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Graham Platner was accused of rape on Monday, and it quickly became clear that he will never be a United States Senator. After days of delay, he finally suspended his campaign in a long and grievance-filled video on Wednesday night. The prospect of his victory was doubtful even before Monday, when a woman he once dated, Jenny Racicot, went on the record to Politico alleging that in 2021, a very drunk Platner let himself her house, when she had told him not to come over. Racicot says she realized he was there when she heard strange noises; then, she says he raped her, forcing intercourse without a condom while she repeatedly told him no.
Politico reported that it reviewed emails between Racicot and her therapist about the alleged encounter. The outlet also interviewed a boyfriend Racicot later confided in about the alleged incident, and reviewed messages she shared with another woman warning her away from Platner, long before the start of his political career. Platner denies wrongdoing, saying: “Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.” But he put out a video saying that he would “reflect on the best path forward” for his campaign. Since Platner may have known about the inevitability of this accusation becoming public, one wonders if the best time for such reflection might have been several months ago, when Maine voters still had the chance to select a more worthy and more viable candidate.
Such apology videos were a staple of Platner’s campaign, which will be remembered, above all, for a series of consecutive and sometimes bizarre scandals – all of which concerned the personal conduct of the candidate, an oyster farmer and former mercenary, and each of which was accompanied by promises from the campaign that there were no more skeletons in the closet yet to be revealed, promises that were scarcely uttered before a new scandal developed.
Based on all this, it is my assessment that Racitot’s allegation is credible. Many others seem to agree: seemingly every prominent Democrat quickly called on Platner to drop out of the race. But at least one major politician came to his defense. Asked about Platner on Wednesday, Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, said: “It’s really a question of whether or not you believe the woman. A lot of people say big falsehoods.”
Platner’s controversies were egregious in their own right, and frequently bizarre. There was of course his Nazi-icon tattoo, a Totenkopf, which Platner claims to have gotten years ago while on leave with some of his military buddies in Croatia. Platner says he did not know the meaning of the skull-and-crossbones image – an assertion that strains credulity, and has been contradicted by the testimonies of people from his past, who said he referred to the tattoo as “my Totenkopf”.
Defenders of Platner wrote off the tattoo as a drunken mistake; one wonders whether other candidates, perhaps those who were not white men, would be forgiven for a similar transgression. And while it always seemed unlikely that the tattoo reflected any secret Nazi allegiance on Platner’s part – frankly, it was difficult to imagine him thinking that hard – the likelier explanation was damning in its own right: that he was habitually drunk and thoughtless, that he had shallow commitments and bad judgement, and that he was recklessly oblivious, if not indifferent, to the hierarchies of race and gender, or to the gravity of history. Someone who can wear a Nazi tattoo with a cavalier irony is not someone suited to the responsibilities of the Senate.
The tattoo should have been the end of it. It wasn’t. Because Platner stayed in the race and retained support after the Totenkopf tattoo was revealed, voters were also forced to learn about his long history of internet commentary. Among other things, in these writings Platner had suggested that rural voters, like those he promised to win over in Maine, were bigoted and stupid. He justified illegal and contemptuous conduct in war, like urinating on the bodies of Taliban fighters. He made strange and often inventively prejudiced statements, like his assertion that Black restaurant patrons do not tip.
Platner credited these statements and others to what he said was a history of excessive drinking and PTSD following his time in conflict zones. He pitched himself as a changed man who had undergone a process of redemption, and surrogates made statements about the necessity of forgiveness that had the tenor of moral blackmail. He said that he was being honest, at last, about his past, about his judgement, about the scope of his behavior. He said that nothing else would come out. Some people, I guess, wanted to believe him.
But as more and more controversies emerged, with Platner himself always seeming a little surprised that new revelations and allegations about his behavior were yet again coming to light, all these declarations of his newfound honesty and integrity became difficult to credit.
Part of what makes Racicot’s account credible to me is that so many of Platner’s controversies related to his treatment of women. In 2013, posting under the memorable moniker “P-Hustle”, Platner said on a Reddit thread that rape and sexual assault victims should “take some responsibility” for their attacks. He downplayed sexual assault in the military, and allegedly referred to women as “hatchet wounds”. Until quite recently, he seems to have been prolifically sexting with women who were not his wife. Earlier in his campaign, he and his spouse released a bizarre video in which the couple announced that they were trying to conceive a child via IVF, and took pains to emphasize that their fertility problems pertained to her body, not his.
Most troublingly, a month ago, an ex-girlfriend of Platner’s, Lyndsey Fifield, alleged on the record to the New York Times that Platner once physically restrained her and locked her in a bedroom during an argument, an incident that she said left physical marks. (Platner “strongly disputes” any claims of physical intimidation or altercations, his campaign said.) On Tuesday, Fifield further alleged, in an interview with the Washington Post, that Platner habitually removed condoms without her consent – an act that activists describe as a form of sexual assault and which several states, including Maine, have recognized as a civil violation. (His campaign, in yet another statement, called the claims “categorically false” and “politically motivated”.)
This pattern of alleged behavior is recognizable to those who have studied violence against women. It made it seem inevitable that more, and more serious, allegations against Platner would soon come to light. When I first saw Racicot’s rape accusation, I was very sad, but I was not surprised.
It is difficult but necessary to acknowledge that to some of Platner’s recruiters and most influential backers in the Democratic party, such a swaggering, reckless, and casually brutish masculinity was understood not as a liability, but as a virtue. Platner was the hero – and the creation – of a sect of Democratic operatives who believe that the party has become too feminized, and that the solution to its electoral woes is to recast itself in a more macho image – primarily by advancing white male candidates of unimpeachable heterosexuality and rugged aesthetics.
Until Racicot’s accusation became public on Monday, Platner’s defenders were even willing to cite his gruff and misogynist treatment of women as evidence of his virility and authenticity, a kind of masculine credential; those who objected to it, in turn, were subjected to mockery and contempt.
The social media power user Ken Klippenstein wrote approvingly that Platner’s ascendance meant that “the era of smoothgroin [sic] politicians is coming to an end”. The thinktank denizen Matt Stoller was similarly effusive when he called Platner’s campaign “a rejection of Dem HR lady politics”. And Ryan Grim, the journalist and founder of Drop Site News, said in a video segment after Platner won his primary that he hoped the candidate would force progressives to confront supposed bigotry against white men. It was hard to read such statements as anything other than contempt for women. Until he was publicly accused of sexual assault, one wonders whether some Platner supporters found his treatment of women affirmatively appealing, even aspirational. For his part, after Racicot’s rape allegation became public, Grim took issue with a detail of her story that Politico did not include, posting a video citing a text she had allegedly sent to Platner about needing a massage. Drop Site News later deleted the video and claimed that it was not Grim’s intention to justify the alleged assault. A bit late Perhaps Mr. Grim would also like to ask what she was wearing.
But if the pro-Platner pundit class appeared to find his misogyny refreshing, there’s not much evidence that actual voters did. The theory of the case for those who believed in Platner was electability: that his questionable behavior and bigoted past statements would read as authentic to the white working class voters whose support has become the sine qua non of US political legitimacy. These voters, we were told, would like that Platner had said ignorant and politically incorrect things; would like that he seemed so unpolished, so uncareful, so unguarded.
Put aside for a moment that this theory betrays a rather low opinion of the working class: it also does not seem to have been true. In polls released just before Racicot’s allegation became public, Platner was trailing his opponent, incumbent Republican Susan Collins, among voters without a college degree. The reason? Many said he lacked “good character” and “the right kind of moral values”.
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