The dude has literally dozens of easily discoverable quote-bites of him excitedly expressing how much he loves killing, can’t get enough of it, wants to get back to doing it asap. How does he pass any smell test at all for anybody who is nominally on the left? I just don’t get it, I feel like he should be seen as so rotten that touching him would taint you (looking at popular youtubers and twitch personalities).
He has extremely weak competition, he’s a very good speaker who says the right things, and Trump has lowered the bar enough that it’s easier to survive scandals that used to doom political careers.
Also worth noting that Maine is a bit, quirky when it comes to electoral politics. They seem to get off on electing people that are a giant ball of contradictions.
The talent pool up there is pretty shallow and anyone running for public office is immediately suspect. The good ol’ boy network is thick as thieves. Like a woke South Carolina.
A healthy dose of DNC astroturfing helps too
The DNC does NOT like him at all wtf are you talking about. They would much rather Janet Mills be the democratic candidate.
The DNC does NOT like him at all wtf are you talking about?
They don’t? All I ever hear about this chode from mainstream sources is how the totenkopf tattoo is a nothingburger and he just did a few lil wholesome chungus warcrimerinos and it’s not that big of a deal. Dems (at least on the national level; can’t speak to the Maine state-level apparatus) have proven in the past that they can and will ratfuck any candidate at any time, so I guess I assumed Mills just pissed someone off and this is how they’re getting rid of her.
They don’t?
Yeah, Chuck Schumer backed his opponent.
ll I ever hear about this chode from mainstream sources is how the totenkopf tattoo is a nothingburger and he just did a few lil wholesome chungus warcrimerinos and it’s not that big of a deal.
They like that he is a marine/nazi. They like the war crime thing. They don’t like the medicare for all thing.
Dems (at least on the national level; can’t speak to the Maine state-level apparatus) have proven in the past that they can and will ratfuck any candidate at any time
They tried and failed with platner. It was not his turn.
A cursory glance at mainstream media seems to show them being annoyed at his success, while the outlets playing down things like the tattoo the most are places like Jacobin
I am once again posting my conspiracy theory which has no evidence that the mills campaign was fake and only meant to make it seem as though they didn’t want platner to win. The corporate media has been guzzling platner’s — HARD since he entered the race. His half brother has been photographed with the president of the entity. They want him to win, although they’re also pretty happy with collins.
That doesn’t really fit with what I’ve seen?
Looking through the news now, it looks like the coverage of platner is either neutral or somewhat negative but not like viciously hostile. I can’t find it now of course but I swear to god my extremely bourgeois firefox recommended news items had a very Biden-esque headline which read something like “Platner wants to do [X Good Thing].” After I saw that I assumed that they adored him, but I may have jumped the gun.
I think they’re at least fine with him if they’re not actively colluding with him. The “establishment” campaign against him was pathetic and they’ve fully transferred their support behind him after Mills dropped out even though the primary isn’t even over yet.
Source will have to be “trust me bro” on this but she grabbed her bag and quit as soon as she got it. She was never going to win and never intended to. It was a personal favor to someone who wanted her to run.
There is huge demand for any kind of left-wing populism. Platner appeals to that.
Maine’s elderly democrats despised bernie but they adore platner even though their platforms are the same. The corporate media also has
endless positivecoverage of platner while they only ignored or denigrated bernie. It’s extremely sus. And I don’t think it’s just because platner fits everything that the average American voter wants (veteran, business owner, blue collar worker, progressive).I don’t live in Maine or know much about Graham Plattenkopf but doesn’t the DNC mostly support his establishment opponent?
She dropped out a week or two ago after running a suspiciously incompetent campaign.
suspiciously incompetent
She’s a Democrat, running incompetent campaigns is their strong suit. Kamala Harris had the presidential position dropped into her lap and threw the race because she couldn’t lie about attempting to make peoples lives better or stopping genocide. And the party is having a conversation about running her again, this is normal party politics.
