Jerusalem wrote a (very prominent and widely discussed) article a month ago whose thesis was "Graham Platner is a scumbag Mainers should vote for." It made very clear that (in June 2026) Platner was obviously a superior candidate to Collins and his many personal failings were not a sufficient reason to reject him in a two-candidate race. But that we should take the 'lesser evil' logic seriously and remember that someone with this track record really does seem pretty terrible and we should lament being in a situation where this is the best option. Because we had plenty of information, long before this week, to support the thesis that he was in fact a scumbag.
Basically, I think she's been pretty consistent and clear that Platner is/was bad news, while also being consistent that the *most* important objective is for any Democrat to win the race.
Seth Masket also had a good piece back in the fall that someone who had a Nazi tattoo for decades and then lied about it repeatedly (in very obvious ways) is bad news, not just because of the tattoo (which was very bad!) but also because it reflects extremely poorly on his judgment and temperament. Someone like that is significantly more likely than the baseline candidate to have other skeletons in the closet, and it's dangerous to hitch yourself to a campaign that could go completely off the rails.
Anyone who was 100% certain that something like this would come out was obviously over their skis. But 'this is a dangerous bet, and do we really need to take the risk in order to get this specific guy?' was a thoroughly reasonable position to hold. And I think the burden should have been on the defenders the whole time to justify their position, not the other way around.
Wow, I didn't know about that article. I basically agree entirely.
I will say: the burden on the defenders was pretty simply just "he has a better chance of winning." I personally found that a compelling enough argument to lightly support him—"Graham Platner is a scumbag Mainers should vote for" is a perfect way of putting it. The part of Demsas' recent article that irked me (and caused me to write this post) was the implication that anyone who hadn't already jumped ship had been exercising bad judgment the whole time.
Also I didn’t mean the parenthetical about her previous piece being widely-discussed as a swipe, or that you are at fault for not realizing it, though I now realize it kind of sounds that way. I just meant that she took a pretty firm stance on the issue before the current revelations, which was (imo) very fair to the defenders of Platner while also making a strong case that they were wrong. So I think she’s got clear bona fides on the subject which I think entitle her to her present take as well.
Nah didn't take it as a swipe—I appreciate the comment. Idk if Jerusalem will ever read this (probs not) but I also hope she doesn't take this as a swipe at her lol I really like The Argument and think she's one of the sharper pundits out there by far
I don't even disagree with this, but Democrats never allowed the same grace for Republicans. If you support a Nazi(a guy in the same party as a guy who made a gesture that may have been a Hitlergruß or may have been him waving), that must be because you love Nazis, not because you still find his policies better than the alternative. And then they turn around and say that having a Nazi tattoo means nothing, and it's fine to support Platner anyway. Forgive us some amusement at that.
The gesture was totally a Nazi salute, but yeah I think Elon and Platner are like the same here. Both probably not literal Nazis, both being really edgy about it (probably in an attention-grabby way), both deserve a ton of flak for it. I think Republicans were absolutely right to be mad about the Nazi tattoo and I think it was very reasonable for many Dems to jump ship at that point—hopefully made that clear in the article.
Honestly man, at this point I'll be happy if we just all agree Nazis are bad.
I think Demsas was hinting at the idea that from a Bayesian perspective, the first few red flags about Platner (got Nazi tatoo, drinking problem, serial adulterer, makes edgy takes about consent and SA on Reddit) should probably increase your prior that something like the sexual assault allegations were coming.
I completely agree, and think she's right about that, I just disagree with the inevitability of it. The point of having a prior is that it influences the magnitude of your future updating, so if you had a pretty good opinion of Platner before, it would reasonably take more scandals for you to jump ship. On the other hand, if you had a pretty negative prior for Platner, the reverse is true. The gist of my argument was mostly that both positions were reasonable and neither was obviously right before the worst scandals came out.
That’s fair, but I don’t actually think there is much reason to have a good prior about the guy. Most of the arguments you’ve given your post are arguments that he is likely to win the election, which isn’t really about his character so much as the public and should not really influence your opinion of him having additional scandals in a positive direction. Unless you have reasonably good prior when it comes to candidates in general, basically all the evidence about him should push you in a negative direction when it comes to likelihood of future damaging scandals that make him a bad candidate.
Fair enough. Do you think that negative direction was strong enough to call for him to drop out before this latest round of scandals, or do you think it was more like "I will reluctantly support him but he's on thin ice"? Because that's where I was.
I do think that that negative direction was strong enough to call for him to drop out or at least oppose him. Those two are not exactly equivalent because if he actually won the primary election, that’s evidence that he doesn’t have such skeletons in the closet, and therefore you can take his poll numbers as closer to his actual performance as a candidate instead of having to price in the possibility of future scandal to quite the same extent.
I do think your view that it was not a mistake is reasonable, but by that I simply mean that it’s a mistake that an intelligent and conscientious individual could still make rather than actually thinking, there was no mistake involved, although I will admit I’m not super confident and I could be wrong.
I do think that many people who I respect were clearly making a reasoning error, as part of the support appears to have been because of him being a progressive, even though I think the effect of a progressive or a centrist holding this particular seat on actual policy would be extremely minimal, whereas whether or not a democrat holds this seat could have enormous effects.
My view is essentially that it was a reasoning mistake, but not an obvious one, and certainly a pretty understandable one, and it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that it’s me who is making the mistake on account of hindsight and not modelling the world view of people more progressive than myself sufficiently accurately, and it wasn’t really a mistake.
The bad judgment Platner supporters showed wasn’t just not jumping ship fast enough, it was also deciding to get on board the ship in the first place. Being a U.S. senator is an important job that Graham Platner never demonstrated any aptitude for. He never demonstrated a strong command of public policy. His platform is roughly 1. yelling about oligarchy, 2. yelling about Israel, 3. offering shallow support for Medicare for All.
Running for a nomination to the U.S. Senate in 2026 is running for four jobs at once: to be the nominee for Senate in 2026, to serve in the Senate in the 120th Congress, the 121st Congress, and 122nd Congress. The vast majority of the positive case for Platner was that he’d be especially good at the first of these jobs. Very little of the case for him had anything to do with how well he’d perform at the last three. I break up the three Congresses to emphasize the point that when someone wins a Senate seat, you’re stuck with them for a long time, and what seem to be the most important issues now, won’t necessarily be the most important issues for the remainder of the term. In fact, a big portion of the early negative case against him was that he seemed an awful lot like a John Fetterman, ie a loose cannon who’d be a headache as a member of the Senate Dem Caucus. And Fetterman supporters first started to sour on him on October 7, not because he changed his position from where he campaigned, but because the positions he took when he was running and which they’d probably have disagreed with him about at time had they cared to look suddenly became a lot more relevant.
