Maine Democrat senatorial candidate Graham Platner was always bad news, and most Democrats didn't care. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer read the room early and recruited Gov. Janet Mills for the U.S. Senate seat. Voters chose the guy with the Nazi tattoo anyway. Now, with damaging allegations piling up, members are abandoning him and wrapping their exits in the language of principle, claiming the moral high ground as their reason. That claim collapses under the weight of their own history. If Platner drops out, Democrats deserve no credit for it.
Far-left activist Cheyenne Hunt appeared on CNN’s The Lead Friday evening, and pulled her endorsement of Platner. “I think that we need to remember who we are,” Hunt said. “If we want to claim that we have the moral high ground as a party, and we need to remember what distinguishes us from those we claim to organize against, and that is holding our own accountable and standing up for women across the board. Accountability does not change whether someone is affiliated with one party or another, and the demand for justice and equity doesn’t change. And so that is why I’m pulling this endorsement now.”
Other Democrats have been suddenly pretending to care about Platner’s scandals. “I think it’s so distressing, all of the stories that are coming out, and they’re more and more it seems by the hour,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) said during a CNN interview with Boris Sanchez. “I’m not a voter in Maine, but he has disqualified himself in my eyes.”
I said before that this has nothing to do with the Democrats’ “moral high ground.” If they succeed in pushing Platner out, it’s not because they police their own and hold themselves to a higher standard; it’s because they think he’ll lose.
How do we know? Because we already know what the “moral high ground” looks like for the Democrats. For decades, Democrat voters and Democrats in Congress have been turning a blind eye to scandals plaguing their own members. Because in the end, power matters more than morality.
In 1983, the House censured two members for sexual relationships with underage pages. Republican Dan Crane lost his next election. Democrat Gerry Studds won reelection six more times before retiring in 1997.
That pretty much sets the tone for everything that followed.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) infamously hired a male prostitute in the mid-1980s, let him live in his home, and watched him run a prostitution ring out of the premises. Frank admitted to paying for sex illegally and using his influence to fix parking tickets and tamper with his guest’s probation conditions. The House gave him an official reprimand in 1990, and Frank kept winning elections until his 2013 retirement.
One of the worst examples is Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.), who ran for reelection in 1994 despite his indictment on charges of sexual assault, criminal sexual abuse, and solicitation of child pornography involving an underage campaign volunteer. He was reelected. It wasn’t until he was convicted in a court of law that he resigned from Congress.
Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) never pulled less than 80% of the vote in his district, even as ethics violations stacked up. The House Ethics Committee found him guilty on 11 counts in Nov. 2010 and censured him. He held four rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, used one as a campaign office, and failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income. He kept his seat, and left on his own terms in Jan. 2017.
Now, some might point to Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who resigned after multiple sexual harassment allegations, including one with photographic evidence. But Democrats later said they regretted pushing him out.
Some scandal-plagued Democrats managed to be some of the most celebrated members of their party. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) literally caused the death of a woman at Chappaquiddick in 1969, left the scene, and served in the Senate until he died in 2009, yet was celebrated as one of the chamber’s most influential members. President Bill Clinton broke laws, faced impeachment, and remains a beloved party figure. And don’t get me started on Hillary Clinton mishandling classified information on a private server, FBI Director James Comey drafting her exoneration letter before investigators even interviewed her, and her walking away without charges.
ICYMI: Democrats Are FURIOUS with Graham Platner Now
I could write a book about all the scandals that plagued Barack Obama during his time in office… oh wait, I did. And how about Joe Biden? Years of racist comments, accusations of sexual misconduct, and even credible allegations of rape from a former staffer didn’t stop Democrats from nominating him in 2020.
Make no mistake about it: the Democrat Party’s moral high ground exists as a talking point and nothing more. In the end, every decision Democrats make is based on a calculation of what helps them win. They see that Platner is becoming a liability, so they’re pulling back. There’s nothing brave about that. There’s no moral high ground there. Democrats have stood behind Platner despite a Nazi tattoo and mounting scandals, and the pullback only started when the optics grew too painful to manage, and the polls showed a shift.
For decades, Democrat voters and members of Congress have stood behind the worst of the worst, and Platner was no different.
