Head on a Platner

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast

“Head on a Platner” (July 7, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the hosts—Jon Podhoretz (Editor), Abe Greenwald (Executive Editor), Seth Mandel (Senior Editor), and guest Eliana Johnson (Washington Free Beacon Editor)—deliver an in-depth, caustic dissection of the political implosion in Maine surrounding Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. The conversation examines the unraveling of Platner’s campaign, the Democratic Party’s crisis response, the role of the media (specifically The New York Times), and the broader implications for political culture and party machinery—especially the influence of outsider consultants and the normalization of “flawed” candidates.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Platner Debacle: How Did We Get Here?

• Eliana Johnson unpacks the Democratic Party’s selective outrage and tolerance regarding Platner’s scandals:
  • Nazi tattoo? Excused.
  • Reddit posts praising Hamas, sexual deviancy, and violence? Excused.
  • Allegations of violence against conservative women? Excused.
  • Key Trigger: “But finally, if you are a woman of progressive persuasion who makes an accusation, that’s what’s too much.” (Eliana, 02:04)
  • Notably, Bernie Sanders maintained support after others rescinded.
• The group notes that it was only after substantial public outcry and key endorsements were withdrawn that the party felt compelled to act.

2. Democratic Party Tactics: Candidate “Swap Outs”

• Jon raises the history of Democratic maneuvering:
  • “Democrats have a record of swapping candidates out who have won primaries...without the public having a role in the swap.” (05:24)
• Eliana: Chuck Schumer and national leadership will have a major say in choosing Platner’s replacement, likely from a weak bench.
  • “None of the candidates have the buzz and the talent and the energy that Platner had around him.” (Eliana, 06:44)
• Seth jokes, “No matter how unvetted...the floor is Graham Platner...it would be hard to find someone with a Nazi tattoo and multiple credible assault allegations against him...” (07:26)

3. Media Malfeasance: Critiquing The New York Times

• The hosts devote a segment to The New York Times’ coverage:
  • They allege the Times buried the most serious news—Jenny Rasico’s sexual assault allegations—30 paragraphs deep, while foregrounding less damning personal flaws.
  • “That was a deliberate editorial choice that was made. They did not want to surface a charge that incendiary.” (Jon, 16:59)
  • “The story was a way of announcing the lesser flaw in order to hide the larger flaw.” (Jon, 16:59)
  • Seth and Eliana cite firsthand accounts indicating the Times ignored corroborating witnesses.
• Broader Point: The press colluded (actively or passively) with party actors to protect the “chosen” candidate, to the detriment of transparency.

4. Consultants & The Disintegration of the Party

• Jon offers a structural critique of Democratic campaign infrastructure:
  • Outsiders like Morris Katz (DSA strategist) now drive candidate selection and campaign spending, prioritizing small-dollar fundraising and movement-building over vetting or electability.
  • “The party is dead. These firms, these consultants are now the party.” (Jon, 29:08)
  • Consultant incentives: “His incentive is not to do a forensic audit of Graham Platner...He has a separate agenda that is both ideological and personal.” (29:55)
• The danger: hyper-ideological, under-vetted candidates pushed by consultants more interested in activism (and personal gain) than general election strength.

5. The “Redemption” Narrative & Flawed Candidates

• Eliana: The left is now explicitly seeking “flawed” candidates to fit a redemptive arc:
  • “They’ve said, specifically, we’re looking for people with no political background...Yes. He was on Reddit and he said these things. And the fact that he’s now running for office is proof of some kind of redemptive arc.” (35:00)
  • Ro Khanna: “A vote for [Platner] is a vote to redeem America.”
• Seth and Jon both compare this to the rhetoric defending Trump—that embracing flaws is a sort of authenticity. Seth references the “King David” narrative from evangelicals concerning Trump (38:00).

6. Therapeutic Culture vs. Accountability

• Jon: The therapeutic culture is being perverted from a path to self-improvement and humility into an excuse for misdeeds, with “redemption” now used to shield indefensible behavior.
  • “It’s a slander against humanity. It’s a slander against our political system...Therapeutic culture has become an excuse for them to do whatever they want...” (43:32)
• Cites Stephen King defending Platner as evidence of this cultural slippage, rebutting: “Almost all [members of Congress] are not rapists. Everybody is not a criminal.”

7. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Eliana Johnson (02:04): “It wasn’t the Nazi tattoo that disqualified him...It wasn’t him describing himself as a communist...It wasn’t him praising Hamas military tactics. Nope. This is what you have to do to have Ruben Gallego rescind his endorsement.”
• Jon Podhoretz (16:59): “I believe the way to look at that story is that it was a version of Catch and Kill...A way of announcing the lesser flaw in order to hide the larger flaw.”
• Seth Mandel (07:26): “If they just plucked a random name...that person would probably not have nearly as much baggage as Graham Platner.”
• Jon Podhoretz (29:08): “The party is dead. These firms, these consultants are now the party.”
• Eliana Johnson (35:00): “We want people who haven’t run before...the argument is an explicit effort to turn vices into virtues.”
• Jon Podhoretz (43:32): “It’s a slander against humanity. It’s a slander against our political system. And it is the antisepsis of political campaigns...The interesting thing is Platner’s life was dug into. A lot of bad stuff came out and then people...supported him anyway.”
• Richie Torres moment (48:01): Seth lauds Rep. Richie Torres for his “no endorsement to rescind” tweet, calling out hypocrisy as others scramble to distance themselves from Platner only after the political cost becomes clear.

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |:----------:|-----------------------------------------------------| | 02:04 | Eliana lays out what did (and didn't) disqualify Platner | | 05:24 | Discussion of Democratic "swap outs" for bad candidates | | 06:44 | Schumer’s influence and the weak Maine bench | | 07:26 | Seth’s “Platner is the floor” quip | | 16:59 | Deep dive on NYT’s editorial choices (“Catch and Kill”) | | 29:08 | Consultants as the new party infrastructure | | 35:00 | The deliberate search for “flawed” outsider candidates | | 43:32 | Jon’s broad critique of “therapeutic culture” and political slander | | 48:01 | Richie Torres shout-out for avoiding Platner endorsement drama |

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Tone & Language

The conversation is brisk, unsparing, and occasionally sardonic. The hosts combine reported detail, moral outrage, and biting humor. There is a sense of exasperation with both the Democratic Party’s dysfunction and the media’s failures, as well as reflection on how this episode fits into broader trends (“therapeutic culture,” the rise of consultant-driven politics, normalization of candidate “flaws”).

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Takeaway

This episode offers a trenchant critique of how opportunism, therapeutic “redemption” narratives, and the crumbling of party and media gatekeeping leave the political system vulnerable to bad actors. The Platner affair is presented not as a wild outlier but as the predictable consequence of deeper structural and cultural changes on the progressive left—changes mirrored, the hosts concede, by dysfunction on the right as well. The episode is studded with memorable barbs, original insights, and a clear-eyed skepticism of redemption politics untethered from accountability.

Transcript

[Host]

Foreign.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Expect the worst Some drinks and pain

[Seth Mandel]

Some die of thirst no way of

[Jon Pod Horiz]

knowing which way it's going Hope for the best Expect the worst Hope for the best.

[Host]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast Today.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Today is Tuesday, July 7, 2026. I am Jon Pod Horiz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel.

[Host]

Hi, Seth.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

And Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hi, John.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

I just want to warn people that I have an unstable connection here today. And so it might be possible that at some point I will vanish from your screen and from this podcast, at which point the redoubtable Abe Greenwald will take over hosting duties for me and run the conversation with Stakhanovite Stalinist precision. Eliana Johnson, you have been in your position as the editor of the Washington Free Beacon, you have been more than normally concerned with the candidacy in Maine of Graham Platner, issues involving Platner's character, character, his views and various other things. So I assume that yesterday represented a moment of a sober reflection on your part about the choices that you have made in covering Platner, which is to say, should you just have done nothing but cover Platner as opposed to covering other things? Because what is this, the greatest story ever? I mean, it's a horrible story, but it's a great story in every angle. So we're going to try to separate out the strands of all the angles in which this is the greatest story ever for us. So would you like to start?

[Eliana Johnson]

Thank you.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Picking your strand?

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, I think it said so much about state of the Democratic Party in so many ways. The first is that it's so obvious that this is the place we would end up. And it says so much that it wasn't the Nazi tattoo that disqualified him. It wasn't the dozens of posts on Reddit, including about sexual assault and sexual deviancy in so many ways for which everybody made excuses. It wasn't the allegation of violence against a conservative woman. But finally, if you are a woman of progressive persuasion who makes an accusation, that's what's too much. It wasn't him describing himself as a communist. Wasn't him praising Hamas military tactics. Nope. This is what you have to do to have Ruben Gallego rescind his endorsement and Ro Khanna rescind his endorsement. Appears Bernie Sanders still with is still with him. But of course, we all know that men who do this one time anti Semites are people of low character and are likely to have other problems. Um, but it is amazing that it took this long for him to be. You know, we all assume he will be forced. Forced out of the race.

