The Platner effect: Beware the "outsider"

It's one thing to be independent, another to actually deserve getting elected.

Graham Platner on the campaign trail in Maine

At the moment Graham Platner seems to be passing like a comet, a train on its round trip to obscurity, sort of like Jeremy Lin or Men Without Hats.

He was, or is, the grandson of the man who designed the Windows On The World restaurant at the World Trade Center, and Platner himself attened a boarding school until he was expelled. But he presented himself as just a clear-eyed oyster farmer and a scruffy ex-Marine. He talked in an ominous baritone and told Maine voters that, whatever they were against, he was against it too. The system was the problem, that darned establishment, and when Platner got to the U.S. Senate he was going to…well, he didn’t really know what, but something. The bored Washington punditry fell for his workingman’s appearance and his macho talk. This was the symbol of the new politics, and the Democratic Party was advised that it had better find five more Platners or become the new Whigs.

During his journey to become the Democrats’ candidate to dethrone Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Platner was asked about that chest tattoo that some people associated with Nazis. Nah, he said, he was rip-roaring one night in Croatia and decided to get inked. His enablers said it was no problem. Kamala Harris didn’t have a tattoo, and look what a bad candidate she was. This just showed Platner was one of the guys and, besides, he didn’t know it was a Totenkopf and was worn by the SS. Apparently the parlor was all out of dragons and cobras.

Only thing is, an old girlfriend said she knew it was a Nazi design and was telling her friends while Platner was pleading ignorance. But, hey, why sweat it? Janet Mills, the governor whom Platner was running against, is 78 years old, a creature of the system and thus automatically disqualified.

Then these pesky rumors of domestic violence kept creeping into the conversation. Another of Platner’s ex-girlfriends — they’re as indigenous to Maine as blackflies — said Tuesday that Platner had a habit of removing his condom during intimate moments. This was on the heels of Jenny Racicot’s account of being sexually assaulted by Platner. He is being renounced and denounced by those who nominated him, which is what happens to wayward Democrats, and it’s highly doubtful he’ll be on the November ballot. Some Democrat will replace him, but Collins, 73, is highly likely to win for the sixth time.

The political world knows Collins for her public anguish over the prospect of supporting President Trump and then doing it anyway. She has done his bidding on 94 percent of her votes in the current Congress. She may appear for all the world like Lily Tomlin as Ernestine, operating her old-timey switchboard, but she was supposed to be easy fodder for Sara Gideon in 2020, a Democratic year, and she won by eight points. The problem for Dems is that they have little chance of winning the Senate, and throwing up at least a caution light at Trump’s Supreme Court appointments, without Maine. They have 47 seats and, in reality, need 52, because they can’t count on Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who supports Trump on the Iran War, was the only Democrat to confirm ex-attorney general Pam Bondi, and is last among all Senators in attendance in this term. A 51-Democrat Senate is a risk because if Fetterman votes against the grain, any 50-50 tie and will be broken by Vice President J.D. Vance.

Fetterman was an outsider, too, although he was the mayor of Braddock, Pa. and, like Platner, grew up in an affluent family. Fetterman is famous for wearing hoodies and shorts in the Senate and wearing tattoos that pay tribute to murder victims in Braddock. He is not as famous for graduating from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. It’s speculative to wonder how much Fetterman’s stroke in 2021 had to do with the change in his politics and tempeerament, it, but he’s certainly more antagonistic to the Democrative progressives he once embraced. His unflinching support of whatever the Israeli government does has also been hard to endorse or justify.

Outsiders. Mavericks. Disrupters. It’s assumed this is what voters want. But it’s like hiring a football coach who promises to take a 6-6 team to a new level, and then goes 3-9. It’s a major gamble that requires granular research and all the questions that a nation with a muscular media used to ask routinely.

Trump was certainly a change agent with no governmental experience, and his second-term choices to protect the environment, American health, the military and the education system were all either ignorant or antagonistic toward the environment, American health, the military and the education system. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville’s qualifications for office were fair-to-middling football coaching records. Shortly after he was elected, he identified the three branches of government as “the House, the Senate and the executive,” and said his father had gone to Europe to “fight socialists” in World War II. This November, Tuberville is the favorite to become Alabama’s governor, although his opponents insist he actually lives in Florida and shouldn’t be eligible.

