Not long after governor Janet Mills had effectively dropped out of the primary race, a storm grew around Platner’s campaign. Rightwing operatives and liberal media mouthpieces started singing in unison that Platner was unfit for office, flimsy allegations poured in accusing the candidate of all sorts of alleged misconduct with former girlfriends.
Chris Hayes, of the uber-liberal MS NOW network, questioned whether Platner was going after underage girls. Not to be outdone, Mika Brzezinski of the same network compared his behavior with that of Jeffery Epstein. All of this after an earlier campaign that claimed the former Marine’s tattoo was indicative of his secret affection for Nazis.
Despite it all, Platner won his primary with 72% of the vote.
Now, without much of an opponent to run against, those numbers don’t mean that Platner will sail to victory in November, but they do suggest that many Democrats, true-blue liberal primary voters, in the Pine Tree state really hated the liberal smear campaign against him. They also resent those in the Democratic “shadow party” that conducted that campaign with a ruthlessness usually reserved for the Republican party.
In other words, the attacks didn’t just fail, it may have even backfired.
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Elite Democrats have become accustomed to accusing their rivals of all sorts of evil sorcery: racism, sexism, Nazism, chauvinism, you name it. Anything to avoid a real debate about policy; about what’s wrong with the country and how to fix it.
The reigning expectation on the left was that such accusations could make good liberals have second thoughts about any candidate, no matter their political program. No decent progressive ought to vote for a deplorable.
For a while, this strategy worked. Since at least 2016, bogus accusations of racism and sexism against candidates such as Bernie Sanders have been an efficient way to defang populist candidates.
Especially those who don’t fit the elite progressive vision of what such a candidate should look and sound like. The strategy was so successful, in fact, that even many progressives who share Platner’s policy preferences have jumped on the bandwagon.
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Chris Rabb, the progressive Democratic party nominee from the bluest district in the country complained: “Populist left-of-center white guys get far more leeway than folks like me, Black progressives … I think there’s a clear double standard.”
Of course, Platner is maybe the only primary candidate in the country to have had years of his dating history scrutinized in the New York Times, and virtually every article about him leads with a long litany of his wrongdoings (the tattoo, the Reddit posts, the sexting). That’s not “leeway” by any stretch.
Nevermind that, the implication in Rabb’s comment is clear. Not only is Platner “problematic”, but the voters who support him are culpable, not true progressives, and somehow morally compromised. Beware.
Yet, the days when exhortations to conform to paint-by-numbers progressive purity tests might be over. Like the boy who cried wolf, elite Democrats are finding that their incessant moralizing isn’t working. Voters didn’t nod along and tsk-tsk Platner’s supposedly beyond-the-pale behavior; instead, they marched to the polls and pulled the lever for a candidate who built his campaign on the populist claim that he wasn’t a front-of-the-class liberal poster child.
He’s admitted to a rocky past, to being a lost young man, to infidelity etc. The avalanche of accusations just confirmed who Platner said he was. Voters chose him despite these flaws and instead because they believed his political appeals: that a populist economic program is appropriate for dealing with the challenges the country faces; that the elite really are rigging the system against the little guy; and that fixing this requires a political and social gut renovation.
Some have argued that Platner’s special appeal resides in his “flawed” persona. I’m not so sure. It’s not that Platner’s personal foibles made him more attractive, but, instead, the fact that he was so clearly targeted by a totally discredited liberal elite.
The plainly coordinated campaign against him stretched across social media, television, podcasts, magazines and newspapers and it signaled to voters that the gatekeepers of the Democratic party do not like this guy. To many voters, that means he’s just the man for the job.
The irony here is rich. For months, elite Democrats have been handwringing about the need for candidates that might appeal to populist-leaning young men or that might be able to peel off some Trump-weary Republicans. Along comes a gruff combat veteran, and suddenly the whole liberal media universe is in a tailspin explaining how he’s woman-abusing.
The hypocrisy is only topped by the political ineptitude. Message to liberals: please stop calling everyone you don’t like a chauvinist fascist pig.
Part of the challenge, too, is that despite preaching the values of democracy against authoritarian threats, elite liberals are often caught with their thumbs on the democratic scales.
Just look at governor Gavin Newsom’s comments regarding the California governor’s race. Despite neglecting to publicly endorse a candidate, Newsom promised a “break-the-glass” contingency plan if his preferred candidates didn’t make it through to the general election. Meaning what, exactly?
The populist revolts both within and against the party are fueled by these kinds of top-down attempts at managing the electorate and pre-approving their decisions. Consider, while Donald Trump’s approval rating has plummeted to about 40%, favorability for the Democratic party hovers around 36% – and that’s a slight improvement.
None of this is to say that Platner has an easy road ahead. While his ambitious platform has a lot of impressive economic policies that could motivate working-class Mainers across the state, and while his barn-burning populist style may find ready-support among independents frustrated by both parties, it’s still the case that Democratic primary voters are far more progressive than voters at large – especially in a rural state like Maine. Platner’s liberal social views will turn off inland Mainers who are more traditionalist than their richer, urban, coastal neighbors.
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Plus, Platner’s expensive education and his blue-blood family ties could be a liability among blue-collar voters who might see him as a phony.
Then again, the liberal crusade against Platner could serve to make him more appealing to the kind of voters that Democrats are desperate to win back. Americans are frustrated by a system that seems to only reward the rich and connected; the insiders and the elites. Independence from that system is now rightly seen as a political virtue.
This is even more true in a state like Maine, where ticket-splitting is still apparent. Platner is running as a Democrat, but he’s not a party-stooge. Inspiring the hatred of the highest layers of the party’s political machinery is a sure way to demonstrate one’s political independence. And nothing generates populist sympathy more than watching an army of liberal talking heads clutching their pearls over old Reddit posts.
In fact, if Platner wins in November we might have the establishment to thank.