[Seth Mandel]

Can we just have a moment for Ruben Gallego, who is clearly the victim in all this? First Eric Swalwell and now Graham Platner. And Gallego is surrounded by friends who he thinks are great people and just keep disappointing him. It's nothing about Ruben Gallego, who, by the way, is planning his own test run for the presidency. It's just things that keep happening to poor, naive, loving Ruben Gallego.

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, Gallego is another one of these people. You know, somebody who leaves his wife, serves his wife, divorce papers when she's nine months pregnant. Nobody in the mainstream media cares because he's running against Kari Lake. Nobody covers it. Then he's Eric Swalwell's very best pal and is just blindsided by news of Swalwell's behavior. He was hoodwinked. So, you know, that's the guy who we want sitting across from the Chinese. And then, you know, he's spending his campaign cash, taking his family to Disney and going to the Super Bowl. All of this is out there. But, you know, people are gonna be shocked when more information comes out on Gallego.

[Abe Greenwald]

Eliana, you said that it was so obvious that we were going to end up here. By that, do you mean. I mean, to me, it was obvious that Graham Platner was a horrible human being, but it wasn't at all obvious to me that we were going to end up with the Democrats actually reconciling with that.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Platner will likely drop out. But now what? Democrats have a record, of course, of swapping candidates out who have won primaries. Right. Without benefit of the public knowing that they've done so, or the public not having a role in. In. In the swap. Right. McGreevey for Lautenberg in New Jersey, and of course, the big one. Right. Harris for Biden. I wonder whether the stink. Whether you can just keep doing this. Now, Lautenberg won in. In New Jersey in 2003 when McGreevey had to drop out, but of course, Harris lost. Can you just do this without the public being. Without the Democratic public being involved? Can you stage some kind of an emergency Democratic party leader convention in Maine to pick a new candidate. Who's going to pick this candidate? We don't even know what the modality is if he drops out.

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, I do think Chuck Schumer is going to have a big say now, given that he was essentially proven correct in his warnings about Platner. So I think the National Democratic Party will have a big say. There are already names being bandied about, but the names being bandied about are the losing candidates from the gubernatorial primary. So this definitely leaves the Democrats best prospects for a pickup in far worse shape. And none of the candidates have the buzz and the talent and the energy that Platner had around him.

[Seth Mandel]

The good news for Democrats, though, is that if you, no matter how unvetted a candidate they put up the floor, is Graham Platner, right? Like, if they just plucked a random name, if they, like, pulled a William F. Buckley and plucked a random name out of the, you know, main phone book, that person would probably not have nearly as much baggage as Graham Platner. It would be hard to find someone with a Nazi tattoo and multiple credible assault allegations against him and a Reddit history of cheering Hamas and saying how great it was to see American soldiers die and all sorts of things. So I think for, for, for the main Democrats, there's, you know, it's only up from here, but I do wonder if Chuck Schumer.

[Eliana Johnson]

I'm not sure, Seth, that it's only up from here. I'll, I'll come back to that. But yeah, finish. Sorry.

[Seth Mandel]

Look, I was just, just wonder. The other thing that I was wondering was just about if Chuck Schumer, as you say, is going to have a big role in this. Nobody's talking as if Janet Mills is going to un. Suspend her campaign in normal circum. That be a more. Maybe after the primary. It doesn't matter. But I guess is the. Is the feeling that Janet Mills was there to beat Platner, and if it's not going to be Platner, they don't need Janet Mills stepping into this race at all. Like, why are we not hearing about the other candidate after one drops out?

[Eliana Johnson]

I think the view among Democrats after the primary was that Mills's candidacy was too anemic, she was too old, there was very little excitement around her, and that she turned out to be a weak candidate against Platner, around whom there was a lot of energy and excitement. And I think what the Democrats are seeing now is that whoever they, they need to pick somebody who isn't going to ignite a civil war within the party between the progressive wing and the mainstream wing, which is what they have going in Michigan right now. So that's why I think the party is left in a perilous state after this. I would much rather be Susan Collins right now than I would be the Democrats. I think she's in pole position right now.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

I mean, I think that's inarguable. The.

