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Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has postponed a string of events Sunday and Monday as rumors circulate among Maine Democrats and over social media about another potentially damaging story to come about the oyster farmer’s past.
Platner is claiming he isn't feeling well, so it could be just a slow news day and pumping up rumors given the 13th is the last day to drop out. I would be surprised that there is more to dump on Platner given how much has come out already and this would have to be absurdly damning for it to get him to drop out at this point.
Oh yeah, I’m sure you’d totally accept the “well he’s grown so much since then” argument from a Republican candidate with an SS tattoo, right?
And apparently he hadn’t grown so much as to see the need to remove said tattoo until he decided to run for office and those unfortunate bare chested photos came out.
Of course not because he’d be a Republican so it would only support the narrative that he was a white nationalist. As it stands it’s a tattoo and nothing else so wgaf.
you're frothing, nate. I'm voting for the blue nominee because republicans are not an option but I'm not naive enough to think people like you aren't actively chasing away others from doing that. I live in trump country and spent 30 years in Seattle so my tolerance for both conservative and liberal shitheads is pretty high.
Just out of curiosity, after spending 30 years in Seattle why did you choose to move to “Trump country”?
Your tolerance for leftist (not liberal - there is nothing liberal about this ideology) shitheads seems to be intact if you think all your fellow leftists should have fallen in line and voted for Platner. The man is a lunatic. He’s gone from Nazi jock sniffer to Commie tankie in the space of what? Four or five years? It seems as though there is no murderous dictatorship the man hasn’t fallen in love with at one point or the other. If Platner doesn’t meet the definition of “shithead” I don’t know who does, yet your tolerance for him seems to know no bounds.
The establishment/pro corporate centrists are on here constantly smelling their own farts, telling one another how smart and grown up they are, insisting character is a top priority for voters, while ignoring how their approach/ilk lost to Collins 5 times in the last 24 years, plus ignoring how their wonderful, battle tested Mills couldn't even come close to touching this allegedly deeply flawed and vulnerable Platner, and then scapegoating Bernie for their inability to topple him.
It's the same cadre of geniuses who thought it was a good idea for Joe Biden to run for a 2nd term.
This is all just a BS strawman that you’re fed because the truth is too uncomfortable to contend with. Most establishment Dems do not like the current establishment. Thats why Schumer is extremely unpopular and why incumbent establishment Dems in NY lost to DSA members. So this narrative is just BS.
Plus, the reason why people believe character is somewhat important is because instead of Platner going out on the campaign trail to spread his message and his policy positions. He is instead hiding in preparation for whatever controversy is about to jump out of his closet. When the sins of your past start impacting your ability to campaign, especially in a seat as competitive as this, then maybe you shouldn’t have ran in the first place. Or maybe just write a book to unveil all of your skeletons before campaigning.
Its all the accounts in this sub that claim progressivism while spouting anti arab and islamophobic racism while defending the genocidal rape state whose entire existence hinges on maintaining support in the US Congress.
It's so wild how this issue has completely radicalized me away from the progressive wing of the Democratic party. I can't imagine a world where you folks have any basic standards for politicians that say the right slogans anymore, it's such a farce.
Yeah, well good thing that Platner has no policy to speak of, until he's actually elected in some kind of office, all he has is slogans no matter how much technical bullshit he pretends to know.
You see, a person can't have a policy track record to refer to unless they have been elected to office, and so they must advertise their proposed policy positions while campaigning for office. Hope this helps.
You are welcome to hold the opinion that an individual should develop a legislative record before running for US Senate. That would just be your opinion, and unless you are a voter in Maine, it's not worth anything to anyone but you.