So that’s a long winded way of emphasizing that all he really had going for him, before any of the negative information came out, was that he could probably beat Susan Collins, in a year when nearly any Democrat would have an advantage, and that he would maybe be a foot soldier for the populist agenda. That’s an extremely thin reed. No one’s support for him should ever have realistically gone past “tepid”. So when the Reddit edgelord shit and the Nazi tattoo shit came out, that should have been a signal that the strongest case for him, that he could win, would be weak. *That’s* when people should have started doing what they’re doing now: find a Democrat with similar views but no baggage. After the first negative stories, everyone should have recognized that he had a high risk of performing below a replacement level Democrat and a moderate risk of performing far enough below replacement to cost us the seat. At that point they should have asked what he brought to the table that made him worth the risk, realized it was very little, and jumped ship.
> So that’s a long winded way of emphasizing that all he really had going for him, before any of the negative information came out, was that he could probably beat Susan Collins, in a year when nearly any Democrat would have an advantage, and that he would maybe be a foot soldier for the populist agenda.
I think you're overstating your case here. A couple months ago, Platner was polling well ahead of Mills in *every single* poll. That's why Mills withdrew in April.
> So when the Reddit edgelord shit and the Nazi tattoo shit came out, that should have been a signal that the strongest case for him, that he could win, would be weak. *That’s* when people should have started doing what they’re doing now: find a Democrat with similar views but no baggage. After the first negative stories, everyone should have recognized that he had a high risk of performing below a replacement level Democrat and a moderate risk of performing far enough below replacement to cost us the seat.
I mean, also agreed. But a replacement hasn't materialized, and so we're stuck with what we have. At this point, I'd prefer Mills to Platner, but obviously a third option would be preferable--that's why I included that long rant at the end about how ratfucking only works on subpar candidates.
If someone in November of last year had decided that they were willing to tolerate the Nazi tattoo because he could beat Janet Mills in the primary, I think we’d all agree that they were exhibiting poor judgment. But if everyone who had previously supported him decided the tattoo was a dealbreaker and forced him out of the race then, we’d be much better off as a party.
In general I agree and think this is a good article, but I'm really not sure the "ratfucking" accusation is all that well supported. And the fact that the same people who are morally certain of the ratfucking (but can't point to any direct evidence) were also morally certain that Cheating On Your Wife Means You're Authentic Working Class Not A Gross Lady makes me pretty suspicious of the heuristics in play.
The other thing I'll say about the Totenkopf, that I told John Ganz at the time, is that you really cannot overestimate the ignorance of the average Marine. (Source: am one.) I was very into WWII stuff as a kid and cared about Marine history while I was in, but I was probably out of the Marine Corps for at least 5 years before I learned what a Totenkopf was. Not true of every Marine but I really doubt this is the one time when I was an outlier in ignorance. (For reference: I met a smart, highly-talented Marine working *as a drill instructor* who wasn't sure who the US fought in WWII. However low the bar is in your mind, lower it.)
> Cheating On Your Wife Means You're Authentic Working Class Not A Gross Lady
yeah this is the worst thing ever. Two steps away from "authentic working class people are bad people with bad character" like come on dude think about what you're implying here
And thanks for the info on the Marines. For the record, I also didn't know what a Totenkopf was before this incident. But that's also why I don't have one tattooed on my body, you know what I mean?
I think my disagreement with this article is really about how we should update our beliefs. I don't have to wait for one definitive piece of evidence before deciding someone should drop out. I tend to start with some prior about whether they're fit for office, and every new scandal should shifts my priors a bit. So, none of the earlier stories was enough on its own, but taken together they made me worry. For me, the question isn't whether the rape allegations were the first thing that made me think Platner was unfit. It's whether all the other things pushed the odds low enough that he should have stepped aside. Different people will draw that line in different places, but I don't think it's "resulting" to decide the threshold had already been crossed before the final allegation came out.
> Different people will draw that line in different places, but I don't think it's "resulting" to decide the threshold had already been crossed before the final allegation came out.
Completely agreed. I just think it's resulting to say "now that we know that Platner was a scumbag, anyone who didn't see this coming failed to exercise good judgment."
Thank you for your engagement in the comments! This one made things click into place, and yep, I agree. We should avoid heaping opprobrium on the judgement of anyone who was feeling uneasily supportive.
I broadly agree with a lot of what you say and there is certainly a lot of truth to your argument that we have to balance purity testing against candidate effectiveness. Since after all, you don’t want to purity test to the point where capable politicians like Bill Clinton get disqualified.
However, in this particular case, I’m not sure they’re in conflict having a bunch of unethical behaviour and scandals past a point can be pretty damaging to your electoral performance. The argument is basically that having a large numbers of scandals in the past increases, the chances that you will get more scandals in the future and there is a good chance. They’ll be damaging enough that once you take the possibility into account, you are no longer the best candidate in expectation, even if the polls think you are the best right now.
Certainly being an edge Lord who takes extremely controversial stands and has a pretty disgusting tattoo, increases The chances that you have skeletons in the closet which would prove fatal in a general election.
This is also why I am not too fussed about the ratfucking, supposing that is what happened although I am actually a bit doubtful of that given the timing. If the democratic establishment didn’t do it to you, the Republicans definitely would do it to you in the general. So really in the context of a primary, it effectively ends up acting like a background check that makes sure you don’t have some secrets that nobody wants their general election candidate to have because they would make you unelectable.
I’m not claiming that the establishment actually has such noble motives just that that is the actual effect of such practices on their part.
Entirely agreed. I wrote this in another comment and think it sums up my response to you as well:
> that's why the last section isn't a case for why it is a ratfucking and more a parenthetical about how we should really just be fielding better candidates who aren't vulnerable to this kind of thing on account of being sucky people
One aspect that I haven't seen as much discussion on is that there were a lot of minor Platner "scandals" that weren't really all that scandalous, or have been reported like they were major scandals. For instance many of the early Totenkopf stories didn't present a strong case that he knew it was a totenkopf before it broke, and I at least don't really think getting a tattoo on a whim without carefully checking whether it resembles a hate symbol is a big deal (it shows impulsiveness, but ). Similarly a bunch of the articles about the Reddit comments buried the bad ones (insulting sexual assault victims) with a bunch of ones that are not that bad.
I think that this leads to two things:
1) People see a couple, decide they aren't that bad, and tune out the rest
2) People assume that that's the worst the opposition research could come up with, and so he's probably not that bad
I don't think either of those assumptions are super logical but it might be some of the explanation for why they haven't dented Platner's popularity as much as you might expect, at least until very recently.
What comes to mind is the Elon Nazi salute thing. The guy is maximally autistic and is a pretty consistent supporter of Israel, yet the ambiguous arm gesture made him a Nazi. Then the guy who gets an unambiguously Nazi tattoo, literally inking it into your flesh semi-permanently, then lies about it, is given a pass.
Even if the whole Musk thing was an intentional salute, a momentary lapse of judgement he walks back on was held to a significantly stricter standard than a tattoo that remains for years.
