It didn't take 68 hours. It took a lifetime of disrespecting and assaulting women to end his political career. It's taken much, much longer for progressives to start to figure out that rape is unacceptable. I am ashamed that anyone would ever make excuses, and infuriated that women were offered up in victim-blaming schemes designed to give power to yet another rapist.
I want to be precise here because I think we're talking past each other. The piece never argues Platner is innocent, and it never asks anyone to feel less certain about what Racicot alleges. What it argues is narrower: the 68 hours measures how fast the party acted, not how long the underlying pattern took to build. Those are two different clocks. Franken's clock ran two months, Cuomo's ran seven, Clinton's never really started. Same party, same kind of allegation, wildly different speed, and the variable that moved wasn't the evidence. That's the actual target of the piece. Not whether accountability should happen, whether it's happening for principled reasons or actuarial ones. I think we agree it should happen fast for everyone. I'm arguing it currently only happens fast for people the party can afford to lose.
Agreed. I'm just so angry at all of the apologism among the rank and file. I think my responses to this entire incident are diffuse because of my hurt, fury and disgust at my own people re-traumatizing his victims.
That isn't what this piece said.... He didn't once argue that he was innocent and he even said that all accusers should have due process and accused should face a judge.... he's just explaining what incentivizes these decisions and gave countless examples.
This, I believe has a lot to do with a wider plan to handle dsa-backed candidates… you can see the full court press in mainstream media right now trying to discredit the DSA.
I understand where you’re coming from with the 68-hour timeline, but the reality is this guy was on thin ice way before that clock started ticking. This was the last straw.
However, your overall thesis is meritorious. The mantra is to believe all women, except if they are against our guy, and so far at least it has always been guys who fall victim to #MeToo. (this may be why we have so many women running for office these days, because they so far had been relatively immune to sexual peccadillos in their closets.)
The Franken episode could be categorized as a bridge too far in which a popular senator fell victim to what I would call a witch hunt, in contrast to Bill Clinton, who survived multiple instances of what his own campaign characterized as “bimbo eruptions” before he even got nominated in 1992.
Outright, good old-fashioned corruption seems to have taken something of a back seat to the more lurid character flaws in the 21st-century. In Chicago, my hometown, financial corruption used to be pretty much taken for granted; occasionally somebody got caught red-handed by the Feds and went to jail, but the system rolled on. The old school pols have been largely replaced by DSA types who are not immune to financial corruption by any means, most of which is now done through NGOs and such; however, they do seem to be a little less driven by personal profit and more driven by what amounts to a communist ideology. In that sense, unless you're a Marxist, you may find there are worse things than good old-fashioned boodle.
In the case of Platner, I don’t think this was an effort by the “establishment“ to bring down DSA, although from my perspective, I certainly hope it works out that way. Establishment Democrats seem to have rallied around this guy because they thought he could win, and ultimately, all they care about is power. If Lenin were alive and could win, they would cheerfully nominate him.
Among today's Democrats, all you need to do to win is spout DSA bromides by putting the F word in front of various trigger words such as Trump, ICE, AIPAC, Israel, Charlie Kirk, the Rich, etc. That's what’s winning primaries and potentially general elections, which sets conservatives’ hair on fire. We have a very simple-minded electorate, the product of decades of leftist brainwashing in what is ironically called “ higher” education. Younger voters are easily influenced to elect DSA types, in my view tantamount to communists, and contrary to past voting patterns, the young and the restless are turning out in droves. They have been energized by the anti-Israel, anti-AIPAC, pro-“Palestinian“, anti-Trump hate. So what we have is a perfect storm of illogic and youthful enthusiasm driven by the most powerful of emotions, which is hate.
That’s the political hurricane that created Graham Platner. This is a guy with no experience, no qualifications, big-time character flaws that were manifest very early, psychological problems, and a track record of failure in the private sector. The only traditional credential he had was his military service, for which we thank him, but he was a perfectly flawed candidate under normal circumstances. In the current environment, it was all too easy for him to embrace the no-nothing, envy- and hate-driven Marxist politics of the DSA and rocket himself to the top of the Democrat charts, ahead of an extraordinarily qualified Democrat who had the disadvantage of experience and expertise. He forced her to suspend her campaign, and now she isn’t even mentioned as a possible replacement because she’s too old, too moderate, and too experienced. This is a polarizing environment that has the potential to tear the country and the Constitution apart. Far too great a percentage of the electorate prefers a confederacy of dunces to moderate Democrats, and prefers anybody but Republicans. We need only look to our major metropolitan blue jurisdictions, once great cities like Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and now New York, to see the catastrophic results of this tragic trend. In fact, San Francisco got so bad, the beleaguered populace actually elected a rich moderate (horror of horrors!) to clean itself up, so it is possible, thankfully, to recover from the cycle, but only after enduring years of misery. Fortunately, people do learn from these horrible experiences, so there is hope if things go straight to hell.
In Maine, there is a good possibility that yet another DSA type will be nominated, so this isn’t exactly the scenario the Bernie Bros abhor, in which the Bern is the choice of the people, and the evil establishment Democrats steal the election and nominate a normie like Hillary, Biden, or Kamala.