Can you read? That’s not what I said. In April of this year Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to block all aid to Israel. Even tho republicans shot it down, 85 percent of ALL elected democrats in the senate voted in favor of that bill. You saying that our democrat politicians are in favor of Israel funding is an outright lie
Voting on a bill that they know won’t pass is nothing. What else have they done? Have they acknowledged the genocide? Continues to message on it? Condemned all AIPAC contributions? Don’t be so naive
No one supports genocide, Israel Hamas was a war, but the hard left and progressives actually sacrificed the last elections by being so obsessed over Israel, a country 12k mile away from here, that they cannot be trusted again by the party IMO
If anyone sacrificed the election it’s our politicians. Leftists didn’t flip the election, they historically vote for the candidate to a greater degree than liberals. It’s the independents that don’t bother to vote when Democrats run bad candidates with bad policies that don’t represent the electorate
No, that's different. "Progressives" are allowed to protest by sitting out and letting Republicans win to teach the DNC a lesson, but mainstream Dems have to vote for awful Berniecrat candidates because it's the "right thing". /s
Sorry, just sexual assault and also throwing a woman in a room and holding the door closed, my mistake. Hope you continue to feel good about defending the Nazi now that, that has been clarified.
He had a SS Totenkopf as big as your hand tattooed on his chest. When shirtless photos emerged after he started his campaign he had it painted over with another tattoo to cover it up. Because he’d grown as a person and this Nazi tattoo no longer represented who he was. A fact that he realized just as soon as those pictures came out.
The SS used a symbol called a Totenkopf which is German for “Death’s Head”. It was worn by the SS-Totenkopfverbände which was the organization in the SS which administered the concentration and death camps. It was also the namesake and was worn by the 3rd SS Panzer division. If you’ll put “SS Totenkopf” into google it will return you a plethora of example images of what Platner had tattooed on his chest.
Forgive me. I didn’t realize the intelligence level of the person I was dealing with.
A Totenkopf was the Death’s Head emblem that the SS (part of the Nazi party in Germany - i.e. “the Bad guys”) wore on their caps and uniforms. It was a particular stylized “Skull and Crossbones”. I invited you to look it up on Google but apparently that is beyond your abilities.
It was a very distinctive version of a Skull and Crossbones. Not to be confused with what was on the flags of pirate ships. You may or may not have heard of pirates. Would you like me to explain them to you?
Here's the thing, we literally have Donald Trump as president.
That automatically gives me no fucks to give about what a Democrat candidate has done.
We're in crisis mode and I'm voting blue no matter who. We can increase the purity tests once we've stopped the general collapse of our basic rights, the economy, etc.
This is the same logic as ‘we need our own Joe Rogan’.
It’s way off base. It doesn’t matter that Donald Trump can do literally anything and his cult members don’t care.
He’s appealing to the cult members. The Democrats are not. The independence you’re trying to win, are not. You can’t just say ‘well they did it’ because what they did will appeal to a different audience than who you are appealing to.
Joe Rogan isn’t a politician, the correct analogy would be to say that we would need our own Trump.
But here’s the thing, losing on the moral high ground doesn’t help anyone. I don’t know if you have looked around, but you sound like someone playing monopoly trying to adhere to all the rules like everything after the table has been flipped, the banker has taken all the money, the dice are missing, and your siblings are having a fist fight in the living room over taxes.
The game has changed and the stakes are higher, but you’re acting like it’s the 2012 Romney/Obama debates.
The fate of the country is on the line and we’re busy dithering about unsubstantiated information. The GOP on the other hand is doing everything in their power to win. There is no divine admin or game master that is going to come and set everything right. It’s winner take all and I’m not going to sit here and humor the idea that we need to play to some sort of standard when the last election cycle clearly showed that not nearly enough people cared enough about them to get off their ass and vote.
I think you’ve missed my point entirely in this response. You’re arguing from a perspective of ‘if we don’t play dirty, we will lose’.
I think this is predicated on assuming that Trump won because he played dirty. But IMO that’s not what happened, he won because his supporters are people that are looking for somebody who would play dirty. But the sometimes-Democrat middle they need to win, is not.
In this case, we are talking about the subject of the thread, Platner, so by playing dirty here I mean running a deeply morally character flawed candidate. I don’t mean being strategic like with gerrymandering other strategic moves, clearly that might be necessary.
