If you’ve been paying attention to the impact of scandals in politics, it is absolutely no surprise that revelations about Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner have not slowed his campaign.
The combination of his Nazi tattoo, offensive Reddit posts, and mistreatment of women—including allegations of both infidelity and physical aggression—makes his path to winning in November harder. But unless there are more, and considerably worse, revelations, most Maine Democrats will vote for him and Democrats nationally will generally stay in his corner. Beating Republican Sen. Susan Collins is just too important—so the argument goes.
There are two reasons that Platner hasn’t been drubbed out of the race. The first is that electing problematic men is a tale as old as U.S. history. I mean, the author of the Declaration of Independence had an affair with an enslaved woman, and Sally Hemings was not exactly in a position to refuse Thomas Jefferson.
In more recent history, we knew Bill Clinton was a philanderer before the 1992 primaries even started. He won the wide-open Democratic primary and then got elected president twice. Most of the claims against him involved sexual harassment and consensual affairs, but there was at least one unadjudicated assault allegation.
Now, President Trump stands as the prime example of a problematic candidate winning anyway. The first “October surprise” of 2016 was the infamous Access Hollywood tape, featuring Trump talking about how he could basically assault women with impunity. Quite a few women had already accused him of assault and harassment.
In part, thanks to the second October surprise—“but her emails!”—Trump won the presidency anyway. A later civil judgment that Trump had probably assaulted E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s didn’t stop him from getting reelected. Of course, if the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that Trump encouraged and failed to stop didn’t end his subsequent prospects, it’s silly to think sexual assault would.
Republicans contorted themselves to get behind Trump. In 2011, only 36 percent of Republicans agreed that an elected official who behaves immorally in their personal life could still behave ethically in their professional life. Somehow, by late 2016, 70 percent of Republicans agreed.
Democrats didn’t really move on the question—about half agreed that an immoral personal life doesn’t preclude being a good elected official. They have spent the past decade pointing out Trump’s problems, only now to perform similar contortions to accommodate Platner. “But Trump” is the common refrain used to give Platner a pass.
This leads to the second reason Platner hasn’t been sent packing: Asking Democrats to cross over to vote Republican, and vice versa, is a very high bar to clear, especially in the current hyper-polarized era. In other countries, you would simply choose to support another party whose beliefs are not too far from your own, but the U.S. two-party system locks us into a choice between a party that holds most of your own views, or its polar opposite.
So both sides play the game: The behavior is abhorrent when the other side’s candidate does bad things, but somehow just not as big a deal on their own side.
Democrats are testing the limits of the #MeToo movement that erupted during Trump’s first term. When the news broke about Platner getting rough with an ex-girlfriend, one of the chief journalistic architects of #MeToo, Jodi Kantor, said these allegations were “not classic Me Too accusations” because it was not a workplace problem. Most of Trump’s problems were also not workplace problems, but Kantor was perfectly willing to criticize him in the same CNN segment.
There does seem to be one red line in the sand: Republican Roy Moore narrowly lost a 2017 special election for U.S. Senate in deep red Alabama after several women accused him of sexual misconduct when they were underage. But that was a rare case.
Most voters stick with their party even if the candidate is flawed, so we end up electing and reelecting candidates with skeletons falling out of their closets. The behavior is not OK, but spare me the pearl-clutching. We know that being a generally scummy guy is not a political deal-breaker. Pretending otherwise is a facade trotted out when the problems are on the other side of the aisle.
Partisans try to save face by pandering to women and acting like such behavior is a huge affront to Americans’ traditional Puritan mores. Then they go vote for the problematic dudes anyway.
Contributing editor Natalie Jackson is an independent pollster and consultant.