I get the consequentialist needs of politics. Musk supported Trump and Trump is bad so we have to be minimally charitable in interpreting his actions to make him look as bad as possible. Platner is a Democrat and Democrats oppose Trump so we have to be maximally charitable in interpreting his actions to make him look as good as possible. But actually believing these things requires a level of cognitive dissonance that is only really tolerated by the intelligent and rational in politics. Which is frustrating since if you want to point that out, it makes you in opposition to what people are saying, which ironically pushes you to actually identifying with and a agreeing with the opposition, if only to oppose the cognitive dissonance in front of you.
I honestly haven’t changed my views on Platner. I didn’t like him before and I still don’t like him. I understand the importance of taking a rape accusation seriously, but relationships are messy (especially an affair) and I’ve seen first hand women reinterpret a relationship after it happened to where, at the time what was consensual, is reframed in a non-consensual light. “I don’t like that I had sex with my ex” can easily turn into “I didn’t like having sex with my ex at the time, and thus if wasn’t consensual.” Given the immense social rewards for coming out against a high profile man, there’s at least reason to give pause. Which one of us doesn’t know someone with the crazy ex who will blatantly lie about their relationship?
The fact that the accusation was possible and credible is a mark against his already marked character. It’s definitely characteristic of him, so I think it’s probably true, but I think “An ex lover is willing to come out to harm a high profile man’s reputation with unfalsifiable claims” should not be the standard of cancellation for someone. I think there’s an equilibrium where rape accusations are taken seriously, while also not being an indisputable tool of character assassination.
> I think Elon and Platner are like the same here. Both probably not literal Nazis, both being really edgy about it (probably in an attention-grabby way), both deserve a ton of flak for it. I think Republicans were absolutely right to be mad about the Nazi tattoo and I think it was very reasonable for many Dems to jump ship at that point—hopefully made that clear in the article.
Re: accusations, yeah it's a difficult situation. I wouldn't say my view of Platner has changed that much, it's just that the final accusation was the straw that broke the already extremely burdened camel's back. If it was a random accusation without any backing or history, things would be different, but given everything we know about the guy, this is all just too much.
> I get the consequentialist needs of politics. Musk supported Trump and Trump is bad so we have to be minimally charitable in interpreting his actions to make him look as bad as possible.
I honestly might write an article disagreeing on this POV. I think this is a very short-term way of looking at things, and in the long term almost guarantees increasing polarization via demonstrating to the other side that you are maximally uncharitable to them. And I think it's extra stupid given the amount of extremely legitimate material we can use to criticize Trump in particular--why not just focus on the unassailable stuff?
Either way, thanks for the detailed response. Always happy to see you in my comments section!
If Elon wasn't constantly on the war path against immigration ranting about cultural decay and great replacement bullshit, signed up whole-heartedly supporting the guy all the other Nazis love, he might have gotten a more charitable read on his "wave".
True, but at least you pretty much know where he stands. He thinks that culture is decaying, that demographic change is happening, and supports a guy who half the voting populous voted for. You can characterize him as a Nazi based on this (I'd disagree, but I can get your point), but it would be wrong to say he's *actually* a Nazi. He supports Israel, is libertarian on most issues, and hasn't indicated he supports Nazism despite his non-existent filter.
With Platner? I have no idea. He has a very strong filter. So when you look at his actions to try to deduce what he *actually* believes, going as far as to get a Nazi tattoo is a strong indicator for hidden beliefs IMO.
tbh my assumption (as a Marine veteran) is that, like many Marines, Platner is kind of a lowlife moron who served well in a military context. if it comes out that he has genuinely anti-Semitic views I wouldn't be particularly shocked, but "he got a dumb tattoo he didn't understand when he was young and then found it kinda funny when he was older and learned what it meant".
Shouldn’t even a utilitarian calculus here consider “does this guy actually have the skill set to operate effectively as a Democratic senator?” And I say this as a centrist who will give the same criticism to Republicans when their vetting process fails to eliminate crazy liars with no relevant experience or knowledge, polarizing personalities, and distracting scandals (eg Santos). There are some big differences between say Bill Clinton (southern governor, hugely intelligent, super likable, beloved by centrist voters, able to get in the weeds in policy, yes also a jerk with poor behavior towards women) and “hey some D-list Dem consultants dug up this toxic guy who can film a solid 30-second commercial that excites NY liberals with the prospect of taking back the Senate, let’s go all in regardless of any red flags or setbacks and then accuse anyone who disagrees with us of hating to win or sabotaging the party.” Not that you have taken the second position, but it is strong strand of Platner defense and perhaps a healthy party would do some long-term work on building a better national party and local network to develop higher quality and lower risk candidates. Like people who have been in the public eye for more than 5 minutes without imploding, have a clean record and proven ability to thrive in politics, and can win a normal election when a bunch of factors tilt in their favor. There are still many quiet moderates who would prefer a functioning center-left party and can look past some Bernie pandering in primaries if the candidate is a decent human with a working brain and a record of succeeding at things they do. I don’t really see how it helps the party’s goals to maybe get to a slim Senate majority that includes a scattering of scandalous idiots who are unreliable when you need their votes and do nothing to help you gather any Republican votes or navigate DC politics (you know, the actual functional job of a Senator, rather than giving speeches on half-baked concepts that would lose 88-12 if put to a floor vote and won’t even make it to a vote because same party committee leadership will kill it first).
I think this is probably the strongest case for "you should have opposed Platner the whole time" that I've heard so far. And I can definitely imagine some plausible future in which he gets elected, has a stroke a la Fetterman, and then is worse than useless for the Dems. Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
Aside from the timing of the most recent allegations, is there any evidence of a Democratic-led ratfucking?
Seems like a convenient accusation since, as Freddie says, it's completely covert and no one would ever admit to it. Also, its end-goal (to hand the Senate to Republicans) makes no sense.
No overwhelming evidence, and that's why the last section isn't a case for why it is a ratfucking and more a parenthetical about how we should really just be fielding better candidates who aren't vulnerable to this kind of thing on account of being sucky people
Hm, I'm not sure if I'd say I bent anything particularly here. I think my general rule is "virtue ethics in normal life, tilt slightly towards utilitarianism as the stakes get higher / in the extremes where virtue ethics may no longer be sufficient." Reminded of this great substack post https://irrationalitycommunity.substack.com/p/against-being-fanatical
Consequentialism isn’t a version of morality where the rules bend. It’s theory of what makes an act right. The rule is “maximize good outcomes." It doesn’t bend depending on stakes. You're advancing a concept of threshold deontology. You need to specify that threshold because your concept of "bending" is incoherent. Why are accusations of rape the threshold and not his earlier indiscretions? Your argument is that character flaws accumulate, so why is an accusation of rape disqualifying but nothing earlier. You need to specify a threshold instead of basing everything on vibes.
> You need to specify a threshold instead of basing everything on vibes.
I think we disagree on this point. I see moral theories as tools that help me understand my own morality, not as foundations that must determine it. Reason is a slave to the passions, not the other way around, and if I really don't like the vibes of a moral theory, I'll reject it on those grounds and those grounds alone. Human behavior is way too complex to try to systematize imo
> If you bend your morals, they aren't morals. Morals aren't fungible.