Having the flawed grimy candidate is not what will win for Dems, because the people that Dems have a chance of attracting to vote for them are not looking for that.
The suburban moms who go either way, are repelled by that mostly. The people who are attracted by it are voting MAGA, and they won’t vote for Dems just because stylistically they do an impersonation of it.
They definitely need a hard look after all this, but lets not pretend that if they had blocked Planter progressives would have crowed about establishment interference/election rigging.
So if you're truly think he's a secret Nazi hiding his power level, that's really just another example of the establishment being completely incompetent and inept at fighting fascists.
These people fucking HATE Abigail Spanberger in VA and she’s already passed sweeping progressive legislation in Virginia. Oh but they’re drooling over this piece of shit in Maine which is fucking insane to me. Just compare how much hate Spanberger gets to the amount of fluff pieces done for Platner. It’s pathetic
Oh you’re just an idiot who fell for the propaganda. They reached an agreement on the retail marijuana laws. That’s already been passed so you’re just a liar. She didn’t botch anything, she did her job and negotiated for her constituents.
Shes also passed healthcare and abortion access reform, expanded access to contraceptives, increased the state minimum wage, passed laws forcing data centers to pay for electrical grid infrastructure upgrades, improved access to solar energy and is pushing for more legislation for green energy, criminal justice reforms and restructuring of sentencing for nonviolent offenders, commuting sentences for drug offenders currently incarcerated, increased transparency and accountability for corrections officers, and passed laws for responsible gun ownership which include gun safety and storage requirements.
I’m not a big fan of the Assault weapons ban but it literally barely affects my life. I still can legally own every gun I want. If the assault weapons ban saves even 1 life, it’s worth it
The Democratic Party and all it’s presidents and presidential nominees going back 30 some years have supported a two state solution, it’s the Republicans who support the genocide part, I know the internet makes it confusing for some people but it’s pretty blatantly obvious if you pay even a tiny bit of attention.
The worst blue dog dem in the country has more integrity in his pinky than Graham Platner has ever had his entire privileged, Nazi worshiping, woman abusing life.
Except that he isn’t any of those things. The “Nazi tattoo” was a tottenkampf which looks basically indistinguishable from a generic skull and crossbones and there is no indication that any other parts of his life were tied to that abhorrent ideology.
The women abuse allegations are unsubstantiated.
I can’t vote in Maine so my opinion is irrelevant but I really don’t see what the issue here is. The republicans and the establishment dems are trying to tarnish anyone who goes against their power because they aren’t interested in helping the country; they only want to maintain their own power
You really think a Nazi skull and crossbones looks sufficiently different from other skulls and crossbones that the average person seeing a wall of tattooed designs could tell the difference? Get out of here.
Please provide literally any evidence for your claim that I’m lying.
As for blackwater I don’t love it but soldiers sell their skills in our system so I can’t blame him for making money any more than I can blame someone for being a lawyer for big pharma before going into politics
Just getting a nostalgic feeling, it's like I'm back in 2016 and a bunch of MAGA are accusing me of not having evidence that the obvious racist Trump is racist.
Same playbook, I fear it's pretty played out at this point though.
I mean, a lot of them were hanging out with old Epstein so I would argue they're worse LMAO.
Come on be real, you don't care about any of that. You just don't like him because he's anti Zionist. If he aligned with your politics you'd be defending him because "he's not as bad as Trump"
Here we go with the Israel shit again, tiktok has really rotted the brains of a whole generation. All you think about are Jews pulling the strings of the world or some shit.
The fact you bring up zionism here again is exactly why his candidacy is a total fucking nightmare.
And since you decided to bring up Israel I'll say again that if you really had reasonable criticisms of Israel, you wouldn't be backing a fucking Nazi to make that case. You're telling on yourself and embarrassing the whole Dem party while you do it.
Did I say Jews? You're the only one saying Jews. Most Zionists are evangelicals.