[Eliana Johnson]

And by the way, the baggage wasn't hurting Platner. What. What is hurting Platner was Chuck Schumer. And the DSCC statement that we are not going to put money into your race. The baggage, you know, he was. He was relatively Teflon to all.

[Seth Mandel]

So is that. So what about. So what about other. You mentioned briefly that there, there are possible platinum, like, there's possible platinum, like baggage among other candidates that they're looking at that Platner is not necessarily the floor.

[Eliana Johnson]

Right. Well, I mean. I mean, Platner isn't necessarily the floor because he was performing. Okay. You know, we don't know how the race would have proceeded. And there was excitement and energy around him and he was raising a ton of money from small dollar donors. Now, the Progressive Victory account this morning has put out a statement. One of the candidates whose name is being banded about is a guy named Troy Jackson, the main Senate president who ran in the gubernatorial primary against Janet Mills. And the Progressive Victory account has put out a statement saying, we began asking our contacts on the ground in Maine about Troy Jackson earlier today after seeing suggestions that he should replace Platner against Susan Collins. We received troubling information about not only Jackson's behavior, but behavior of many prominent Maine Democrats toward women more broadly. And they go on to say, you know, they heard that Troy Jackson, in a heated disagreement, struck a female colleague with a bottle he threw at her. There are many witnesses. And it appears this is a widespread open secret in Maine politics and not an isolated incident. So, you know, they're not in a great spot.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, what's incredible to me is, I mean, might the Democrats generally now sort of get this idea that, okay, we tried this, let's get through this and never again, like, you know, take the Democrat bus down to the Bowery and say, hey, who wants to run for something? You know? You know, just raise your hand and you're in.

[Eliana Johnson]

Yeah, we need people with no political experience, just a guy with PTSD who's been through some really rough times, drank heavily, smacked some women, women around, and has a redemptive arc, you know, the apex of which was he was in some troubling relationships. He got married, he had a kick account, was texting some women. But he's redeemed himself as of a year ago.

[Host]

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[Jon Pod Horiz]

The New York Times of course did a big story about Platter's troubles with women. I guess three weeks ago, something like that that surfaced our friend Lindsey Fifield who is the one who who revealed the existence of the Totenkov tattoo and her allegations. And 30 paragraphs into the story it mentioned Jenny Rasico, the woman who came out yesterday basically to say that he had raped her. I mean, he had sexually assaulted her without her consent.

[Eliana Johnson]

Broke into her house.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Broke into her house. Right. Now, she said she came forward because nobody was. People were letting Lindsey Fifield, whom she doesn't know and is a political opponent of, hang out to dry. Why am I bringing this up? Because the New York Times, one of whose reporters on the story was Jodi Cantor, one of the leading.

[Eliana Johnson]

She wasn't on the story. She just.

[Host]

She wasn't.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

I'm sorry.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

No, she meant. She talked about it. She defended the story and the approach on.

[Eliana Johnson]

And said, to be clear, this is not me too. Because there was no power dynamic at work, and they were in a consensual relationship. This is in a completely different category. You have to understand.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Right. But what I wanted to bring up is what the New York Times story was and what it did. And I believe that the way to look at that story is that it was a version of Catch and Kill. The story was Jenny Rasico being assaulted. They did not want to publish the detail about Jenny Rasico being assaulted, so they stepped back and published a story about Graham Platner's troubles with women, burying Jenny Racico's story, for which they had. There were other witnesses who could credibly have supported her, that they could have gone to, that they did not go to, and that therefore, the story was a way of announcing the lesser flaw in order to hide the larger flaw. And that cannot have been, speaking as a longtime newspaper editor, anything but conscious. That was a deliberate editorial choice that was made. They did not want to surface a charge that incendiary. Even if they had it, even if they had nailed it down without question. And this goes to. I mean, it's an extraordinary breach. Not only they can decide they don't want to cover the story at all, but to cover the story and to bury the lead and refuse to cite the more important fact so that you can create this story, which is he said, she said. She said he had Tonkov tattoo, which he does. But she's a Republican operative, and therefore she might have reasons. She was a Republican. She might have reasons. She's trying to get him out of the race for ideological reasons, and therefore you Democrats can still support him, even though she said he mistreated her and of course, had this tattoo. Because this is a Republican op. The attacks on Platner are a Republican op. That couldn't be said about Jenny Rasico. She is a left winger who supports his positions, but thinks that he's a disgusting human being. And they did not do that. They did not tell us that the lieutenant was. They chose not to tell us that

[Eliana Johnson]

the lead of the story was. Of the New York Times story was. On a whirlwind day, Graham Platner rushed home because rumors were spreading about his messy personal life after news reports that he had sent sexual messages to women while he was married. And he worked the phones to talk to other women who had dated to get them to attest that he was a decent guy and, you know, that he was fun and caring. And other women said it was a more complicated story. And what was played up was the political affiliation of Lindsay Fifield, who was in turn slimed and discredited by Platner's political allies because she is a conservative.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

And the paper campaign manager indicated that her story. Who quit, Sorry.

