Graham Platner Was Just Hunter Biden With Worse Ink
Beware seductive men with volatile personalities and substance abuse problems. Do not let them into your bedroom or public office.
Dear readers,
As I have watched the rise and fall of Graham Platner — and read the press coverage about his past, which has implied that he has a remarkably large number of ex-lovers for a heterosexual man lacking objectively appealing characteristics — there are a couple of questions I’ve repeatedly asked myself. “Why are Maine voters so impressed with this guy?” was one. “Why did so many women want to date or hook up with this guy?” was another. And I think these questions have the same answer.
People keep comparing Platner’s rise to that of Donald Trump, but Platner reminds me of nobody so much as Hunter Biden: a substance-abusing egomaniac who sponged off his family, repeatedly obtained and abused the trust of people who really should not have given it to him, and somehow got laid a lot.
I am attracted to men, so at a gut level, I get it — Platner and Hunter Biden both have sex appeal, at least when they are not heavily intoxicated. A lot of the Kennedys have been sexy, too. These men have a kind of sex appeal that is a problem; it helps them get away with shit, and they end up hurting people, especially women. But importantly, the seductiveness these men exhibit is not solely sexual. They get women to sleep with them, but they attract both men and women and cause them to surrender their better judgment and make bad choices in a variety of contexts, including the voting booth. There is a personality type at work here — indeed, I would venture, there are cluster B personality disorders at work — and it is important not to become entangled with this type, in politics or in life.
Everyone is hating on Morris Katz and his moron buddies Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan (“Beavis and Butthead,” as Nate Silver aptly calls them) who plucked Platner out of obscurity and talked him into running for Senate. Don’t get me wrong — I hate these people too, and anyone else who gets up in the morning and thinks of ways to preserve the Republican Senate majority. But ultimately, nobody made Maine Democratic primary voters fall in love with the loser this crew served up. The main fault in this episode lies with an electorate that ignored all the signs that Platner might be bad news, from his Nazi tattoo to his Reddit posts to his complete lack of achievements in life.
To me, the grimmest aspect of the public reaction to Platner’s implosion is the extent to which his erstwhile supporters appear surprised. Betrayed, sure — they were lied to. But surprised? Aren’t these people supposed to be familiar with the trope of the toxic male feminist? Have they never encountered charming scoundrels in their personal lives? As Sean Trende notes, Platner is the figure that Andrea Dworkin tried to warn the left about. But Maine progressives couldn’t see what should have been obvious because Platner had all the correct left-wing political positions and melty puppy-dog eyes.
As Platner is promising to exit stage left, Hunter Biden is reentering the discourse and trying to rehabilitate his image. I would simply like to ask Democratic primary voters to remember that the first word in “bad boy” is bad, and not to elevate bad boys1 to elected office just because they talk about how much they have changed. After all, one of the main reasons bad boys are bad is that they lie.
Very seriously,
Josh
In theory, a female candidate could display this kind of dysfunction, but I can’t really think of one who has. Nancy Mace offers a different set of cluster B problems that are a topic for a different piece, and also South Carolina Republican primary voters had the good sense to reject her — and will likely soon have an opportunity to do so again.
I have some issues with AOC, but boy she comes out of this looking a lot better than a bunch of folks- looking at you Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders. (Unlike those three, AOC never publicly supported Platner). I wonder if her experience working as a bartender helped her clock what Platner really was and told her spidey-sense to keep her distance. Whatever it was, it clearly worked!
There is a LOT to be grim about regarding this whole debacle, and I agree that it ultimately falls on the Maine electorate, but I can give them some grace for preferring Platner to noted sex icon Janet Mills.
I also know that the polls show that "generic democrat" beats Collins usually by somewhere in the realm of five points, but to me, one of the most fascinating and underreported elements of this entire fiasco has been the ridiculous discipline from the Collins camp to just shut up, sit back, and let the Democrats cannibalize themselves. Lesser politicians (like Trump himself) would try to hoot and holler and capitalize, but she's been remarkably focused on just carrying on as Maine's senator.
I think it's odd that this race became such a national firestorm and center of attention. I've always been of the mind (granted, as a normie lib who is not in Maine) that regardless of the current polling and Trump's horrid unpopularity, Collins was probably just going to roll ahead to another narrow victory in November because that's consistently what she does in Maine.