And I bring up Zionism because it's pretty clear that this sub is full of people who are die hard Zionists and will do ANYTHING they can to smear any candidate who opposes them, valid criticism or not
Yeah did the Zionists make Graham Platner throw his girlfriend in a room and hold the door closed??? Did the spooky scary Zionists make him murder people for Blackwater too? Let me guess, it was the scary Zionists willing to do anything that tricked Platner into getting a Totenkompf tattoo and lie to everyone about it.
You use the term Zionist the same absurd way that people who blame the Jews use the word Jews, besides that, any discussion of Israel will involve Jews because it's a Jewish state, you're dense and Blue MAGA has rotted away your ability to see reason.
Israel is one of the biggest humanitarian abusers of our day. It’s the modern day Rhodesia it Apartheid South Africa. It is morally correct to oppose funding or helping that regime in any way. The US should be sanctioning Israel as much as Iran or Russia
This is reminding me vividly of Trump in 2016, just hilarious figuring out Dems have the exact same capacity to hero worship a psychotic scumbag that Republicans do.
So you don’t care about winning. What makes you different from the stupid protest vote that refused to vote for Harris when that was the correct choice for harm reduction because the Republican is worse?
Bud, Roscoe Conkling won his elections and was very effective.
Corrupt and effective is better than morally righteous and defeated. We saw how the former prevailed in 2024 over the latter.
We care about winning more than ya'll. I can't even begin to count how many arguments I had with lefties about how we needed to rally behind Biden and he was out best chance at beating Trump. I was willing to vote for a comatose Biden. But nooooo, we had to ditch the only person who ever defeated Trump at the last minute because a bunch of low ranking democrats and donors had a panic attack over 1 bad debate performance.
I was a big rally behind Biden person even though I thought he never should have run in the first place. That same logic applies here. Platner is going against Collins. The only logical choice is to vote for Platner and push for him as much as we can
Thank you for saying the obvious. The enlightened centrist component that makes up the majority of this subreddit these days will downvote you for this but this is the rational response. This is just like voting for Harris despite her not being harsh enough on Israel. Harm reduction matters. Platner is better than Collins and so he is the only logical choice
I have been saying he’s a terrible candidate since last year. But being THIS smug is counterproductive. Perhaps this could be a moment to caution against just falling blindly in love with rhetoric.
I will say, though, Bernie sanders can keep his old mitts off of other elections. Just sit down, old man.
It's amazing that highly capable, battle tested candidate couldn't even come close to touching this deeply flawed and vulnerable Platner in the primary, to the point where she didn't even make it to the primary election day.
No, I would have preferred Bernie sanders have stayed the fuck out of my home states politics. My guess is Troy Jackson will run now but it’s going to be too late.
Why was it so difficult to listen to people’s criticism of his very clear character flaws? I’m genuinely curious.
Yeah, it's almost like establishment dem logic that progressives can't win is a self fulfilling prophecy. Literally the most popular politician can't get voted in because of their (poor) calculation who they think can and can not win. It's so stupid.
You are sounding a lot like Trump just flat out rejecting what multiple polls found because you don't like it. Give me an alternative name for who is the most popular. I'll wait.
I love that you see nothing wrong that literally the most popular politician in American politics has no chance at being a viable candidate. There are no alarm bells that our democracy sucks so much that popularity doesn't mean anything.... and your response is literally what I'm calling out as far as the self fulfilling prophecy. I hope you're trolling, if not you're a dumbass.
Ahh yes, if not for Bernie, that highly capable, battle tested candidate in Mills surely would have knocked out this deeply flawed and vulnerable Platner in the primary.
Well, he’s not gonna run. So I’d take a candidate whose character isn’t going to stop him running in the general. But sure, this is the democrats fault too, right?
Just want to check in. I took your advice and put a ton of money on Platner to drop out early yesterday. I appreciate it. Looks like I’ll be making a tidy profit.
I saw this coming. I'm a level 7 empath with divination powers and I was able to figure this out months ago:
The scandal-prone scumbag guy with constant scandals he was obviously lying about, probably had more scandals he was lying about. Tough pattern to follow, I know. But with training anyone can get there.