This is a pretty strong (and controversial!) claim. Almost everyone will admit some exception of where a broad moral rule should be ignored or is outweighed by something more important: "don't lie, except when your friend's psychotic ex husband asks if she's staying with you". Doesn't mean "don't lie" isn't a moral principle, just that human life is messy and we have to weigh competing values and interests against each other.
A. I find it funny that the wing of the party currently calling for Platner to step down partially broke for Cuomo over Mamdani, despite Cuomo's past history. It kind of militates in support of the idea that it's mostly factional.
B. I think this give and take about whether the tent is big enough for Platner, from day one till now, is pretty healthy. I have no dog in this fight, but I think it's nice that different pundits are going back and forth on questions of party identity. Dueling essays are a way better way of figuring out a party identity than expensive primary battles, although both will obviously continue to happen, as the essays aren't dispositive in quite the same way. This is especially relevant on the Democratic side of the aisle, where expensive primaries are also vaguely dirty-feeling, because of the split over Citizens United. Discourse is good. That's literally the premise of The Argument, and if Demsas is on the wrong side of this one, that's why she isn't the only voice on the left.
C. I really enjoyed the interview Daniel Munoz did with Ian Shapiro (that you linked to), enough to borrow the book from the library. I was disappointed. It was gratuitously leftist, and I gave up pretty quickly. [Rant cut from here. Going to be a note.]
B. Agreed, but what I disagree with Demsas on isn't her opinion on Platner, it's more the idea that anyone who didn't jump ship before this point made a judgment error. The main point of my article—and this has come up a few times now, so I think I didn't make this clear enough—was that there was a wide range of possible reasonable perspectives on Platner before the worst scandals broke, and that it would be a mistake to use hindsight to decide that the one that happened to be right was always going to be right.
C. Interesting to know. I am gratuitously leftist at heart, even if I'm too annoying to be as outwardly leftist as I inwardly feel ("muh pragmatism or whatever"—shut up me), so maybe I'll read it anyway?
I'm not leftist. (I'm not sure i’m really classifiable. My political posts consist of several bits of conservative apologia and a full throated defense of Abundance.) And yet I read leftists.
But the juice has to be worth the squeeze, and in that case it didn't seem to be, although now that I've begun drafting up my thoughts on the bits of the book I read, I'm beginning to think it deserves a review, even if I don't think much of it. Oppositional thinking is clarifying.
On the point about Demsas, I agree that resulting here is a bit silly (really great concept, and I'm going to be using it in the future, btw), but I still think it's nice that there's a voice in the tent that says vice should be grounds for expulsion. I don't think everyone who supported him until this point made a judgement error, but I'm okay with letting people gloat, as it will change the baseline assumptions next time, and maybe lead to better vetting. It's also great that some push back on the gloating, but at this point it's getting a bit meta. I'm not omniscient, and I don't know which sliders on the mixer deck of the party need to be moved in which direction every time. But I'm glad many sliders exist, so that I can push some of them a bit higher when I have a more specific opinion. (This is all basically the framework that I use in my post on Abundance.)
Basically, I don't think those who supported Platner till today made a categorical error of judgement, but I would say there should have been a lot more wariness. The difference between this and a game of poker is that next time you can try to cheat. In poker you're never going to know the cards, but in politics you can at least do a bit more vetting early on when the signals are like this.
> Basically, I don't think those who supported Platner till today made a categorical error of judgement, but I would say there should have been a lot more wariness. The difference between this and a game of poker is that next time you can try to cheat. In poker you're never going to know the cards, but in politics you can at least do a bit more vetting early on when the signals are like this.
Yeah fully agreed. I think Ali Afroz made a similar point somewhere else in this comments section--when done early enough, "ratfucking" really just means "background check," which is a good thing to get done before the general (and ideally before the primary too).
In a party that has enough power to get candidates to resign, I think it would be best if that sort of thing happened early on in the primary process.
Every candidate has a sort of balance between the electoral enthusiasm they can generate and how good a candidate they are in everything but electoral enthusiasm. Doing a really really thorough background check on a candidate before the primary begins might well be a waste of time, as a lot of candidates never get enough traction to be worth the time it would take to investigate them.
Yeah I think the worst judgment here comes on the part of the people who scouted Platner for this job. They could've like, not done that. And found someone better.
I think there's some false-binarizing going on here and your position actually sounds close to Demsas's to me. I don't think that she was literally claiming that we should have predicted that he was a rapist or stopped supporting him earlier; she said he was better than the alternative until recently. I took her piece to be saying "you shouldn't have been surprised by this," for... basically the reasons you list. There's also game theory: I have heard Republicans wait until candidate replacement deadlines have passed, and ideally to near election day, to dump oppo research, so it's not irrational to say "there's probably worse out there."
My life experience has made me familiar with several "types of guy", as Ganz put it. So I was generally skeptical of Platner's character and not shocked about the rape allegation. "Guy who keeps claiming he changed" is a type of guy, and not one I find compelling. "Guy who acts respectful of women until it personally inconveniences him" is, unfortunately, a type I'm very familiar with. "Guy who impulsively says what will benefit him rather than what is true" is also a type I'm familiar with. Against that background, his claims of having reformed felt pretty weak and lacking in evidence.
Oh for sure. I'm mostly pushing back against the idea that all of Platner's defenders showed equally bad judgment / were delusional the whole time. It's not irrational to say "there's probably worse out there," but I don't think it was also necessarily irrational to say "...and that's a risk I'm willing to take." I know I'll be drawing my lines closer the next time this happens, though.
i think it was uniquely predictable that there was more drunken/violent relationship antics to come out BECAUSE THE CAMPAIGN OFFICIALS KEPT ACTING IN WAYS THAT IMPLIED THERE WERE MORE DRUNKEN/VIOLENT RELATIONSHIP ANTICS TO COME OUT. the way they treated outgoing staffers was a dead giveaway. there are plenty of other politicians in living memory where you genuinely couldn’t really predict scandals, or where everyone genuinely seemed to play their cards right and it didnt work (hillary clinton). but the people predicting that this would come out weren’t saying “graham platner is bad and i bet he will do other bad stuff” they were saying “based on the way this information keeps coming out, it seems clear that theres more bad stuff the campaign knows about that will come out in the next few weeks/months” and they were right, they weren’t lucky guessers.
Jerusalem wrote a (very prominent and widely discussed) article a month ago whose thesis was "Graham Platner is a scumbag Mainers should vote for." It made very clear that (in June 2026) Platner was obviously a superior candidate to Collins and his many personal failings were not a sufficient reason to reject him in a two-candidate race. But that we should take the 'lesser evil' logic seriously and remember that someone with this track record really does seem pretty terrible and we should lament being in a situation where this is the best option. Because we had plenty of information, long before this week, to support the thesis that he was in fact a scumbag.
Basically, I think she's been pretty consistent and clear that Platner is/was bad news, while also being consistent that the *most* important objective is for any Democrat to win the race.
