But they voted for Nixon, Reagan, and Trump twice.

Republicans have no morals or ethics at all. It's fucking scary.

That's their strategy and media companies are complicit.

I'm not a member of an organized political party, I'm a Democrat.

anyway.

They're squabbling over their pick going over like a dry fart delivered during eulogy, and just want the world to know it should have listened to them!

I'm watching people compare sexting to drugging and raping women.

Yeah. That's just bitterness coming out without the executive function overriding it before the keys get tapped.

And I say this as someone who really doesn't want Becerra, but if it's him vs. a Republican, I'ma STFU about it.

Platner's going to be the candidate. People need to deal with it.

"Sexting!" from the same people who were all out of sorts that Cuomo lost to Mamdani.

It's excessively disingenuous.

Bad character. Bad actions.

MAGA overlooks that sh*t. Doesn't mean everyone has too.

I didn't like Cuomo either. I did and do fully support Zoharan Mamdani. Mamdani is an excellent representative. He doesn't belong in the same conversation.

Would you rather:

A politician who sexted and whose marriage seems to have ridden that out?

Or! A politician with a clean personal life who enabled policy that left the employment of new mothers vulnerable, showed abject indifference to unions, supported tax breaks for the rich, etc. etc. etc.

It's a testament to our puritanical roots that we'll get all caught up in what is inconsequential personal behavior between two people while overlooking that the policies certain politicians support, the donations they take, and the lobbyists they give favors to that have far, far, far greater effects.

It feels like "bad character" is always over stupid shit, when the real large scale projects never seem to be down to "bad character." Politician votes for bad policies again and again, but hey, at least their marriage is nice?

When a crime has been committed, someone come find me.

I have never asked or expected a candidate to be perfect, but this is not even close to normal when you add it all up. This is like George Santos level.

This isn't stupid shit and it's quite offensive to suggest it is.

with that many issues. That we know of.

Nope/

He's a politician who had a nazi tattoo, is a rape apologist, still uses the word retarded as a slur, told an antisemitic YouTube host he was a big fan, has a bunch of other problematic reddit posts, and shortly after getting married was busted sexting women who weren't his wife.

Except the sexting. And if the tattoo didn't budge that needle, I doubt this will.

I'm on record repeatedly noting the guy's got some problems and wouldn't have been my first choice.

But I also live in reality where he's going to be the nominee, and it was obnoxiously on-brand for our leadership to go, "You know what'll excite people? An 80 year old in their first term whose been slap-fighting with her own party the past four years!"

There are plenty of ways this went dog-legged. Maybe glance at the leadership's absolutely fucking terrible decision making for the past ten years and start with that. Because Platner's candidacy and the fact he is not only viable, but the overwhelming choice of Maine Democrats so far, is 100% down to the party's failures. Schumer personally recruited Mills.

This was their bright idea, and the surprise people have that it's now blown up all over the place is a testament to their lack of political skill and awareness of what voters are like nowadays.

If people are mad about Platner, fine, be mad.

And then demand people in leadership start retiring. I mean, if we're serious about how we got to this stage.

I suspect we will not see this.

Look around. Do you want more of this?? Do you?? Seriously, DO YOU??? If we don't start using our fucking heads, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE'RE GOING TO GET!

Pukes don't care about their candidate's improprieties for one simple reason. IT'S THE AGENDA THAT MATTERS, not the candidate. You want more of THEIR agenda, then keep this shit up. In that respect, they're way smarter than many Dems. Way smarter.

NT

That's what we're going to get with the shit. It's like Gaza all over again. Look where that got us.

Sadly we are likely to get more of this shit because it looks like we might nominate a very problematic candidate who needs to face her in the general election. I'm not comfortable with our odds.

Neither are good. One's not as bad as the other. Make a choice. And while you're at it. Welcome to life.

"You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit" - Nina Turner

I didn't care for her wrong and awful point then and I still don't.

I don't vote in Maine.

Take it from someone who's had to eat a few "half" shit sandwiches.

I strongly disagree with the situation she did apply it to which was the 2020 Presidential election.

it certainly DOES apply to this situation; yes indeed

Dead wrong.

Sara Gideon was polling ahead of Collins, too.

I will stress again that I do not want Collins to return to the Senate for another six years. She's awful. But my optimism for flipping this seat isn't as high as it was.

he seems to be our best bet unless some big plot twist comes up in the next few weeks. Yes, he's not who I would have picked, but if he can beat her, he adds one more seat toward us controlling the committees. One more link in the chain of saving our Democracy. And those really are the stakes.

He still seems to be our best bet for that seat.

ranks below those, the totenkopf, him stating he was a communist, etc., etc. The "r's" are going to have a field day (hypocritical, I know) with him. I have already seen one rather large piece they have on him and his oyster business. Whether it is true or not, I have no idea.

