As with Jay Jones, the Media Research Center was in full pouncing mode on another Democratic candidate, Maine’s Graham Platner. P.J. Gladnick used an Oct. 18 post to hype a text scandal that he insisted were “Antifa-level disqualifications that hopefully prevent Platner from ever holding any kind of public office”:
It is hard to exaggerate the beloved hype much of the liberal media was bestowing upon Platner until these latest revelations. One such example was provided by Politico this past August with this Golden Boy of the Masses paean: “Maine oyster farmer wants to upend Democratic politics with Senate bid.”
However, it might not be too late to resurrect the political career that never was of Graham Platner. After all, proclaiming yourself to be a violence-promoting communist shouldn’t be a deal-killer for aspiring Democrat politicians in this bizarre era, perhaps even in Maine.
In an Oct. 21 post, Jorge Bonilla huffed that non-right-wing media weren’t obsessing over Platner like he was, even as the revelation of a Nazi-style tattoo added another scandal:
Once again, the legacy network newscasts come together to suppress a story that would be national news had it involved a Republican candidate for office. The latest instance of selective media outrage involves the suppressed shortcomings of via Maine Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner.
Imagine the dudgeon had a Republican purple-state Senate candidate been spotted with a tattoo of a totenkopf (the notorious Nazi SS “Death’s Head”), the signature emblem of Hitler’s SS. This would be a multicycle top story on the legacy newscasts, and congressional correspondents would dutifully shove a microphone into every GOP member’s face until they take a position on both the tattoo and the candidate dumb enough to get it.
Alas, this wasn’t the case on the legacy nightlies. Viewers today heard more shutdown ragebait, and plenty about overseas aviation mishaps, but none about a highly touted Senate candidate with a D next to his name. Once and again, we are reminded that if it weren’t for double standards, there would be none at all.
Um, weren’t Bonilla and his MRC buddies just glossing over the racist and anti-Semitic texts by a group of Young Republicans were exposed? And didn’t they refuse to explicitly denounce those texts the way they went after Jones and Platner?
Gladnick kept up his whine in an Oct. 22 post:
Now that the heavily hyped Maine “oyster farmer,” Graham Platner, who is running as a Democrat to defeat incumbent Senator Susan Collins has been exposed as deeply flawed, Politico‘s senior political columnist Jonathan Martin has lashed out at who he considers responsible for foisting Platner upon us with minimal/no vetting. And according to Martin that culprit is primarily the Democrat party as you can see in his Wednesday column, “Democrats Keep Falling for Political Fantasies. When Will They Learn?.”
However, what is notable is that although he mentions “journalists” in passing, he conveniently overlooks Politico‘s own role in promoting the flawed oyster farmer.
Didn’t Gladnick and his fellow right-wingers promote Donald Trump as a credible candidate despite the fact that he’s a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist?
Alex Christy put on his comedy-cop hat for an Oct. 25 post:
HBO’s Bill Maher quipped on Friday’s Real Time that Bernie Sanders-endorsed Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s days as a Democrat are limited and that he might have to become a Republican given his Nazi tattoo and other controversies.
[…]Far from the suggestion that Platner’s sins make him a Republican, his biggest supporters are standing by him, and, according to polls, he has a massive lead on Gov. Janet Mills in the primary despite everything Maher mentioned. Meanwhile, it is also interesting that Maher brought up Paul Ingrassia’s doomed nomination because Ingrassia’s nomination was pulled due to lack of GOP support.
Couple Platner with Jay Jones in Virginia, and it becomes clear that for a lot of progressives, warnings about Nazis and political rhetoric are just ways to smear Republicans. Recent weeks Republicans have seen Democrats hold their unsavory types accountable. Why can’t Democrats?
We don’t recall Christy or anyone else at the MRC ever denouncing Ingrassia — or Donald Trump, for that matter.
Geoffrey Dickens put Platner (along with Jones) on his Oct. 31 list of “Democratic candidates who have made shocking statements in their past” but are not being reported on in the non-right-wing media.
Gladnick — apparently upset that all this right-wing pouncing on Platner hasn’t severely dented his popularity with voters — returned to whine about this situation in a Nov. 2 post:
Someone needs to inform Jay Caspian Kang of the New Yorker that “dirtbag” is considered to be a pejorative, not a positive. Yet, Kang seems to think that he is somehow helping to restore the sinking candidacy of Democrat Graham Platner for the U.S. Senate from Maine by repeatedly referring to him as the “embodiment of the dirtbag left” as he did on Friday with “What Explains Graham Platner’s Popularity?”
And Kang weirdly does his worst to help Graham’s supposed popularity by emphasizing Platner as a “dirtbag” starting with the subtitle: “The U.S. Senate candidate from Maine seems like the embodiment of the dirtbag left. But there’s another way to understand his appeal.”
Gladnick then whined that Platner has the “dirtbag” tag despite having once attended a ritzy school:
Kang’s “Dirtbag” Elegy continues on and on for many more paragraphs desperately attempting to convince the reader that “working class” Graham Platner “is probably the closest thing we have to the id of the mainstream Democratic voter in 2025.”
Sorry Kang, but if Platner is the “id of the mainstream Democratic voter” then that party is in much worse shape than we had imagined. However, at least they are much wealthier than we had thought.
Um, didn’t “Joe the Plumber” have similar “dirtbag” cred on the right? We don’t recall Gladnick complaining about the appeal for right-wing voters like himself for the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist — both arguably “dirtbag” activities — that is Donald Trump.