The bad news for conservatives is that the DSA bullet has not yet been dodged, not by a long shot. We should know within the month whether or not yet another DSA sock puppet will be nominated, in which case Platner’s defenestration doesn’t really make much difference. Any idiot can mouth the bromides of DSA. You could easily create an AI candidate that just played their simplistic slogans on a continuous loop, and the useful idiots of the left would vote for it.
So the real question here is whether a sensible moderate will emerge to represent Maine in the Senate. That could be Susan Collins, because the race against whatever candidate the Democrats come up with seems to be something of a dead heat.
Personally, I like elections where I’m not really all that concerned one way or who wins as long as somebody has expertise. capacity for critical thinking and a moderate outlook, I can live with either side, being politically homeless, but I can’t live with a communist Congress, and when people vote for DSA, that’s exactly what they’re voting for, in my view
George, fair pushback, and I'd add a nuance: the 68 hours measures the party's reaction time, not how long the pattern had been building.
You're right that this was closer to a last straw than a first offense. The tattoo, the Reddit posts, the sexting story had already been sitting out there for months before Racicot came forward.
I think that you're right and it is clear with your idea this was the establishment engineering an opening to take out a DSA-aligned nominee. I don't think the evidence supports that read.. If he'd still been running ahead of Collins after the allegation surfaced, my guess is the same people find a way to stay quiet a lot longer. That's actually the thesis in miniature.
It's not ideology deciding who gets protected. It's whether you're still worth the carrying cost.
The Franken and Clinton contrast is the sharpest version of that same point, and I probably should've used it in the piece. Franken had a first term and no personal machine behind him. Clinton had two terms and the entire party's fortunes riding on him. Different assets, different math, same underlying rule.
I'd like to add my opinion to one of your statements. "That’s a harder thing to be angry about than hypocrisy, because hypocrisy has villains and this doesn’t, really" The villains in this case are the ultra wealthy donors that fund the party establishment that they control in exchange for their contributions. You do a great job of relating this in a later section.
I had actually put together a similar outline for an article I was going to publish on my Substack site. I will still do so but will be careful to give you credit for your analysis that might borrow.
Appreciate that, Steven, and you're right that the donor piece is the actual engine underneath all of this. I kept it in a later section because I wanted the mechanism (party as cost calculator) to land on its own before naming who's holding the calculator. Would genuinely like to read your piece when it's up, borrow away, that's the whole point of putting this stuff out there.
It didn't take 68 hours. It took a lifetime of disrespecting and assaulting women to end his political career. It's taken much, much longer for progressives to start to figure out that rape is unacceptable. I am ashamed that anyone would ever make excuses, and infuriated that women were offered up in victim-blaming schemes designed to give power to yet another rapist.
I want to be precise here because I think we're talking past each other. The piece never argues Platner is innocent, and it never asks anyone to feel less certain about what Racicot alleges. What it argues is narrower: the 68 hours measures how fast the party acted, not how long the underlying pattern took to build. Those are two different clocks. Franken's clock ran two months, Cuomo's ran seven, Clinton's never really started. Same party, same kind of allegation, wildly different speed, and the variable that moved wasn't the evidence. That's the actual target of the piece. Not whether accountability should happen, whether it's happening for principled reasons or actuarial ones. I think we agree it should happen fast for everyone. I'm arguing it currently only happens fast for people the party can afford to lose.
Agreed. I'm just so angry at all of the apologism among the rank and file. I think my responses to this entire incident are diffuse because of my hurt, fury and disgust at my own people re-traumatizing his victims.
I get it .. this is a nasty business and I don't think that these types of things even cross their mind
That isn't what this piece said.... He didn't once argue that he was innocent and he even said that all accusers should have due process and accused should face a judge.... he's just explaining what incentivizes these decisions and gave countless examples.
Was always “so disgusting”
https://substack.com/@thinktorah/note/c-275207903
This, I believe has a lot to do with a wider plan to handle dsa-backed candidates… you can see the full court press in mainstream media right now trying to discredit the DSA.
I understand where you’re coming from with the 68-hour timeline, but the reality is this guy was on thin ice way before that clock started ticking. This was the last straw.
However, your overall thesis is meritorious. The mantra is to believe all women, except if they are against our guy, and so far at least it has always been guys who fall victim to #MeToo. (this may be why we have so many women running for office these days, because they so far had been relatively immune to sexual peccadillos in their closets.)
The Franken episode could be categorized as a bridge too far in which a popular senator fell victim to what I would call a witch hunt, in contrast to Bill Clinton, who survived multiple instances of what his own campaign characterized as “bimbo eruptions” before he even got nominated in 1992.
Outright, good old-fashioned corruption seems to have taken something of a back seat to the more lurid character flaws in the 21st-century. In Chicago, my hometown, financial corruption used to be pretty much taken for granted; occasionally somebody got caught red-handed by the Feds and went to jail, but the system rolled on. The old school pols have been largely replaced by DSA types who are not immune to financial corruption by any means, most of which is now done through NGOs and such; however, they do seem to be a little less driven by personal profit and more driven by what amounts to a communist ideology. In that sense, unless you're a Marxist, you may find there are worse things than good old-fashioned boodle.