You want more of the Republican agenda? Do you? And when we get exactly that for voting stupid, don't come boohooing to me. I don't want to hear it.

And we get one more seat to give us the Committee control. As we are fighting for the life of our Democracy and need every seat we can get.

Let's keep our eyes on the prize.

That's why we lose.

Our side never seems to stand behind anyone.

Look at Biden, he had one bad debate performance and 3/4 of the party suddenly thought he should be thrown out like garbage.

Then, they had Kamala, a shiny new candidate, followed by the screaming that we should have had a primary (in the short time before the election)....then, when she lost, it was all about her failings as a candidate and "we should have had a primary" and a bunch of other crying over things that were done.

Do you live in Maine? If not, you have no say over the outcome of the primary or the election.

I don't live there. I don't get to choose their candidate. I get to vote on my choice in Iowa and I hope that the Iowa seat and the Maine seat go to Democrats.

There are plenty of Democrats I find to be not what I would choose. I don't pretend that I am the arbiter of morality for the entire country though.

nobody is looking for garbage either.

Shouldn't be too much to ask.

The MAGA way does not appeal to me at all and never will I am not interested in pursuing the MAGA way.

Does the Republican agenda appeal to you? Because that's what we're going to get if we play politics this way. It never ceases to amaze me that people actually think politics is some honorable activity. It isn't. People are imperfect and politics is a machiavellian business. But it's what drives policy. Pukes understand that, if little else. We screw ourselves.

But go on and do just that. Just don't come crying about the outcome. You'll get no sympathy from me.

You do realize that what should have been an easier flip will now be quite difficult if Platner wins the primary, right?

Not a single Mainer has voted in the primary let alone in the general and I am not as confident as your are that Mainers will toss out Collins in favor of this unknown guy with all the baggage. It won't just be Democrats voting. Independents and Republians get to vote too.

To suggest supporting her would of lead to an easy win is comical

That she ran virtually no campaign, raised so little money she couldn't afford her Zoom bills, and got heckled out of every town hall she attended.

Mainers did not want her.

And she didn't want the job.

She was NOT the perfect candidate in reality, despite what her resume might've said in theory

They just found this one and settled?

Imagine that, a politician who listens and talks to regular people instead of asking what the party bossy want

This is the one we have, unless there's a big upset in the primaries which doesn't look likely.

Not a good argument against all the stuff that keeps coming out on Planter's own actions.

I want Collins gone, too. I'm pissed that he didn't clean up his act before he started running.

And I don't like at all the way he's dissing other Dems... We need all Dems to win across the country for the Midterms. He can't do it alone. He has some nerve attacking other Dems.

Far too many Dems are fixated on hand-wringing over flaws than getting out and saving the GD republic.

Throw out the old rulebook - it's not useful to keep using it when the GOP set their copy on fire 40 years ago.

need to accept and deal with it if we want to survive, move forward in a positive way, and possibly one day actually thrive.

What people were "all out of sorts" that Cuomo lost to Mamdani?

I see this differently. I think Platner is a ticking time bomb scheduled to go off in October. He never should have gotten this far. There have got to be better candidates in Maine.

I'm seeing a lack of leadership on the part of the DNC. A short list of things that have me very worried:

1. The DNC released a report on their analysis of what went wrong in 2024 and it has no analysis, no action plans. It ignores big issues like the I/P protests. It appears to have been written by AI. Basic facts are wrong. (Our local paper reviewed the section on the gubernatorial win in NC and reported that this "analysis" got basic facts wrong and missed the big point - which was that the Republicans ran a disastrous candidate.)

2. I'm watching Talarico twist in the wind in TX and all our party seems to be doing to support him is engage in schoolyard taunting online.

3. Swalwell. Turns out it's more than sexting and even more than harassment. This should have been flagged much earlier. At least he resigned but it's a bad look for us. Should never have run.

4. Platner. Sexting on Kik is not good. His campaign knew about it a year ago. Where's the strategy? The crap keeps piling up. His little Tottenkamp tattoo that he's cute about. His false origin story. Years of problematic statements. Why was he encouraged to run?

5. Most importantly, where is the pushback every single day as we watch our country go down the tubes? Why aren't our leaders holding press conferences every day? I don't want to watch Schumer read from a piece of paper. Where is the fire and strength?

I agree that Democratic voters can be stupid about little things. I'm still angry that Al Franken was forced out (looking at Schumer again).

Whatever the hell is wrong we need to fix it fast.

Which is why I've always been a little "Eh . . ." about him. But given the party's major alternative would be a geriatric running for a first term after she managed a series of very corporate friendly actions (and boy howdy, those vetos) during her governorship, I get it. I think if I lived in Maine, I'd get Platner's appeal even more. Not merely populism, but just sheer frustration at politicians making choices they do not have to outside of what's good for their vested interests over what's good for the people.