Seth Masket also had a good piece back in the fall that someone who had a Nazi tattoo for decades and then lied about it repeatedly (in very obvious ways) is bad news, not just because of the tattoo (which was very bad!) but also because it reflects extremely poorly on his judgment and temperament. Someone like that is significantly more likely than the baseline candidate to have other skeletons in the closet, and it's dangerous to hitch yourself to a campaign that could go completely off the rails.
Anyone who was 100% certain that something like this would come out was obviously over their skis. But 'this is a dangerous bet, and do we really need to take the risk in order to get this specific guy?' was a thoroughly reasonable position to hold. And I think the burden should have been on the defenders the whole time to justify their position, not the other way around.
Wow, I didn't know about that article. I basically agree entirely.
I will say: the burden on the defenders was pretty simply just "he has a better chance of winning." I personally found that a compelling enough argument to lightly support him—"Graham Platner is a scumbag Mainers should vote for" is a perfect way of putting it. The part of Demsas' recent article that irked me (and caused me to write this post) was the implication that anyone who hadn't already jumped ship had been exercising bad judgment the whole time.
Also I didn’t mean the parenthetical about her previous piece being widely-discussed as a swipe, or that you are at fault for not realizing it, though I now realize it kind of sounds that way. I just meant that she took a pretty firm stance on the issue before the current revelations, which was (imo) very fair to the defenders of Platner while also making a strong case that they were wrong. So I think she’s got clear bona fides on the subject which I think entitle her to her present take as well.
Nah didn't take it as a swipe—I appreciate the comment. Idk if Jerusalem will ever read this (probs not) but I also hope she doesn't take this as a swipe at her lol I really like The Argument and think she's one of the sharper pundits out there by far
I don't even disagree with this, but Democrats never allowed the same grace for Republicans. If you support a Nazi(a guy in the same party as a guy who made a gesture that may have been a Hitlergruß or may have been him waving), that must be because you love Nazis, not because you still find his policies better than the alternative. And then they turn around and say that having a Nazi tattoo means nothing, and it's fine to support Platner anyway. Forgive us some amusement at that.
The gesture was totally a Nazi salute, but yeah I think Elon and Platner are like the same here. Both probably not literal Nazis, both being really edgy about it (probably in an attention-grabby way), both deserve a ton of flak for it. I think Republicans were absolutely right to be mad about the Nazi tattoo and I think it was very reasonable for many Dems to jump ship at that point—hopefully made that clear in the article.
Honestly man, at this point I'll be happy if we just all agree Nazis are bad.
'bUt aCtuAllY iT waS coMplIcaTed, hItLer waS gOod oN iMigrshUn!!1'
something something nazi animal welfare
I think Demsas was hinting at the idea that from a Bayesian perspective, the first few red flags about Platner (got Nazi tatoo, drinking problem, serial adulterer, makes edgy takes about consent and SA on Reddit) should probably increase your prior that something like the sexual assault allegations were coming.
I completely agree, and think she's right about that, I just disagree with the inevitability of it. The point of having a prior is that it influences the magnitude of your future updating, so if you had a pretty good opinion of Platner before, it would reasonably take more scandals for you to jump ship. On the other hand, if you had a pretty negative prior for Platner, the reverse is true. The gist of my argument was mostly that both positions were reasonable and neither was obviously right before the worst scandals came out.
That’s fair, but I don’t actually think there is much reason to have a good prior about the guy. Most of the arguments you’ve given your post are arguments that he is likely to win the election, which isn’t really about his character so much as the public and should not really influence your opinion of him having additional scandals in a positive direction. Unless you have reasonably good prior when it comes to candidates in general, basically all the evidence about him should push you in a negative direction when it comes to likelihood of future damaging scandals that make him a bad candidate.
Fair enough. Do you think that negative direction was strong enough to call for him to drop out before this latest round of scandals, or do you think it was more like "I will reluctantly support him but he's on thin ice"? Because that's where I was.
I do think that that negative direction was strong enough to call for him to drop out or at least oppose him. Those two are not exactly equivalent because if he actually won the primary election, that’s evidence that he doesn’t have such skeletons in the closet, and therefore you can take his poll numbers as closer to his actual performance as a candidate instead of having to price in the possibility of future scandal to quite the same extent.
I do think your view that it was not a mistake is reasonable, but by that I simply mean that it’s a mistake that an intelligent and conscientious individual could still make rather than actually thinking, there was no mistake involved, although I will admit I’m not super confident and I could be wrong.
I do think that many people who I respect were clearly making a reasoning error, as part of the support appears to have been because of him being a progressive, even though I think the effect of a progressive or a centrist holding this particular seat on actual policy would be extremely minimal, whereas whether or not a democrat holds this seat could have enormous effects.
My view is essentially that it was a reasoning mistake, but not an obvious one, and certainly a pretty understandable one, and it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that it’s me who is making the mistake on account of hindsight and not modelling the world view of people more progressive than myself sufficiently accurately, and it wasn’t really a mistake.
I think we at the very least agree that the next time someone like this shows up, we should really just oppose them from the jump.
Yes, we agree on that!
The bad judgment Platner supporters showed wasn’t just not jumping ship fast enough, it was also deciding to get on board the ship in the first place. Being a U.S. senator is an important job that Graham Platner never demonstrated any aptitude for. He never demonstrated a strong command of public policy. His platform is roughly 1. yelling about oligarchy, 2. yelling about Israel, 3. offering shallow support for Medicare for All.
Running for a nomination to the U.S. Senate in 2026 is running for four jobs at once: to be the nominee for Senate in 2026, to serve in the Senate in the 120th Congress, the 121st Congress, and 122nd Congress. The vast majority of the positive case for Platner was that he’d be especially good at the first of these jobs. Very little of the case for him had anything to do with how well he’d perform at the last three. I break up the three Congresses to emphasize the point that when someone wins a Senate seat, you’re stuck with them for a long time, and what seem to be the most important issues now, won’t necessarily be the most important issues for the remainder of the term. In fact, a big portion of the early negative case against him was that he seemed an awful lot like a John Fetterman, ie a loose cannon who’d be a headache as a member of the Senate Dem Caucus. And Fetterman supporters first started to sour on him on October 7, not because he changed his position from where he campaigned, but because the positions he took when he was running and which they’d probably have disagreed with him about at time had they cared to look suddenly became a lot more relevant.
So that’s a long winded way of emphasizing that all he really had going for him, before any of the negative information came out, was that he could probably beat Susan Collins, in a year when nearly any Democrat would have an advantage, and that he would maybe be a foot soldier for the populist agenda. That’s an extremely thin reed. No one’s support for him should ever have realistically gone past “tepid”. So when the Reddit edgelord shit and the Nazi tattoo shit came out, that should have been a signal that the strongest case for him, that he could win, would be weak. *That’s* when people should have started doing what they’re doing now: find a Democrat with similar views but no baggage. After the first negative stories, everyone should have recognized that he had a high risk of performing below a replacement level Democrat and a moderate risk of performing far enough below replacement to cost us the seat. At that point they should have asked what he brought to the table that made him worth the risk, realized it was very little, and jumped ship.
