The Democratic Urge to Lose

I went to see Graham Platner speak and all I got was this lousy sack of bullshit from people on the internet who don't even go here

Note: the way this Substack works is that every public piece has a follow-up piece for paid subscribers only containing all the screams I restrained to make the free one either come in under the character limit or nice and civilized enough to not have to argue reality with sea lions in the comments. And sometimes, because I’m still mad but it’s not helpful to yell publicly as it’s not actually the candidate I intend to vote for’s fault that his campaign is the beneficiary of some seriously grotesque hypocrisy I’m still struggling to swallow.

The follow-up to this essay is here: On Progressive Golden Boys and the Circle of Brotection

I really don’t get us sometimes.

We here on the vast “not Nazi” side of the political divide seem to be happy to scream passionately about fascism 24/7 online, but faced with actually doing anything about it, down to and including the barest meager minimum of maybe voting for our own party, we seem to genuinely love losing more than we love our own rights.

There’s always a reason, and it’s always that our fundamental rights are less important than something else, oh and also the person who will protect our rights is kind of meh so fuck it, better die slaves

So yeah, this is about Graham Platner.

Oh, the internet certainly does have a lot of Big Feelings about Mr. Platner. All the more so over the last couple of weeks, headed into a primary it’s been nearly impossible for him to lose since like March. And everyone from the collective hive-shriek of Facebook randos to the established media still pretending to be liberal and trustworthy, will be more than happy to tell you all about every single thing they’ve heard thirdhand from their cousin’s favorite influencer’s contact in an opposing candidate’s and/or party’s campaign if you so much as say the guy’s name three times into an empty oyster plate. Or make a pretty goddamned innocuous post about going to hear him speak with your kid because he literally came to speak on the street where I live last month.

See, there’s a huge difference between me and the vast and teeming majority of people flapping their face-holes about Platner online at the moment, the moment being less than a week before the primary.

I fucking live and vote in goddamned Maine.

Funny how there’s suddenly so much national interest in this little state most people can’t be bothered to remember exists beyond “lobster” “Stephen King” and “wait, there’s another Portland?” Sure seems odd to me that, like beautiful maritime magic, everybody seems so loudly confident about knowing our business and what’s best for us. And no, it’s not just because of Susan “Concerned” Collins. I’ve lived here a couple of decades now, and at no point, no matter who was running against her, could the politically-aware nation at large tell you the name of her opponent, let alone pick their faces out of a line-up. Most of them still couldn’t.

I had to take that post down, at least from thrice-cursed Facebook, because all manner of strangers just couldn’t wait to barf up whatever they think they know about a candidate for an election they have no stake in like the corpse of Jon Voight in Anaconda, and also what a terrible parent I am for taking my child to a talk where virtually every child on the island was present, and also demand I personally answer for every single rumor, despite, once again, none of these people knowing anything whatsoever about Maine.

And now he’s won the primary, which, if you live here, was never seriously in question. Sure, Governor Mills was on the ballot, but she suspended her campaign months ago, and even if she hadn’t, Platner was 38 points ahead of her when she bounced, because no one was into her as a candidate, least of all Mills herself, who never actually seemed to want to run. She just wasn’t that into us, and it showed. I saw all of one Governor Mills campaign sign and my first thought was: wow, where did they even get one of those? And sure, there were another candidates, but you don’t know who they were and neither did pretty much anyone. Platner has had so much energy behind him for so long now there was no serious advertising for the others (but plenty of negative ads against Platner paid for by that scamp, “no specific candidate”). Much like Mills’ baffling campaign, they didn’t even really seem like they wanted to be here except to spend the campaign funds—and occasionally, try to torpedo the only opposition to Collins that has gotten anyone in this state genuinely excited and hopeful.

Do I think he’s a beautiful leftist cinnamon roll of a messiah who must be protected and elevated at all costs? Absolutely not. Are there things that bother me about both him and his supporters? Definitely. Do I think any of that fucking matters right now? Not even a little bit.

Am I going to vote for him? Of fucking course I am what are we even doing here?

Well, I’ll tell you what we’re doing here. The same thing we do every single time a Democratic candidate gets any traction or momentum at all. Passively watch the media tuck a napkin into its bib and eat that D alive with a massive bowl of hot buttery hypocrisy to dunk them in before shrugging helplessly and losing again. What else could we possibly do? Not demand youth and experience and a perfect personal life from the cradle on and massively overclocked charisma and perfectly pure policy stances that satisfy the whole tent from blue dog to radical leftist from every single candidate for every single office or else fascism can just take us all? Don’t be stupid, if we did that, we might win!

Meanwhile, let’s hear some trenchant analysis on the moral fiber of Democrats from our guest, Actual Asmodeus, Lord of the Pit and Arch-Fiend of Hell (R)

Every article about him winning the primary I’ve seen has made references to Platner’s “scandals.”

Platner’s scandals. The President of the United States and his entire party are exposed pedophiles, rapists, corrupt corporate puppets when they aren’t puppetmasters, bought and paid for by foreign interests, abusers, war profiteers, screaming idiots, and cheerfully co-operating with big tech to destroy the planet on a quest to fully replace every human being they possibly can with a chatbot, and they aren’t shy about showing how gleeful the idea makes them to any camera they can find.

