Graham Platner Pretty Sure The Establishment Was Asking For It
Don't let the door hit you, bud.
Well, if there was any doubt what kind of man Graham Platner is before the past couple days, watching how he’s handled his exit from Maine’s US Senate race filled in all the rest of the blanks. He refused to simply gather his things and leave, he dawdled as long as possible, and then he released an 11-minute video explaining why actually all of this is The Establishment’s fault, like The Establishment was asking for it, like The Establishment had sore glutes.
Ultimately, somewhere in there, he announced he was quitting the race.
There’s a lot in this video, but spoiler, there’s not a moment where he takes any responsibility, so if you’re looking for that, you can skip it:
“This is all false,” he says early on. Not only is it false, he says, but “it’s not real.” We guess his accuser has just been hallucinating all these years.
“We were not looking to get into politics,” he says, setting himself up as the one who deserves praise and glory here, not condemnation. “We had no desire to run for office.” (He wasn’t referring to himself as the royal “we,” he started that part by talking about him and his wife collectively.)
“I just want you to think about, like, what you would do, as a regular person, in a position where a much larger world, large forces were working against you personally to accuse you of the worst thing that a person could do. [biiiiiig deep breath].”
He’s still only a minute and a half in. He whines right there that the “corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner.” As if we didn’t all read the extremely detailed, well-sourced, well-corroborated allegation and decide for ourselves.
“Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end!”
Sorry, wrong party, this one doesn’t give out merit badges for sexual assault accusations like the MAGA Epstein Republicans.
“I think it’s really important to understand why this is happening in the timeline.”
Because a woman says you raped her and she has the receipts? But nooooo, it’s not his fault! He says it’s all rigged because this was the last week to get him off the ballot! It’s a set-up!
“It’s not the false allegations, though, that have brought us to where we are. It’s the fact that they are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us.”
Hate it when the political establishment puts structural pressure on guys just because a woman credibly says he raped her.
“We live in a political system that is not built for normal people.”
Normal folks who aren’t altar boys who are always getting accused of salt-of-the-earth rape?
“It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish.”
Oh my fucking God, ask all the other progressive and DSA candidates who haven’t been accused of anything like this, who are currently winning races nationwide, how they feel about that. Ask folks like Zohran Mamdani why their endorsements got lost in the mail to begin with. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who we are guessing clocked who this guy was the second he walked into the bar. Are they part of tHe sYstEM?
He’s only three and a half minutes in. You know those split seconds during Kyle Rittenhouse’s testimony just before he started doing those clown cries? That’s Platner’s demeanor throughout this video. It’s remarkable that he hasn’t bloodied his knuckles punching the bumper of his truck on camera yet.
“They’re going to take everything away from us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things we need to run a campaign.”
Yep, it’s a conspiracy, literally everyone is against you. Bye, though!
“They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the nominee.”
Uhhhhhhh, sorry, buddy, but do you think all your voters are still with you? Yes, yes, he does. (Very, very doubtful!) Because he thinks he is God’s gift to everything, which is remarkable because Graham Platner, for all his alleged bad boy ruggedness, is nowhere near hot enough to be pulling this poor-me, please-feel-sorry-for-me kind of shit. Dude looks like a Temu Build-A-Bear version of a sexy, blue collar bad boy. Dude looks like he still stinks even after he comes home and takes a shower to wash off a day of oyster-touching.
Dude looks like he knows actually hot bad boy types, but like they run rival oyster farms and give him dirty looks at the diner, because they know he’s a scumbag too.
But no sorry, this is happening because people would like a chance to at least try to salvage a win out of what was setting itself up to be Susan Collins’s easiest re-election yet.
Susan Collins is concerned today, because her entire campaign strategy of dropping oppo on Graham Platner every two weeks until November likely just got flushed down the toilet.
You may have more patience in you for the rest of the video, but we sure didn’t. Unsurprisingly he tries to dictate what comes next, because he thinks he’s still got leverage here. He keeps blaming the “donor class” and the “entrenched forces,” like he’s a hero in a fucking video game. He finally, after holding you hostage for seven and a half minutes with his sob story, announces that he’s getting the fuck out.
“This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think it’s an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not. We’re not doing it because of the allegations. We’re doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power.”
Are the powers in the room with us right now? Did they say you drunkenly raped them like a common drunken rapist piece of shit with a Nazi tattoo?
So anyway, that is where we closed tab.
By the way, look who can’t help but defend the credibly accused rapist:
Just cannot help himself. Game recognizing game?
The only thing we do agree with Platner on — but more like we agree with Dean Obeidallah, who made the same argument but isn’t a scumbag — is that Maine Democratic Party leaders do indeed need to read the room and not fuck this up, that this is not the time for trying to snake somebody “mainstream” back into the race, to try to find a way to let senile James Carville-type thinking claw its way back into this race. The voters have indeed said they want something different, a different kind of politics and a different kind of (progressive) candidate.
Dean writes, “If Maine’s Democratic party leaders want to win, then the choice is clear: Pick a candidate that most aligns with Platner’s economic populist message that inspired people to support him. That is why he won 72% of the vote just last month in the Democratic primary.” And Dean mentions a few names and gives background, without pushing any of them specifically. And we cosign that.
The Maine Democrats released this statement on where things will go from here:
And more from the Bangor Daily News:
The Maine Democratic Party’s state committee voted Wednesday to hold a nominating convention to select a replacement for U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, according to a party statement and an account of the meeting shared with the Bangor Daily News.
More than 100 state committee members attended the meeting and voted in favor of the convention process, the party said in a statement. The convention would include 500 delegates elected proportionally by county committees, along with the entire state committee, according to the account of the meeting.
This is salvageable, and indeed, the Maine Democrats are the only ones who can ruin this at this point. (No pressure!) We’re only around 100 days out from the election, which we are sure will activate PTSD in a lot of people, but Maine is a lot smaller than the United States of America. We’re sure they can find a bold progressive who doesn’t stink like Graham Platner stinks right now, and we’re sure that campaign can chart a course to beating the shitfire out of Susan Collins.
In this electoral environment? Lord. The Senate races in Texas, Ohio, Alaska, and Iowa are tied up. Literally anyone should be able to find the momentum to beat Susan Collins in a state Kamala Harris won after 107 days by seven points.
Don’t fuck it up, Maine Democrats.
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I yearn for simpler days when a Donna Rice could sit on Gary Hart's lap in the cockpit of an ironically named boat and cause a candidate withdrawal.
Madame Grumpe and I are on the Minnesota shores of Lake Superior celebrating our 20th anniversary. This is the first time in a couple days that we have an internet connection so I will keep it short.
Crap! He is still alive damnit an fuck Ted Cruz.
Over and out,
MG