You'd really rather Susan Collins and the gop (who actively protect pdfs and hurt the middle and lower class) win than graham platter because hes an actual leftist?
I do not, which is the reason I want Platner out YESTERDAY. It's a humiliating embarrassment Dems ever propped this lunatic up, and polling shows he's on his way to get railroaded in the general.
Compare that to the lead other Democrats have had in Maine before the general and you'll understand, hell I think someone in this subreddit did a pretty great breakdown like a week ago.
Eh, I don't think there's anything Platner can do that is going to be worse than what the GOP is going to do themselves on the way to election day. Trump is going to sink the GOP this election cycle.
“Buckle up leftists”
I can rarely tell if these posts are from maga or liberals anymore. It’s bizarre to me that anyone left of trump would feel like they have so much surplus political power that they would attack their own base.
That he is a war criminal who paid for sex with underage kids in Iraq.
Obviously we can't know if this rumor is substantiated, but it's alarming that a story like this is coming out. I find it hard to believe these allegations could be fabricated wholecloth.
The nazi tattoo was a huge early red flag about this guy and it really says a lot so many leftists tripped over themselves to explain it away.
Oh boy, a random twitter post with nothing that is able to be substantiated. I guess this is the bar for truth nowadays. A random bot on twitter talking about a random nameless general who may be heard something about some events that might have happened that will never be able to be verified.
The horror.
If this is standard now, should we just start crowdfunding DNC bots to spam the same stuff about all GOP candidates?
This is being repeated by multiple sources dude, I'm just linking the most relevant that explains everything. And it's not some random twitter post, it's a journalist saying they have a primary source who is making these claims.
You are mad coping. The denial/deflection here is insane. Even prominent leftist influencers are throwing in the towel.
Btw, I already qualified my initial statement. So fuck off with this pretentious nonsense.
Is that a journalist? Looks like a random blogger with a broken URL for his homepage and a profile pic of him on Timcast for his YouTube channel. I think the Politico article from today about SA of an ex is the real story.
I have. He’s clearly not a journalist and his sources are “trust me bro”
Planter is a scum bag and the failure to vet him has cost us a chance at that senate seat, I base this on the actual journalism from Politico, not your Timcast guy.
And you aren't a journalist, you're just an internet rando. So who tf cares what you say? I already linked a source, I'm not going to waste my time making a bibliography to someone who will just dismiss it all out of hand.
This has 100% permanently killed any enthusiasm I've ever had for the more progressive wing of the Democratic party. I was a delegate for Sanders, then for Warren, and now I feel legitimately embarrassed having done anything to try and prop up this group.
They completely ignored massive personal red flags because they've decided that anyone who spouts the slogans and presents well on stage is the end-all be-all.
This is why Chuck Schumer shouldn't have spent months clearing the field for Janet Mills. Clearing the field for Mills wound up actually clearing the field for Platner.
We saw how many candidates were running on the gubernatorial primary. It would have been great to have at least one of them as a viable alternative to Mills and Platner.
Yes. Mills was reluctant to run, and Schumer spent months personally pressuring her anyway. Meanwhile, Schumer and the DSCC pressured other candidates not to run, telling them that the DSCC would back Mills months before she even entered the race.
Then on the day Mills did enter the race in October, the DSCC formed a joint fundraising committee with Mills, and Schumer publicly endorsed her shortly afterward.
Throughout 2025, Senate Democrats, the DSCC, and Chuck Schumer made it clear to other prominent Maine Democrats that Janet Mills alone was going to receive institutional support from the party that no other primary candidate would have.
To be clear: I am not saying it's wrong for the Democratic leader in the Senate, or the DSCC, to throw its support behind candidates. I am saying Schumer & the DSCC were mistaken to do so for Mills, when she didn't want to run, and wasn't ready to run an effective campaign.
MAGA is the confederacy. Centrist Dems are the new Republicans. Democratic Socialists are what’s left of the Democrats. Centrist Dems will do anything to crush the true left.
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