Late reply but: mills knows how to win a statewide race. She’s the governor. This should have been a lot easier for her. Just let Platner’s bizarre comments speak for themselves. But she held a few events and then threw in the towel. I thought maybe it’s because she’s super old and can barely walk, but that’s not stopping other democrats from running for re-election.
Honestly, at this point establishment dems running a competent campaign is the aberration not the norm.
“Plattenkopf” sounds absurdly funny in German.
libs secretly sympathize with nazi ideas. they know deep down imperialism is what makes them so “great”.
I mean, a deaths head tattoo turned out to not really be that big a deal for some ‘leftists’ so, with as little snark as I can muster, what does anyone expect?
Leftists in the US are mostly a joke. I include myself in that grouping so
Leftists don’t care about the nazi tattoo because he was a marine. You got 'splaining to do if you think a tattoo is worse than actual participation in war crimes.
The dude has literally dozens of easily discoverable quote-bites of him excitedly expressing how much he loves killing, can’t get enough of it, wants to get back to doing it asap.
Have you met Americans?
Kinda this but not really
yankees love nazis and could not give the tiniest fuck about foreigners
Most people in Maine who are “Left” are more “I want government benefits, but I do not give a shit how many people must suffer for me to have them” types
You know, like most Democrats
Maine is a bluish purple state but it is extremely old and white.
Been up there a few times, mostly around Portland and Kittery
That’s absolutely right
Friend’s parents used to live up there too, moved away when they found out their neighbor was in the Klan
The entire state was in the klan 100 years ago. Multiple governors in the 1920s were klan governors. Any white mainer whose family has been here for 100 years is almost certainly related to klan members. The political divide here is: elderly white liberals, young and elderly nazis, and like 5 communists. Non-white friends who visited me here were freaked out by how white it is. I can’t fucking stand it (although it’s beautiful) but I’m fucking trapped here.
Go north of Augusta and there’s fascists holding up banners in broad daylight on a regular basis. Esoteric neo-nazis building compounds in the woods. Real northern Idaho vibes past there. I spent a few weeks in Calais and it’s suffocatingly Anglo there. All of northern New England is but Maine is something else. Extremely racist in ways I didn’t know still existed.
Graham Platner is a perfect exemplar of the half of the boat dealership class that isn’t - I don’t even know how to put it. They’re not sending their best.
You’re correct, it’s just his target audience choosing to look past (or quietly embrace) his fascist, murderous past that he is in no way apologetic about, let alone working to repair.
So the question is: why does his target audience do that? That audience is: electoral-brained liberals of all stripes. Same ones that gave Bernie a pass on Zionism. They’re enveloped in the shallow logic and talking points of “lesser evil” electoralism and thought-terminating clichés. And the worst of them are actually tailist, they think the way you appeal to “the libs” is by embracing certain stereotypes of white America, including the casual racism, national chauvinism, military worship, and so on.
Liberals excuse (and promote!) this stuff all the time in rhetoric and action, they just usually reject aesthetic association with Nazis. They very recently embraced or tolerated settler colonialism genocide when “their side” supported it, at least until it became considered gauche. Actual Nazi shit, just without swastikas and heils. Liberals and Nazis are close cousins.
I’ve been reading Ken Klippenstein about this and the dems just keep finding the oldest, most compromised people to run against him
As with many things lately, the bar has pierced the earth’s mantle
People on the internet give a shit about the nazi stuff. People in Maine who vote do not.
American Civil Religion includes veneration of troops no matter what they do as part of their enlistment. There is no real political base that can be made today outside the bounds of ACR.
You’re not thinking like a lib.
He is The Candidate, which means he is the Only Acceptable Choice. This is the most important and sacred truth about him. Anything else is either irrelevant or just an “attack” on him by the Unbelievers.
There are sort of two lefts in Maine. The “populists” which have deep Trotskyist roots but are more like Greens (and the AFL), then the Marxist left which is much smaller and mostly Trotskyist ultras and two small MLish groups. The former have deep ties to the Bernie network (which is why he’s gotten so much national coverage) and are all in for Platner. The latter might be quietly supportive of Platner but notably haven’t endorsed him.
