Something has gone badly wrong inside the Democrat Party, and even their own people are saying it out loud. The Senate race in Maine has exposed the moral rot in the party that it would much rather the public not see. A candidate with a record that should disqualify him from running for dog catcher is still standing, still fundraising, and still pulling support from enough people on the left that he’s refusing to drop out. What does that tell you?
Graham Platner's campaign for the Maine Senate seat should have been dead on arrival. The allegations against him are devastating: a Nazi tattoo on his chest, physical abuse allegations, sexual assault allegations, and sexting on an app known as a predator's playground. Any one of those revelations would torpedo a Republican candidate overnight. The media would guarantee it. Platner is a Democrat running against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and that changes everything for many on the left.
Related: Democrats Are FURIOUS with Graham Platner Now
How much does it change? A Democrat consultant close to major-party donors spelled it out without apology. "We don't care. I think that's the case for many donors. Anybody who beats Susan Collins will do," the consultant said. No hedging. No pretending. Just raw, transactional politics dressed up as anti-Trump resistance.
Let's be honest here: this is Trump Derangement Syndrome at its most destructive. The hatred for Trump has burned away every standard the left claimed to hold. These are the same people who branded Trump a Nazi. They accused Elon Musk of giving a Nazi salute at a rally. And now they're writing checks to a man who had an actual Nazi tattoo on his chest and even called it “my Totenkopf.”
Even CNN noticed. During a Thursday broadcast, host Anderson Cooper brought up what Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said about Platner, that he's "behaving in a degenerate way," and Cooper called on Maine voters to support Gov. Janet Mills, who dropped out of the race in April. CNN contributor Van Jones gave a lengthy response.
"You know, it's a moment of truth in this party," Jones said. "This is tough. You know, I think that I hear people in our party and they're saying, ‘Why are we so tough on our bad guys when the Republicans are so soft on their bad guys?’ And so, you know, that's the kind of stuff when you when you're a parent, you struggle with that because it's like, look, were running this house. We're not running the house across the street. We're not running the neighbor's house. We're running this House."
Jones continued, "And so, what bothers me about what he's done is not just the things that are being reported about him, but that his stories just don't hold up. He said that he got the stuff under control years ago, and some of this stuff is not years ago, and people are concerned that there's more to come.”
He added, “Do you want to sign off on the Donald Trump standard of behavior? You've got some other people who have very bad behavior in the other party. Is that now our standard in this party, or is it not? And I think people are going to have a tough choice in Maine."
Van Jones says Platner's candidacy is a "moment of truth" for the Democratic Party
— Jeff Charles, Asker of Questions🏴 (@jeffcharlesjr) June 5, 2026
“Do you want to sign off on the Donald Trump standard of behavior? ...is that now our standard in this party, or is it not?" pic.twitter.com/9dnZ2Sh1YP
Jones frames the entire reckoning as a comparison to Trump, and that framing reveals the deeper rot. From their point of view, there’s no greater evil than Donald Trump, and therefore, that justifies them in supporting genuinely awful people.
And that’s what this moment of truth reveals about the Democrat Party.