He very well might implode. Absolutely. He's risky to say the least. But what really prompted me is the . . . let's just say pattern of names who went hard to bat for Cuomo and almost to the mat for Swalwell until that became virtually impossible who are now play-acting, "Verily, servant, fetch me the smelling salts!" over Platner. It's like people don't get the Internet is forever. I can see what you wrote in the past year about much worse people, y'all.

It's cynical pretense, and I just hate that shit.

Completely agree with you on Talarico. But you know what? Maybe it's a good thing our national party is mostly leaving it alone. Do we really want Newsom's interns bothering Texan voters? How would that play there? The people who run the national party - particular the ones who hang around social media all day every day - have proven themselves time and time again to have no idea what a normal voter looks like. They seem keyed into a terminally online perspective and no one else. Sometimes I wonder if they've even talked to someone who lives outside of Twitter or a city. It may redound to Talarico's benefit if they just let him do his thing without their "help." I've spent a little time in Texas, and they think people from Oklahoma are practically foreigners. Maybe the coastal consultant class should leave those plane tickets unused.

Your fifth point is where it gets interesting. Platner seems willing to be that type of politician. Maybe we should hang up our pearls for a moment and just let that ride. Especially, and I wrote a long post on this before, we're entering an age where a lot of people are going to have long social media histories that aren't going to be perfectly curated for political respectability.

We've been electing "respectable" people, and those people keep doing some not so respectable things in regards to policy and governing. I'm willing to give some people of ill-repute a shot if they're going to champion policies that help people on the ground. Barring criminality of course. We can and should draw a line there.

And this is, after all, the party that still holds Bill Clinton in some esteem. Acting like he wasn't a much worse mess back in the day - and still pretending he wasn't.

The hypocrisy is just too much to let slide without comment. It's like those people on the Right. Their pastor molests a school bus and they don't have much to say. But when a politician they dislike does something even a tenth as bad, suddenly they're in front of cameras, "As a Chreeestyan . . . ."

I don't enjoy it when we emulate that.

People are so very concerned. Oh so very concerned.

And the purity tests, oh my God.

I've been accused of having purity tests because I'm critical of leadership but I recall a whole lot of people here supporting the love gov Cuomo because he wasn't an anti-genocide young Muslim. Oh, how we had to hear how he was the real Democrat and Mamdani was an upstart, flash in the pan know nothing.

Janet Mills didn't want the job. She didn't campaign effectively. She didn't raise money. She would not have beat Susan Collins.

Graham Platner, by all metrics, is beating Susan Collins.

Whatever sex he has, I don't care as long as he doesn't fuck the country like Collins.

Platner doesn't have good track record with rape, either

I'll take the imperfections.

Schiff, Franken and Hill.

These 'imperfections' keep leaking, lots of them and they are giving fodder to our enemy. Yes, we need that seat, and I am afraid we may lose it. I just wish we had a better vetting process and the big names that came out with immediate endorsements used it. That includes my Senator that I adore.

That said, I am hoping for the best in the primary and a huge Democratic victory in the general election.

She didn't, because she was never really running. She was being run.

My understanding is she didn't want the job, and that the DSCC - Schumer and Gillibrand basically begged her.

On the campaign, she did terribly. I watched her town halls and zoom calls. She was contemptuous of her constituents. She didn't want to be doing that.

Nor should she have been asked. She had a rich, successful career and didn't need to fight at 78 years old.

Heck, if she was promising 1 term as a 78 year old freshman Senator, that is a pretty troubling sign. Worthy of concern.

Gov. Janet Mills saw she was losing by 40-50 points because Maine did not like what she was selling. They preferred the dude with the nazi tattoo and the great speeches.

She wasn't going to lose, she was going to be humiliated by a man with a nazi tattoo.

She didn't want to actively be a part of that.

So, she stepped away.

Because... she was just on the tracks set for her by Schumer and Gillibrand.

with devotion's visage, and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself.”

It's not like voting for felon turned out well, did it?
Maybe there are good reasons to not vote for the felon.

We're also very good at circular firing squads.

But we're in a war with the nazi fascist republican party. We need to overcome this tyranny together. Cheers!

Unless he runs for President or VP, I’m never gonna have to vote for him.

Y’all do what yer gonna do. It’s got nothing to do with me.

Too many purity tests.

Dems screwing themselves because fundamentally they don't understand politics. Politics is machiavellian at its heart and no amount of happy thoughts will EVER change that. It many times requires holding one's nose to advance the agenda. And it's the AGENDA that's important, not that Platner may have some improprieties. The only time those improprieties should come into play is if it will cost him the general AND if there's an alternative. There's not. Mills dropped out so hold your damn nose.

If you're not down with all that, what it takes to win, you don't get to do the governing part. Republicans understand that, if little else. The supposedly smart party many times does not and has a long, storied history of f'ing itself.

