For reasons that no one can explain, Graham Platner, the Democrats' presumptive nominee for the Senate in Maine, remains a viable candidate. In fact, according to a recent poll, he has a seven-point lead over incumbent Sen. Susan Collins. National Democrats are rallying around him. He's made the cover of Time magazine. He’s the Democrats’ new golden boy. And yet something tells me the best days of Platner's campaign are behind him. Maybe the Nazi tattoo wasn't enough to disqualify him within the Democratic Party, but his past is starting to catch up to him. How much worse does it have to get?
Pretty bad, it turns out. And it already is.
The stuff we already know about Platner is disqualifying. The man had a literal Nazi tattoo on his chest for crying out loud. I guess the same party that likes to compare its enemies to Hitler has no problem with Nazi sympathizers within its own ranks. Democrats used to cancel people for a lot less.
But the tattoo was just the tip of the iceberg. He’s on record saying, “I got older and became a communist,” has written Reddit posts mocking rural white Mainers as “racist and stupid,” and pushed anti-police rhetoric while wrapping himself in the language of the far left. He praised Hamas terrorists for killing Israeli soldiers, smeared the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, and said a soldier shot 4 times by the Taliban was a “dumb motherfucker who didn’t deserve to live.”
Related: Graham Platner’s Deleted Posts Have Been Exposed — and They’re Revolting
He has said that women should “act like an adult” to avoid rape and mocked women who report sexual assault in the military. There’s also a post in which Platner allegedly asked, “Why don’t black people tip?” and called it a “solid stereotype” from his bartending days. Nazi tattoo, communist self-identification, racial stereotyping, anti-gay slurs, mockery of combat-wounded veterans, attacks on women who report rape.
And then there’s the porta-potty thing. Back in March of 2017, using a now-deleted Reddit account, Platner wrote: "I still have to j**k off every time I sit in a portas***er… that blue water smell conditioned me." He has problems.
And when a reporter recently confronted Platner on camera, asking, "Do you still have to m********e when you see porta-potties?" he didn't laugh it off. He didn't answer. He literally ran inside a school building and disappeared.
He can’t dodge these questions for another five and a half months.
Especially when more stuff is coming. As PJ Media previously reported, political analyst Mark Halperin heard from an NRSC source that the opposition research they haven’t even deployed yet is so damaging that "He won't just lose the race, he'll have to leave Maine."
What's been made public so far is apparently only the opening act. If the full opposition file is even half as damaging as the NRSC is suggesting, Platner's campaign isn't headed for a tough November. It's headed for implosion. He can run from reporters. He can dodge cameras. He can duck inside school buildings. But he can't outrun his own past. It will catch up to him eventually.