But sure, Platner’s got scandals. That must be included in every headline so no one makes the mistake of not realizing Democrats Bad. While Republicans can just cruise on by with some of their baby-devouring lunch still dripping off their chin—no comments, sir, and no follow-up questions!

Uh…congratulations, I guess?

You should always be suspicious when the media agrees on something. When they all use the same words. When they all get oh-so-Collinsingly concerned about this one Democrat people like and how much we shouldn’t like them. Especially because this trick is only ever rolled out against Democrats and the left, while the right gets the benefit of a thousand angles all competing to see which one gets them into the least trouble.

So let’s go through it.

Yep, he made a bunch of shitty Reddit comments. You know I don’t like a single one of those moronic statements.

Yep, he has a deeply questionable and fucking stupid tattoo he absolutely should’ve been smart enough to get covered long before he ran for Senate. Right about the time he was deleting his social media comments.

And yep, it appears he was maybe a shitty boyfriend in his 20s and sexted people he wasn’t married to while a private citizen. Now, I held back this essay once I heard something new was going to come out, in case it was assault or minors or something indefensible. But this isn’t Swalwell. They weren’t minors, no one is even suggesting it went beyond texting, the information came directly from his wife (leaked by an aide working for another candidate in the party) who has obviously forgiven him and also this isn’t Love Island, that’s between them, we’re not electing a Husband for the State of Maine, so I don’t fucking care.

Protect our goddamned rights. Stand up for us. Pull us back from the brink. That is what I care about. Democrats have jettisoned their own (sometimes correctly, sometimes Howard Dean yelled too enthusiastically) over and over while Republicans happily vote for a parade of fucking Backrooms monsters and this is where it’s gotten us.

Is it fascism or isn’t it? Because if it’s fascism, well, people are mostly trash most of the time and none of this is more important than NOT DOING FASCISM WITH THE WORLD’S LARGEST NUCLEAR ARSENAL. I don’t know what kind of tattoos Susan Collins has (though I do know what Pete Hegseth has on his chest and the media never refers to it in headlines) but her actions show she’s a fascist. She has enabled them joyously every step of the way. She played an enormous role in taking away my bodily autonomy.

Oh and fun fact: she’s married to a guy she started adulterously fucking while his previous wife was dying of cancer. Shall we write even a single article about it? No? Because that’s a bit worse than sexting. Still no? Ah yes, I see the media is very genuine and serious about this whole situation.

Honestly, if we’re going to say a stupid edgelord tattoo, shitty Reddit comments, not being a good boyfriend thirty seconds out of the military, and sexting adults other than his wife are disqualifying, we might as well just pass a law now barring Millennial men from holding any kind of office. And no, some salacious story about jerking off in a port-a-potty you only know about from his own comments on Reddit where everyone exaggerates, doesn’t turn the dial on that. Oh no, he jerked off privately in a closed space where no one knew or saw? No man has ever done such a thing in the history of the world, better surrender to fascism!

You can’t demand younger outsider candidates and also insist none of them have been a recent dipshit—being an occasional dipshit is largely part and parcel of being younger and an outsider. The only result will be that only rich personality-free kids groomed for government from birth by helicopter parents with their eyes on the prize will ever get elected as Democrats, while the Republicans will continue electing their Garbage Pail Kids Rogues’ Gallery because everyone normal fucks up plenty on their way to not being young anymore.

And I would be very careful about sending the message that people cannot change or grow or come to the left from outside it, because we do actually need to get kind of a lot of folks out of these horrifying pipelines, and that will involve convincing them that not only can they change and grow, but that there is a viable life waiting on the other side of their mistakes. Platner might be a pretty superb beacon for leading that exodus, precisely because of all this.

Not to mention riding the “dipshit to decency” pipeline has been Platner’s brand from jump and it’s why he’s been successful. Mainers knew, it’s been on label the whole time. Everyone loves a conversion story. Nobody here heard “working class ex-military white guy fisherman” and didn’t assume he was rough around the edges at a minimum. For the most part, it’s why a lot of people around here like him. This is not a state that falls along easy party lines. Our political motto might as well be “why don’t you go fuck yourself, bub, and leave us alone?” It’s also why a lot of red-leaning independents like him, and that’s why the media is in a panic that Collins might go, and Trump, of all fucking tentacled creatures of the underdark, is out there calling him a thug. Which won’t help at all, it just fixes the whole “Democrats aren’t tough” thing, but what Trump understands about human nature would barely make a splash in his golden toilet.

Graham Platner is the only opponent Collins has faced with genuine grassroots enthusiasm behind him, whose name the voting population here in Maine now knows very well, and let’s be honest, he’s a straight white dude and we’ve seen how much that matters over and over. Shouldn’t, but does. We do not get to play politics in a magical gummy bear dreamland full of philosophers. We have to play the field as it lies.