He does seem to be good at politics.

We should get in the trough with Republicans? I recall a great Democrat who said "When they go low, we go high." I stand with her.

I stand with Michelle Obama.

"We lost the gunfight, but at least our KNIVES were clean."

I don't believe you can.

how to be in the minority

However, we're only talking texts. Bad taste, lewd, but in the final analysis, in the big picture, inconsequential.

The culture in America has changed. Things that were socially unacceptable decades ago, though still frowned upon, carry less of a taboo today.

One good thing about this revelation, is that it's coming out now, and will have been flushed down the memory hole well before November.

The main question has to be, would the country be better served with Susan Collins or Graham Platner? What is worse, Collins voting with Trump 96% of the time, or Platner sexting last year?

Democrats not only view the goal but the journey, as well.

As the cliché goes: to victor belongs the spoils

Know your enemy.

"Imperfections"?

If you mean adultery, we've been known to overlook that particular private transgression, to the ultimate good of the country.

If you mean harassment, assault, coercion, yeah, no.

If you mean financial crimes, another hard no.

Refers??

Moreover, anyone who thinks "The end justifies the means" is anything less than REPREHENSIBLE AS A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY has not been paying attention to its historical manifestations.

Democrats will squabble over some text messages he may have received or some tattoo he had from a long time ago and decided not to go vote for him and hand it over to Susan Collins before they vote for him because of their squabble over being perfect. Dems have to vote for Dems no matter what.

Democrats will vote for the Democratic candidate. But independents - who determine our elections - might not vote for a candidate who seems to have his own personal shitstorm following him everywhere.

Pre - Nov 2016 a text or rude comment would have ended a GOP politicians career forever. Today that would probably get them a promotion. After seeing Trump win despite being the most disgusting piece of shit in history, MAGA has been operating under these new rules since then.

Dems are still stuck in 2005 with their "standards". Better get with the times, get tough and win elections like the other side.

Good luck to everyone that is brave enough to run for public office these days. It is a nasty business at best. I seriously doubt that any of us are that "squeaky clean". ☮

The Democratic National Committee, our party's organization, should have one goal: elect Democrats up and down the ticket in every local, state, and national contest.

To achieve that goal our party must find strong candidates, encourage them to run, and support their campaigns with money, messaging, and grass roots support.

A person with Platner's baggage never should have gotten the party's support. There have got to be strong Democratic candidates for senate in Maine.

I'm watching Talarico fight off dirty campaign tactics in TX and I'm not seeing the DNC come to his support with anything more than schoolyard taunts back and forth.

We need a strong party apparatus.

Platner is against the murder and mayhem going on in the mid east, AIPAC will accept nothing but complete support for Israel so they will spend many millions trying to defeat platner

We already have them in cities. We have a cabal of open criminals looting our government and we have a demented, murderous dictator running wild, along with a congress who is sitting back and saying "what problems?"

We don't need to be having this conversation about Democrats.

For the past 25 years, Republicans have never been
bad enough, and Dems have never been good enough.

Me... I have always held my nose and voted for the
Democrat, even when I preferred a different nominee.

We are literally fighting a fascist situation that is being fully enabled by the Republican Party, so it's all hands on deck.

It's Trump fascism or democracy.

in the face of monstrous inhumanity.

WORST Democrat is BETTER than the best Republican.

particulary the few Republicans that still have a few working brain cells…they know he’s garbage in sub-human form…they hate his existence but they will never say it out loud… they will say he’s a complicated man with baggage ..and when they vote they are not voting for a convicted rapist, a pathological liar, a hate spewing psychotic degenerate, they are voting for a Republican..period

We Democrats tend to parse are candidates..what we like and what we don’t like…and we never fully vet them
and rarely discourage the more controversial to sit this one out..and we do all this publicly…

So when the few Republicans that still have a few working brain cells stand before a voting machine (fully aware Trump is a loathsome cretin) they will still pull the “lever” for the loathsome cretin because the Democrats ran a guy with Nazi tattoos..

A lot of people thought that John Fetterman was an excellent candidate, too.

If this is about Platner I have issues with him but he's not Swallwell. Democracy is on the line. We need butts in the seats bottom line and the Republicans are much worse.

The problem is that voters other than Republicans voted for the rapist felon while voters other than Democrats refuse to vote for the imperfect Democratic candidate.

but most people don't sport nazi tattoos

There are three people on the Maine primary ballot. There’s still a choice to make?

or is anything less than that simply an "imperfection"?

Because that seems a rather low bar; is that where we are now?

disgusting

misogyny and white supremacy are now 'imperfections"

got it

As he is neither of those things.

You will not find one record or utterance from him to validate those smears.

You might want to think about why the same people who attacked Mamdani are now attacking Platner.

yeah OK, done here