> So that’s a long winded way of emphasizing that all he really had going for him, before any of the negative information came out, was that he could probably beat Susan Collins, in a year when nearly any Democrat would have an advantage, and that he would maybe be a foot soldier for the populist agenda.
I think you're overstating your case here. A couple months ago, Platner was polling well ahead of Mills in *every single* poll. That's why Mills withdrew in April.
> So when the Reddit edgelord shit and the Nazi tattoo shit came out, that should have been a signal that the strongest case for him, that he could win, would be weak. *That’s* when people should have started doing what they’re doing now: find a Democrat with similar views but no baggage. After the first negative stories, everyone should have recognized that he had a high risk of performing below a replacement level Democrat and a moderate risk of performing far enough below replacement to cost us the seat.
I mean, also agreed. But a replacement hasn't materialized, and so we're stuck with what we have. At this point, I'd prefer Mills to Platner, but obviously a third option would be preferable--that's why I included that long rant at the end about how ratfucking only works on subpar candidates.
If someone in November of last year had decided that they were willing to tolerate the Nazi tattoo because he could beat Janet Mills in the primary, I think we’d all agree that they were exhibiting poor judgment. But if everyone who had previously supported him decided the tattoo was a dealbreaker and forced him out of the race then, we’d be much better off as a party.
In general I agree and think this is a good article, but I'm really not sure the "ratfucking" accusation is all that well supported. And the fact that the same people who are morally certain of the ratfucking (but can't point to any direct evidence) were also morally certain that Cheating On Your Wife Means You're Authentic Working Class Not A Gross Lady makes me pretty suspicious of the heuristics in play.
The other thing I'll say about the Totenkopf, that I told John Ganz at the time, is that you really cannot overestimate the ignorance of the average Marine. (Source: am one.) I was very into WWII stuff as a kid and cared about Marine history while I was in, but I was probably out of the Marine Corps for at least 5 years before I learned what a Totenkopf was. Not true of every Marine but I really doubt this is the one time when I was an outlier in ignorance. (For reference: I met a smart, highly-talented Marine working *as a drill instructor* who wasn't sure who the US fought in WWII. However low the bar is in your mind, lower it.)
> Cheating On Your Wife Means You're Authentic Working Class Not A Gross Lady
yeah this is the worst thing ever. Two steps away from "authentic working class people are bad people with bad character" like come on dude think about what you're implying here
And thanks for the info on the Marines. For the record, I also didn't know what a Totenkopf was before this incident. But that's also why I don't have one tattooed on my body, you know what I mean?
I think my disagreement with this article is really about how we should update our beliefs. I don't have to wait for one definitive piece of evidence before deciding someone should drop out. I tend to start with some prior about whether they're fit for office, and every new scandal should shifts my priors a bit. So, none of the earlier stories was enough on its own, but taken together they made me worry. For me, the question isn't whether the rape allegations were the first thing that made me think Platner was unfit. It's whether all the other things pushed the odds low enough that he should have stepped aside. Different people will draw that line in different places, but I don't think it's "resulting" to decide the threshold had already been crossed before the final allegation came out.
> Different people will draw that line in different places, but I don't think it's "resulting" to decide the threshold had already been crossed before the final allegation came out.
Completely agreed. I just think it's resulting to say "now that we know that Platner was a scumbag, anyone who didn't see this coming failed to exercise good judgment."
Thank you for your engagement in the comments! This one made things click into place, and yep, I agree. We should avoid heaping opprobrium on the judgement of anyone who was feeling uneasily supportive.
Another thing that doesn't help is that he got caught lying about the tattoo. Now he cant even credibly deny scandals anymore
I broadly agree with a lot of what you say and there is certainly a lot of truth to your argument that we have to balance purity testing against candidate effectiveness. Since after all, you don’t want to purity test to the point where capable politicians like Bill Clinton get disqualified.
However, in this particular case, I’m not sure they’re in conflict having a bunch of unethical behaviour and scandals past a point can be pretty damaging to your electoral performance. The argument is basically that having a large numbers of scandals in the past increases, the chances that you will get more scandals in the future and there is a good chance. They’ll be damaging enough that once you take the possibility into account, you are no longer the best candidate in expectation, even if the polls think you are the best right now.
Certainly being an edge Lord who takes extremely controversial stands and has a pretty disgusting tattoo, increases The chances that you have skeletons in the closet which would prove fatal in a general election.
This is also why I am not too fussed about the ratfucking, supposing that is what happened although I am actually a bit doubtful of that given the timing. If the democratic establishment didn’t do it to you, the Republicans definitely would do it to you in the general. So really in the context of a primary, it effectively ends up acting like a background check that makes sure you don’t have some secrets that nobody wants their general election candidate to have because they would make you unelectable.
I’m not claiming that the establishment actually has such noble motives just that that is the actual effect of such practices on their part.
Entirely agreed. I wrote this in another comment and think it sums up my response to you as well:
> that's why the last section isn't a case for why it is a ratfucking and more a parenthetical about how we should really just be fielding better candidates who aren't vulnerable to this kind of thing on account of being sucky people
One aspect that I haven't seen as much discussion on is that there were a lot of minor Platner "scandals" that weren't really all that scandalous, or have been reported like they were major scandals. For instance many of the early Totenkopf stories didn't present a strong case that he knew it was a totenkopf before it broke, and I at least don't really think getting a tattoo on a whim without carefully checking whether it resembles a hate symbol is a big deal (it shows impulsiveness, but ). Similarly a bunch of the articles about the Reddit comments buried the bad ones (insulting sexual assault victims) with a bunch of ones that are not that bad.
I think that this leads to two things:
1) People see a couple, decide they aren't that bad, and tune out the rest
2) People assume that that's the worst the opposition research could come up with, and so he's probably not that bad
I don't think either of those assumptions are super logical but it might be some of the explanation for why they haven't dented Platner's popularity as much as you might expect, at least until very recently.
What comes to mind is the Elon Nazi salute thing. The guy is maximally autistic and is a pretty consistent supporter of Israel, yet the ambiguous arm gesture made him a Nazi. Then the guy who gets an unambiguously Nazi tattoo, literally inking it into your flesh semi-permanently, then lies about it, is given a pass.
Even if the whole Musk thing was an intentional salute, a momentary lapse of judgement he walks back on was held to a significantly stricter standard than a tattoo that remains for years.
I get the consequentialist needs of politics. Musk supported Trump and Trump is bad so we have to be minimally charitable in interpreting his actions to make him look as bad as possible. Platner is a Democrat and Democrats oppose Trump so we have to be maximally charitable in interpreting his actions to make him look as good as possible. But actually believing these things requires a level of cognitive dissonance that is only really tolerated by the intelligent and rational in politics. Which is frustrating since if you want to point that out, it makes you in opposition to what people are saying, which ironically pushes you to actually identifying with and a agreeing with the opposition, if only to oppose the cognitive dissonance in front of you.