In the case of Platner, I don’t think this was an effort by the “establishment“ to bring down DSA, although from my perspective, I certainly hope it works out that way. Establishment Democrats seem to have rallied around this guy because they thought he could win, and ultimately, all they care about is power. If Lenin were alive and could win, they would cheerfully nominate him.
Among today's Democrats, all you need to do to win is spout DSA bromides by putting the F word in front of various trigger words such as Trump, ICE, AIPAC, Israel, Charlie Kirk, the Rich, etc. That's what’s winning primaries and potentially general elections, which sets conservatives’ hair on fire. We have a very simple-minded electorate, the product of decades of leftist brainwashing in what is ironically called “ higher” education. Younger voters are easily influenced to elect DSA types, in my view tantamount to communists, and contrary to past voting patterns, the young and the restless are turning out in droves. They have been energized by the anti-Israel, anti-AIPAC, pro-“Palestinian“, anti-Trump hate. So what we have is a perfect storm of illogic and youthful enthusiasm driven by the most powerful of emotions, which is hate.
That’s the political hurricane that created Graham Platner. This is a guy with no experience, no qualifications, big-time character flaws that were manifest very early, psychological problems, and a track record of failure in the private sector. The only traditional credential he had was his military service, for which we thank him, but he was a perfectly flawed candidate under normal circumstances. In the current environment, it was all too easy for him to embrace the no-nothing, envy- and hate-driven Marxist politics of the DSA and rocket himself to the top of the Democrat charts, ahead of an extraordinarily qualified Democrat who had the disadvantage of experience and expertise. He forced her to suspend her campaign, and now she isn’t even mentioned as a possible replacement because she’s too old, too moderate, and too experienced. This is a polarizing environment that has the potential to tear the country and the Constitution apart. Far too great a percentage of the electorate prefers a confederacy of dunces to moderate Democrats, and prefers anybody but Republicans. We need only look to our major metropolitan blue jurisdictions, once great cities like Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and now New York, to see the catastrophic results of this tragic trend. In fact, San Francisco got so bad, the beleaguered populace actually elected a rich moderate (horror of horrors!) to clean itself up, so it is possible, thankfully, to recover from the cycle, but only after enduring years of misery. Fortunately, people do learn from these horrible experiences, so there is hope if things go straight to hell.
In Maine, there is a good possibility that yet another DSA type will be nominated, so this isn’t exactly the scenario the Bernie Bros abhor, in which the Bern is the choice of the people, and the evil establishment Democrats steal the election and nominate a normie like Hillary, Biden, or Kamala.
The bad news for conservatives is that the DSA bullet has not yet been dodged, not by a long shot. We should know within the month whether or not yet another DSA sock puppet will be nominated, in which case Platner’s defenestration doesn’t really make much difference. Any idiot can mouth the bromides of DSA. You could easily create an AI candidate that just played their simplistic slogans on a continuous loop, and the useful idiots of the left would vote for it.
So the real question here is whether a sensible moderate will emerge to represent Maine in the Senate. That could be Susan Collins, because the race against whatever candidate the Democrats come up with seems to be something of a dead heat.
Personally, I like elections where I’m not really all that concerned one way or who wins as long as somebody has expertise. capacity for critical thinking and a moderate outlook, I can live with either side, being politically homeless, but I can’t live with a communist Congress, and when people vote for DSA, that’s exactly what they’re voting for, in my view
George, fair pushback, and I'd add a nuance: the 68 hours measures the party's reaction time, not how long the pattern had been building.
You're right that this was closer to a last straw than a first offense. The tattoo, the Reddit posts, the sexting story had already been sitting out there for months before Racicot came forward.
I think that you're right and it is clear with your idea this was the establishment engineering an opening to take out a DSA-aligned nominee. I don't think the evidence supports that read.. If he'd still been running ahead of Collins after the allegation surfaced, my guess is the same people find a way to stay quiet a lot longer. That's actually the thesis in miniature.
It's not ideology deciding who gets protected. It's whether you're still worth the carrying cost.
The Franken and Clinton contrast is the sharpest version of that same point, and I probably should've used it in the piece. Franken had a first term and no personal machine behind him. Clinton had two terms and the entire party's fortunes riding on him. Different assets, different math, same underlying rule.
I'd like to add my opinion to one of your statements. "That’s a harder thing to be angry about than hypocrisy, because hypocrisy has villains and this doesn’t, really" The villains in this case are the ultra wealthy donors that fund the party establishment that they control in exchange for their contributions. You do a great job of relating this in a later section.
I had actually put together a similar outline for an article I was going to publish on my Substack site. I will still do so but will be careful to give you credit for your analysis that might borrow.
Appreciate that, Steven, and you're right that the donor piece is the actual engine underneath all of this. I kept it in a later section because I wanted the mechanism (party as cost calculator) to land on its own before naming who's holding the calculator. Would genuinely like to read your piece when it's up, borrow away, that's the whole point of putting this stuff out there.