[Abe Greenwald]

And. And the paper indicated her story couldn't be corroborated. I mean, that was, that was what you were supposed to come away with from, from the first story.

[Host]

And Lindsay.

[Seth Mandel]

Well, they, they had, they had done this thing where they had said, like, you know, you. They. To John's point, they had said you couldn't. We couldn't corroborate X. Right. And it turns out, as Lindsay has written online since then in detail that she had given them. Let's say there were two claims that she gave them X and Y. And so she gave that. And gave them five sources of confirmation for all of them. They called two of the five sources, and those two were only able to corroborate why. And they just didn't call the other three who could have corroborated X. They didn't call. And then they said it couldn't be corroborated. And the same. Something similar. I mean, Jenny Rasico hinted, not hinted. I mean, she, she basically said that something similar had happened with her story, which is that they had suggested they had enough information to. From her to make clear what they were dealing with here. So the reader would be. It would be clear to the reader that the story was about really serious allegations. And you wouldn't. And, you know, and she wouldn't have to cross certain lines if she wasn't comfortable to do it. But there were enough people saying the same thing about Graham Platner that that's what the story was about, that, you know, Graham Platner has a problem. And she was led to believe that that was enough for the story. And then it was. And then they went in a totally different direction. Right. And in the story, when they say she declined to elaborate on a certain part. Right. That's self exonerating language. But it's not honest like it's, it may be literally true. But she declined to elaborate, it appears because they, they discouraged her from feeling she had to elaborate further. Right. So there's all these phrases dropped throughout the reporting that hint that something else is, was going on here. And you only get the answer to it when the sources come forward and explain in detail here's how the process went. So we don't want to get too inside baseball, but it is also a look at how these stories come together, the judgments that are made along the way, editorial and otherwise, and what sources are made to expect in certain situations. And clearly those expectations were not met by the New York Times.

[Abe Greenwald]

And it's also an indication of just how all these different parties and forces are pulled together to collaborate to try to get their guy over the finish line. You got the media, you got the boosters elsewhere. I mean, it's just a very ugly thing. It really is strangely reminiscent of the Biden is Unfit saga, which John referenced before.

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[Jon Pod Horiz]

So I use the phrase catch and kill because the idea of a catch and kill story is that somebody, a news organization, gets it and then has it exclusively and then doesn't run it, and it doesn't run it for all sorts of exogenous reasons, right? It could be that they, if they're, if they're paying for it as the National Enquirer did with Stormy Daniels or whatever, if they're paying for it, they buy it to silence it. If they don't run it for ideological reasons, that's another form of catching and killing. That the idea would be, well, it's the New York Times. This is going to be the definitive story. And the Times effectively seems to understand that if it does a story that says there are rumors swirling around him but he's trying to fight them, that that will not encourage. That will serve to make it possible for Democrats to continue to support him or to say that he's okay with them or that he's a troubled person who was trying to get his life back together. As Jon Favreau, the Pod Save America podcast bro, said something that could not have been said had they just gone with the story at the time. They would have also saved a lot of these people from not career ending embarrassments, but from having essentially come out and said all kinds of relatively nice stuff about someone who is clearly, you know, a really despicable human Being not. Not even, not even talking about the ideology, which is a whole other deal. And I'm not saying this is something new, but the nakedness of it and the fact that it got exposed this quickly is pretty new. And I don't know how the Times is going to handle this. And the story is not about the Times. It's really obviously about Graham Platner and what the Democratic Party is going to do. But this DSA takeover of the party also deserves some unpacking because we know that Platner getting into the race was largely the work of a guy named Morris Katz, who was essentially the chief strategist of the Mamdani campaign and runs a firm called fight. He's 27 years old