I honestly haven’t changed my views on Platner. I didn’t like him before and I still don’t like him. I understand the importance of taking a rape accusation seriously, but relationships are messy (especially an affair) and I’ve seen first hand women reinterpret a relationship after it happened to where, at the time what was consensual, is reframed in a non-consensual light. “I don’t like that I had sex with my ex” can easily turn into “I didn’t like having sex with my ex at the time, and thus if wasn’t consensual.” Given the immense social rewards for coming out against a high profile man, there’s at least reason to give pause. Which one of us doesn’t know someone with the crazy ex who will blatantly lie about their relationship?
The fact that the accusation was possible and credible is a mark against his already marked character. It’s definitely characteristic of him, so I think it’s probably true, but I think “An ex lover is willing to come out to harm a high profile man’s reputation with unfalsifiable claims” should not be the standard of cancellation for someone. I think there’s an equilibrium where rape accusations are taken seriously, while also not being an indisputable tool of character assassination.
As I wrote in another comment,
> I think Elon and Platner are like the same here. Both probably not literal Nazis, both being really edgy about it (probably in an attention-grabby way), both deserve a ton of flak for it. I think Republicans were absolutely right to be mad about the Nazi tattoo and I think it was very reasonable for many Dems to jump ship at that point—hopefully made that clear in the article.
Re: accusations, yeah it's a difficult situation. I wouldn't say my view of Platner has changed that much, it's just that the final accusation was the straw that broke the already extremely burdened camel's back. If it was a random accusation without any backing or history, things would be different, but given everything we know about the guy, this is all just too much.
> I get the consequentialist needs of politics. Musk supported Trump and Trump is bad so we have to be minimally charitable in interpreting his actions to make him look as bad as possible.
I honestly might write an article disagreeing on this POV. I think this is a very short-term way of looking at things, and in the long term almost guarantees increasing polarization via demonstrating to the other side that you are maximally uncharitable to them. And I think it's extra stupid given the amount of extremely legitimate material we can use to criticize Trump in particular--why not just focus on the unassailable stuff?
Either way, thanks for the detailed response. Always happy to see you in my comments section!
If Elon wasn't constantly on the war path against immigration ranting about cultural decay and great replacement bullshit, signed up whole-heartedly supporting the guy all the other Nazis love, he might have gotten a more charitable read on his "wave".
True, but at least you pretty much know where he stands. He thinks that culture is decaying, that demographic change is happening, and supports a guy who half the voting populous voted for. You can characterize him as a Nazi based on this (I'd disagree, but I can get your point), but it would be wrong to say he's *actually* a Nazi. He supports Israel, is libertarian on most issues, and hasn't indicated he supports Nazism despite his non-existent filter.
With Platner? I have no idea. He has a very strong filter. So when you look at his actions to try to deduce what he *actually* believes, going as far as to get a Nazi tattoo is a strong indicator for hidden beliefs IMO.
I feel like a guy who actually has a strong filter wouldn't get an extremely obvious Nazi tattoo LOL
tbh my assumption (as a Marine veteran) is that, like many Marines, Platner is kind of a lowlife moron who served well in a military context. if it comes out that he has genuinely anti-Semitic views I wouldn't be particularly shocked, but "he got a dumb tattoo he didn't understand when he was young and then found it kinda funny when he was older and learned what it meant".
Shouldn’t even a utilitarian calculus here consider “does this guy actually have the skill set to operate effectively as a Democratic senator?” And I say this as a centrist who will give the same criticism to Republicans when their vetting process fails to eliminate crazy liars with no relevant experience or knowledge, polarizing personalities, and distracting scandals (eg Santos). There are some big differences between say Bill Clinton (southern governor, hugely intelligent, super likable, beloved by centrist voters, able to get in the weeds in policy, yes also a jerk with poor behavior towards women) and “hey some D-list Dem consultants dug up this toxic guy who can film a solid 30-second commercial that excites NY liberals with the prospect of taking back the Senate, let’s go all in regardless of any red flags or setbacks and then accuse anyone who disagrees with us of hating to win or sabotaging the party.” Not that you have taken the second position, but it is strong strand of Platner defense and perhaps a healthy party would do some long-term work on building a better national party and local network to develop higher quality and lower risk candidates. Like people who have been in the public eye for more than 5 minutes without imploding, have a clean record and proven ability to thrive in politics, and can win a normal election when a bunch of factors tilt in their favor. There are still many quiet moderates who would prefer a functioning center-left party and can look past some Bernie pandering in primaries if the candidate is a decent human with a working brain and a record of succeeding at things they do. I don’t really see how it helps the party’s goals to maybe get to a slim Senate majority that includes a scattering of scandalous idiots who are unreliable when you need their votes and do nothing to help you gather any Republican votes or navigate DC politics (you know, the actual functional job of a Senator, rather than giving speeches on half-baked concepts that would lose 88-12 if put to a floor vote and won’t even make it to a vote because same party committee leadership will kill it first).
I think this is probably the strongest case for "you should have opposed Platner the whole time" that I've heard so far. And I can definitely imagine some plausible future in which he gets elected, has a stroke a la Fetterman, and then is worse than useless for the Dems. Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
Aside from the timing of the most recent allegations, is there any evidence of a Democratic-led ratfucking?
Seems like a convenient accusation since, as Freddie says, it's completely covert and no one would ever admit to it. Also, its end-goal (to hand the Senate to Republicans) makes no sense.
No overwhelming evidence, and that's why the last section isn't a case for why it is a ratfucking and more a parenthetical about how we should really just be fielding better candidates who aren't vulnerable to this kind of thing on account of being sucky people
If you bend your morals, they aren't morals. Morals aren't fungible.
I think you're a wonderful person and writer, but I disagree with this post. I'm going to continue to follow you.
Hm, I'm not sure if I'd say I bent anything particularly here. I think my general rule is "virtue ethics in normal life, tilt slightly towards utilitarianism as the stakes get higher / in the extremes where virtue ethics may no longer be sufficient." Reminded of this great substack post https://irrationalitycommunity.substack.com/p/against-being-fanatical
Consequentialism isn’t a version of morality where the rules bend. It’s theory of what makes an act right. The rule is “maximize good outcomes." It doesn’t bend depending on stakes. You're advancing a concept of threshold deontology. You need to specify that threshold because your concept of "bending" is incoherent. Why are accusations of rape the threshold and not his earlier indiscretions? Your argument is that character flaws accumulate, so why is an accusation of rape disqualifying but nothing earlier. You need to specify a threshold instead of basing everything on vibes.
> You need to specify a threshold instead of basing everything on vibes.
I think we disagree on this point. I see moral theories as tools that help me understand my own morality, not as foundations that must determine it. Reason is a slave to the passions, not the other way around, and if I really don't like the vibes of a moral theory, I'll reject it on those grounds and those grounds alone. Human behavior is way too complex to try to systematize imo
All I am saying is that if you allow partisanship to compromise your values/morals, then your values were lightly held in the first place.
> If you bend your morals, they aren't morals. Morals aren't fungible.