American politics in the mid-2020s is the only field of endeavor in which inexperience and disengagement are considered a strength. This is not to bury one’s head in the swamp and deny that our political class is always long on ethics and self-sacrifice. But real estate developers do not make the best diplomats, especially in war negotiations, and reality-show actors do not make the best Secretarys of Transportation.

It is true that Ronald Reagan grew up an actor, but he also was governor of California for eight years and, although he had built a solid right-wing world view, was capable of listening to the realists he had hired. Instead of dropping nukes on Moscow he recognized Mikhail Gorbachev could be his partner in toppling the Soviet order. Instead of continuing his anti-government shtick he raised taxes when applicable and was always strong for legal immigration. You can quibble with what Reagan did to America, but it was a well-respected and optimistic nation when he left. With each comparative day he becomes more saintly.

And this is not to say that men and women with dirty hands should be disqualified. On the contrary, Nebraska’s Dan Osborn is a citizen-politician with serious heft. He has been active in a union, and was fired for his association, and he’s a mechanic who served in a Navy. His positions are thoughtful and not easily grouped. He is pro-gun but also pro-minimum wage. He is pro-life but doesn’t want to ban abortion. He is running for Senator for the second time in three years and is doing so as an independent. He’s an outsider who has done his homework, as has Sam Forstag, a smokejumper and union leader in Montana who is the Democrats’ choice for a congressional seat.

James Talarico, the divinity student who is trying to beat habitual defendant Ken Paxton in a Texas Senate race, is an outsider to a point, but he’s been in the State Senate for eight years. For that matter Barack Obama seemed to come from some distant horizon to win the Presidency in 2008 but he was a U.S. Senator at the time, and before that he was a three-term State Senator in Illinois.

Then there’s Spencer Pratt, former star of The Hills, who decided he’d be a fine mayor of Los Angeles. His qualifications were (A) his house burned down during the Pacific Palisades fires (B) people liked his TikTok videos, and ( C) only he could see that L.A.’s unhoused actually wanted to live on the street because they are “drug-addicted zombies.” Pratt promised to leave L.A. if he didn’t win. When he finished third and out of the runoff, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel sent a U-haul to his house. Pratt then called mayor Karen Bass and challenger Nithya Raman “commies” and said they stole the election, as if Democrats actually had to cheat to win in L.A. The question is whether Pratt will become the Linda Blair of Ralph Macchios, or whether Pratt the politician will be as perishable as Pratt the TV star.

Again, the pseudo-intelligentsia was surprised that Pratt didn’t fare better because his videos were so celebrated. Which they were. They just weren’t celebrated inside L.A., where the voters are.

The same members of D.C. cafe society scoffed at the gubernatorial campaigns of Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey last fall. Both were traditional Democrats who talked about education, grocery bills and security. Both won by double-digit margins.

You only notice House representatives and Senators when they make self-promotional videos or when they appear on Fox, MS Now or CNN. Nobody reports on the mundane compromises that are reached every day, the institutional knowledge that, slowly but eventually, becomes a bill that makes an American’s life more affordable and convenient. Tim Scott, a longtime Trump toady, nevertheless worked with progressive Elizabeth Warren to pass a significant housing act, one that provides for more construction and less institutional buying. Of course, this bill is being held up by Trump, who would rather see a voter-suppression bill pass instead.

Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, whose TV appearances are usually restricted to C-Span, undertakes frequent missions across the aisle and hasn’t been wounded yet. She, New York Democrat Paul Tomko, West Virginia Republican Carol Miller and California Republican David Valadeo collaborated on a bill that will make Medicare provide residential substance abuse care to seniors. This is likely to affect far more people than the presence of transsexuals in the long jump, but Jesse Watters and Symone Sanders haven’t yet commented..

If confronted with a car engine rebuild or the dreaded “check engine” light, would you trust the job to someone who not only lacks auto repair experience but is proud of it? Would you turn over your laptop to the Novice Computer Shop? But every year, tens of thousands of us push the button in favor of a candidate who brings nothing but an opinion and a podium. Maybe one day we’ll insist on people who don’t need a behavioral therapy class in advance, and a government that’s better than we deserve.