctly) necessary to use was never meant to make their ideas more palatable to *me*.
I think I may have been wrong about Platner’s seemingly most damning weakness (poor judgment to assume our side would easily forgive past behavior considered largely indefensible).
I’ve been burned a lot by hope over the past 15 years, but worse, I led others within my sphere of influence to believe like me that we were on the cusp of disempowering the toxic cynicism of the human soul.
I was right about the moral character of Barack Obama, who for better or worse, I have to credit as the fundamental benchmark for the quality of person I wanted to be, and the quality of leader I felt we as a society were now able to expect.
I was 20 years old when I was able to vote for the first time. Although my Dad had already derisively labeled me a hopelessly naive young liberal at that age (instead of the staunch evangelical christian conservative he spent my childhood raising me to be), I voted for George W. Bush.
I was never entirely sure why I did, but I suppose it was mainly because I felt he was somehow just a more…confident(?) leader than Kerry, despite it also being extremely obvious that intellectually, W was a very, very dumb man.
After a period of disillusionment with both sides immediately following his victory, I sat out the 2006 midterms. I didn’t care enough to vote at all that year, but I recall being pleased by Democrats’ massive sweep.
Barack Obama first appeared in my consciousness that year, and the more I heard him talk, the more I felt something different about him than every politician I’d ever seen before.
Although it’s pretty easy to conclude in hindsight I would have drifted to the Democrats over the course of my life anyway, at age 22 Barack Obama electrified me to *want* to help him build a better world for everyone—I felt something palpably *genuine* in his moral character, an authority he never betrayed, despite the continued moral failings of those he served.
Graham Platner is certainly no Barack Obama, but there is a feeling of genuine empathy that comes through when, for example, he’s apologizing for using slurs against others in an insulated environment that made clear that for people who looked like him, he wouldn’t face any immediate or even abstract consequences for coding like an intolerant, self centered, unsympathetic white man.
I like to consider myself to be representative of a good man. I was raised in a virtually all-white rural community, and the agreeably indefensible things he’s admitted to doing in his private life before choosing to subject himself to national scrutiny are strikingly similar to things I remember doing as well.
What I believe my experiences have revealed to me is that those things were motivated by my effort at that time to code myself as a christian conservative. Partly to avoid disappointing my father, but also because it seemed to allow me to be left alone by the sea of delusionally hateful christian conservatives that surrounded me.
I am not the same person today that I believed I was supposed to be back then. And the change didn’t come simply because I noticed any specific injustice for the first time, or because my “cool” friends supported any particular liberal cause, or least of all, because I felt any “guilt” toward my existence as a white man.
The difference today is that I no longer consider hope to be a virtue in isolation. I think the implicit truth that we understand needs to remain unspoken is that among the masses of people in this country who look like me, he represents a person who has morally internalized the need for societal change.
Like Barack Obama, he also faces the reality that he needs to code himself in a way that doesn’t cause those only capable of surface-level moral judgment to reflexively fight against his efforts to create that societal change.
It might be a little too soon for such a sweeping conclusion in Platner’s case but I have seemed to feel a bit of a shift recently in the way the Democratic coalition is willing to engage in its damning judgment of situations like his.
Perhaps we are closer to once again uniting around the qualities of genuine moral character, as we found it very easy to do when inspired by guidance from leaders like Barack Obama. I no longer engage in the act of hope as an emotional control, but I can say that the recent developments involving Platner’s uncomfortable history have given me a glimmer of light in the distance—a gladly welcomed reprieve from the unbroken darkness that’s surrounded us for years.
I listened to Nate on the 538 podcast for years and he was pretty explicit about being gay, whenever it happened to come up as a relevant topic (obviously this was not the focus of the show).
I think he alao did a "Nate Silver is a non-stereotypical gay guy" profile once around 2012. Back when he charactetized his politics as more libertarian. Or maybe that was an angle in a general piece about him.