This is a pretty strong (and controversial!) claim. Almost everyone will admit some exception of where a broad moral rule should be ignored or is outweighed by something more important: "don't lie, except when your friend's psychotic ex husband asks if she's staying with you". Doesn't mean "don't lie" isn't a moral principle, just that human life is messy and we have to weigh competing values and interests against each other.
A few thoughts
A. I find it funny that the wing of the party currently calling for Platner to step down partially broke for Cuomo over Mamdani, despite Cuomo's past history. It kind of militates in support of the idea that it's mostly factional.
B. I think this give and take about whether the tent is big enough for Platner, from day one till now, is pretty healthy. I have no dog in this fight, but I think it's nice that different pundits are going back and forth on questions of party identity. Dueling essays are a way better way of figuring out a party identity than expensive primary battles, although both will obviously continue to happen, as the essays aren't dispositive in quite the same way. This is especially relevant on the Democratic side of the aisle, where expensive primaries are also vaguely dirty-feeling, because of the split over Citizens United. Discourse is good. That's literally the premise of The Argument, and if Demsas is on the wrong side of this one, that's why she isn't the only voice on the left.
C. I really enjoyed the interview Daniel Munoz did with Ian Shapiro (that you linked to), enough to borrow the book from the library. I was disappointed. It was gratuitously leftist, and I gave up pretty quickly. [Rant cut from here. Going to be a note.]
A. Yeah well you know my thoughts on this one
B. Agreed, but what I disagree with Demsas on isn't her opinion on Platner, it's more the idea that anyone who didn't jump ship before this point made a judgment error. The main point of my article—and this has come up a few times now, so I think I didn't make this clear enough—was that there was a wide range of possible reasonable perspectives on Platner before the worst scandals broke, and that it would be a mistake to use hindsight to decide that the one that happened to be right was always going to be right.
C. Interesting to know. I am gratuitously leftist at heart, even if I'm too annoying to be as outwardly leftist as I inwardly feel ("muh pragmatism or whatever"—shut up me), so maybe I'll read it anyway?
I'm not leftist. (I'm not sure i’m really classifiable. My political posts consist of several bits of conservative apologia and a full throated defense of Abundance.) And yet I read leftists.
But the juice has to be worth the squeeze, and in that case it didn't seem to be, although now that I've begun drafting up my thoughts on the bits of the book I read, I'm beginning to think it deserves a review, even if I don't think much of it. Oppositional thinking is clarifying.
On the point about Demsas, I agree that resulting here is a bit silly (really great concept, and I'm going to be using it in the future, btw), but I still think it's nice that there's a voice in the tent that says vice should be grounds for expulsion. I don't think everyone who supported him until this point made a judgement error, but I'm okay with letting people gloat, as it will change the baseline assumptions next time, and maybe lead to better vetting. It's also great that some push back on the gloating, but at this point it's getting a bit meta. I'm not omniscient, and I don't know which sliders on the mixer deck of the party need to be moved in which direction every time. But I'm glad many sliders exist, so that I can push some of them a bit higher when I have a more specific opinion. (This is all basically the framework that I use in my post on Abundance.)
Basically, I don't think those who supported Platner till today made a categorical error of judgement, but I would say there should have been a lot more wariness. The difference between this and a game of poker is that next time you can try to cheat. In poker you're never going to know the cards, but in politics you can at least do a bit more vetting early on when the signals are like this.
(Woah, this is a long response.)
> Basically, I don't think those who supported Platner till today made a categorical error of judgement, but I would say there should have been a lot more wariness. The difference between this and a game of poker is that next time you can try to cheat. In poker you're never going to know the cards, but in politics you can at least do a bit more vetting early on when the signals are like this.
Yeah fully agreed. I think Ali Afroz made a similar point somewhere else in this comments section--when done early enough, "ratfucking" really just means "background check," which is a good thing to get done before the general (and ideally before the primary too).
In a party that has enough power to get candidates to resign, I think it would be best if that sort of thing happened early on in the primary process.
Every candidate has a sort of balance between the electoral enthusiasm they can generate and how good a candidate they are in everything but electoral enthusiasm. Doing a really really thorough background check on a candidate before the primary begins might well be a waste of time, as a lot of candidates never get enough traction to be worth the time it would take to investigate them.
But yeah, stronger parties have some advantages.
Yeah I think the worst judgment here comes on the part of the people who scouted Platner for this job. They could've like, not done that. And found someone better.
I think there's some false-binarizing going on here and your position actually sounds close to Demsas's to me. I don't think that she was literally claiming that we should have predicted that he was a rapist or stopped supporting him earlier; she said he was better than the alternative until recently. I took her piece to be saying "you shouldn't have been surprised by this," for... basically the reasons you list. There's also game theory: I have heard Republicans wait until candidate replacement deadlines have passed, and ideally to near election day, to dump oppo research, so it's not irrational to say "there's probably worse out there."
My life experience has made me familiar with several "types of guy", as Ganz put it. So I was generally skeptical of Platner's character and not shocked about the rape allegation. "Guy who keeps claiming he changed" is a type of guy, and not one I find compelling. "Guy who acts respectful of women until it personally inconveniences him" is, unfortunately, a type I'm very familiar with. "Guy who impulsively says what will benefit him rather than what is true" is also a type I'm familiar with. Against that background, his claims of having reformed felt pretty weak and lacking in evidence.
Oh for sure. I'm mostly pushing back against the idea that all of Platner's defenders showed equally bad judgment / were delusional the whole time. It's not irrational to say "there's probably worse out there," but I don't think it was also necessarily irrational to say "...and that's a risk I'm willing to take." I know I'll be drawing my lines closer the next time this happens, though.
i agree with your overall point that in electoral politics people do to much “resulting” but i think platner is a bad example
The resulting I dislike here is the "anyone who defended Platner should've seen this coming and had bad judgment" bit. Do you disagree with that?
i think it was uniquely predictable that there was more drunken/violent relationship antics to come out BECAUSE THE CAMPAIGN OFFICIALS KEPT ACTING IN WAYS THAT IMPLIED THERE WERE MORE DRUNKEN/VIOLENT RELATIONSHIP ANTICS TO COME OUT. the way they treated outgoing staffers was a dead giveaway. there are plenty of other politicians in living memory where you genuinely couldn’t really predict scandals, or where everyone genuinely seemed to play their cards right and it didnt work (hillary clinton). but the people predicting that this would come out weren’t saying “graham platner is bad and i bet he will do other bad stuff” they were saying “based on the way this information keeps coming out, it seems clear that theres more bad stuff the campaign knows about that will come out in the next few weeks/months” and they were right, they weren’t lucky guessers.
Very interesting. Seems like I was missing some pretty important information then--didn't know about the outgoing staffers thing
Ratfucking or not, I am relieved that people abandoned him because of the SA accusations. Is it sad that this feels like progress?
I really love the chess vs poker analogy.
I hope it is progress. And Annie Duke's book is very good and I want to pick it back up again!