Graham Platner Must Go
Democrats made the Devil's bargain with Graham Platner. The Adversary has come to collect.
By now we should all be aware of the horrifying rape allegation made against Maine’s U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, made by a woman who had already gone on record to accuse him of “unsettling” and violent behaviour.
And just minutes before I sat down to write these very words, yet another story about Graham Platner’s troubling history of violent misogyny dropped, from another of his previous accusers, who alleged that he frequently, nonconsensually removed his condom during sex. This, too, is a form of rape.
The latest allegations, extensively corroborated by the accusers’ friends and loved ones, and contemporaneous texts and documentation, come after an earlier round of revelations that showed Platner as a man with a history of aggression, violence, and entitlement towards women, stretching back for over a decade—and unnervingly close to the present. The most recent rape allegation dates back to 2021.
Platner’s Totenkopf tattoo by itself should’ve disqualified him from becoming one of this country’s hundred most powerful people; the bizarre, conflicting stories he told about its origin inspired no confidence. Meanwhile, his social media posts were distant sirens in the night that warned of coming danger—one where he said rape victims needed to “just need to take some responsibility for themselves” feels like a case in point now. Such attitudes are rarely, if ever, completely disconnected from behaviour.
In the wake of the rape allegations, it is abundantly clear that this man cannot represent himself let alone the state of Maine, nor help the Democratic Party recover the spirit of Reconstruction that our nation so desperately requires. Such a spirit is necessarily pluralist, necessarily liberal in the best sense—of inclusion, equality, shared dignity. He must withdraw from the Senate race and allow the Democratic Party of Maine to determine a path forward. Without him. …
Continue reading this article by Katherine Alejandra Cross, “Graham Platner Must Go,” here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/graham-platner-must-go/