The Trump effect: Why Dems embraced a Platner time bomb

According to Axios, Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner is now a major liability for Democrats, and the party has few good options in one of the country's most important races. Axios reports that many Democratic leaders privately feared Platner even before this week's on-the-record rape allegation, which he denied. Warning signs had piled up for nearly a year: a Nazi-linked tattoo, controversial social media posts denigrating police, and reporting from the Wall Street Journal on sexually explicit messages sent outside his marriage. Axios frames his rise and fall as a symptom of how President Trump has reshaped Democratic politics, arguing the party was willing to set aside its stated values for a candidate who could weaken Republicans. The piece also questions the working-class image Platner and his consultants built: he was billed as an oyster farmer, though he acknowledged making little money from oysters, and his father, a lawyer, loaned him two hundred thousand dollars to buy his home. As of late May, his campaign had spent over fourteen million dollars, much of it flowing to opaque LLCs.

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