I’m not defending these things. Of course I don’t love any of it. (Still baffled as to why Collins’ past is a no-go zone, though!) But are we facing the existential threat of fascism or aren’t we? There really is no taking the Senate back without this seat and, call me quirky and unreasonable, but I would like to keep some rights. And not die in a nuclear fireball just yet. We do not have the luxury of waiting for perfect candidates. We never did. I have been furious at voters for not being able to look past whatever flaws Kamala, Biden, and Hilary had and pull the lever for the smallest hope of things getting better instead of the certainty that they wouldn’t. I can’t not do the same in my own home state.

And when I went to hear him speak a few weeks before the primary, he did actually address these things. I went with quite a bit of suspicion, because I did not like him at first. But a major Senate candidate came to the tiny island in the ocean where I live. A thing Susan Collins has certainly never done, nor Mills.

You know who organized that? The island school nurse and her husband, who is also an oyster farmer and knows Platner personally. In fact, I know a lot of people who know Platner personally. Maine is that kind of place. There are more alligators in the state of Florida than people in the state of Maine. Platner opened his speech asking if anyone knew his mom and about a dozen people cheered because they did. We know each other here. I can talk to more than one person who’s known this guy for years without leaving a mile radius of my house. And the people who know him are the ones I listen to.

Did I like everything he said? Nope. I will never like it when a candidate bashes the party they’re running to lead to the voters aligned with that party. I am allergic to insincere promises, I despise canned meme statements like “get money out of politics” as though that’s remotely possible while resources remain finite and people remain human, and these days idealism just depresses the hell out of me. But I liked his policies (because they’re pretty much just Democratic policies, I don’t know why we have to do this “not like other girls” dance all the time to avoid siding with ourselves) and he’s a good and relatable speaker that gets people excited which I promise you Sara Gideon did not.

Who’s Sara Gideon? That’s the fucking point. She was the last challenger, and while she was ahead in the polls briefly, no one was ride or die for her the way many are for Platner, and she was never enough of a threat for the Republican-thralled media to wallpaper the country with scare-quotes about her.

And he talked about all this stuff very openly. The first questions were about the Reddit comments etc. And he talked about getting sucked into the pipelines that so many young people are drowning in these days, and finding his way out again. About having to answer for yourself. He seemed, to me, to take accountability rather than blaming someone else or shrugging it off. One of my major issues with him is that I don’t think he’s handled these oppo leaks very deftly, and he’d better figure it out quickly, because Susan Collins won’t be as out to lunch as Janet Mills. Most of this should’ve been and could’ve been dealt with before he ever filed to run, and I’m nervous about someone who doesn’t know that. But in person, he is actually very good at facing it down and at least seeming to take real lessons from it.

And pretty inspiring, if my dead soul were capable of being politically inspired anymore. He’s the only Congressional candidate I’ve ever heard acknowledge that the junior senator from Maine can’t actually do any of these things alone, and won’t make a huge difference except in Senate majority numbers unless there’s a movement, people, and other candidates standing with him. What can I say, pragmatism gets me going.

But no, I don’t think the guy campaigning on the idea that our time is being stolen from us by the conservative agenda and everyone deserves more time, more ease, healthcare, safety, opportunities, peace, equality, and the possibility of even hoping for reform is some kind of secret Nazi sex-fiend. That’s not how they talk. I’m pretty sure the proud and outspoken Nazi sex-fiends are Nazi sex-fiends, though. Because they tell us they are. And then steal our money to build a ballroom to have their Nazi sex-fiend parties in while telling us that’s exactly what they’re doing. Scandals are meaningless now. The President is one of the worst people ever to walk the Bad People Planet. The media agrees Graham Platner is somehow equivalent, which I and all of us should’ve learned long ago probably means he’s a pretty good person because the only thing the media ever cooperates to do is lie.

And I don’t think he’s another Fetterman, though that would still get Collins out and help secure the Senate my god do we even want to win? Fetterman never talked as empathically and warmly about equality even before the catastrophic head injury.

Look, I didn’t like Graham Platner at first, either. I’m not sure if I “like” him now. But liking someone is not actually my primary criteria as a voter. Honestly, I very rarely like candidates at all, and even less candidates I see receiving the Bernie Sanders treatment from the online commentariat—by which I mean, a candidate who receives the benefit of only being attacked from the right, while the online left suddenly declines to give them the usual ugly nicknames or distribute disingenuous readings of their histories and policies, but instead leaps into any comment section to dogpile and drown out even the mildest of criticisms. That kind of double standard, on top of the double standard Democrats already face, pisses me off and it’s hard not to notice that the candidates who get those soft gloves are always men and usually white. So I have come around the long way. (And yes, the follow-up essay for paid subscribers starts right here, you know me so well.)

But in the end, if this is it and there isn’t something absolutely massive still to come out, I think he might be the only person who even has a prayer of prying this state out of the cold, unfeeling claws of Susan Collins, at least for the moment. And that’s probably why we’re being primed to hate him and draw a straight line between the monstrous crimes of blood and gold Trump and his regime commit every second of every day and a bunch of rumors that amount to just kind of what you’d assume an ex-Marine oyster fisherman in Maine did before getting his life together.

Or shall we just lose to fascism because it’s the only thing we know how to succeed at anymore?