[Host]

and he is

[Jon Pod Horiz]

trying to get DSA far left people elected and to do so by primarying more centrist Democrats, winning that race and then pushing forward. I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who was like, why? Where was the vetting? Why didn't they vet. And the whole point here is that the party is dead. These firms, these consultants are now the party. And what Morris Katz is looking for is somebody he can raise money off of and somebody not only he can run because it's exciting and he has this profile. And Morris Katz looks at it demographically and personally and thinks this is a great story to tell. But it becomes his campaign. He's the author of the campaign. He's got this frontman in Graham Platner that he's moving around like a GI Joe figure around Maine, getting him to say this, getting him to do that, getting him to the other thing, and they're raising money hand over fist and he gets 15% of that money. His incentive is not to do a forensic audit of Graham Platner to make sure that he's a pristine candidate and won't be subject to negative, barrage of negative attacks that will harm the Democratic Party. He doesn't care about that. He has a separate agenda that is both ideological and personal. And I mean, I don't know how much money the Platner campaign has raised over the last six months, but I bet it's in the tens of millions and he gets a slice of that. This was a success for him. He's not responsible for Graham Platner's personal bad behavior. He just made a whole ton of money and he showed a path. He can go to people and say, look, I got Graham Platner across the finish line. Stick with me, I'll get you across the finish line. You know, it's like the, it's like

[Abe Greenwald]

junk bonds

[Jon Pod Horiz]

or Chauncey Gardner from being there or anybody who says I can take you and make you a presidential candidate. There was all this freelancing by consultants in the late when campaign finance reform laws started to change and things started to loosen up where political consultants, including so friends of mine in a somewhat mercenary way, would go around to very, very rich people and seduce them running for office with the idea that they would self fund because if they self funded and they spent $150 million, they got 10% of that. It was a brilliant strategy. You get somebody who gets as a business strategy, you seduce somebody into running for office. Now Platner's obviously not a rich guy raising himself. But what the dsa, what these people beginning with Howard Dean and onward realized was that they could generate tons of cash, ready money with credit cards really fast to then pump into a campaign, but also get their cut. And so the Democratic Party has two challenges now, which is that they not only have an ideological challenge of people running candidates who might be really unacceptable in a general election, we'll learn that better in November. But they have these people whose incentive is not to strengthen the Democratic Party or to make sure that they win the Senate, it's to push far left ideas and candidates and raise money off them at the same time. And Morris Katz's place in this has not been properly vetted, shall we say. There's nothing to be done about it. This is, you know, this is, this is what people do and it's how politics works. And everyone, anyone, anybody can run for office and get any kind of support. But you know, it's a, it's a pretty amazing thing to see a 27 year old guy like outmaneuver Chuck Schumer on a, on a Senate race. When Schumer gets his favorite candidate, the person he wanted to run for office in the race, agrees to do it and then is outflanked by this tyro kid and this weird up from hardscrabble success story that turns out to be a lie anyway. His whole life story of being an oysterman and this and that and the other thing, it's all family money and support from his family and all that. So this is where the DSA rubber is going to hit the road. Like let's assume El Sayed wins in Michigan. As we keep saying. One of the weird parts here, we said yesterday, one of the weird parts here is he has not been unloaded on, I mean we've unloaded on him. Conservative media have unloaded on him. He has not had $100 million in television commercials and social media spending and all of that that, that the Republicans are going to dump on his head for three months. We have no idea whether he can survive that. I don't think he can survive it. I mean, can we, can we talk

[Abe Greenwald]

about him for a second? Because I'm.

[Eliana Johnson]

Before we go to there, one thing that struck me about the arguments made on Platner's behalf was the effort by Morris Katz. And then there are two other operatives, Dan Moraf and Leanne Fan, who went to Maine in search of a candidate and said, they've said, specifically, we're looking for people with no political background. We want people who haven't run before. And then the allies, Ro Khanna, Bernie Sanders, Ruben Gallego, Elizabeth Warren. And it is, the argument is an explicit effort to turn vices into virtues and to say, no, we like him because he's flawed and imperfect and he hasn't been on this political track his whole life. He's aired, he has ptsd, he used to drink. Yes. He was on Reddit and he said these things. And the fact that he's now running for office is proof of some kind of redemptive arc. And Kana is the one who's made this argument more forcefully than anybody when he went out and campaigned with Platner days after that New York Times story and said, a vote for him is a vote to redeem America. That's where I see this going. And Fan and Moraf have explicitly said, you know, we want flawed people like this. I think they, they are the downwardly mobile wealthy people who embrace this kind of ideology. And there's a whole class of people in the press and in the political, you know, the left wing political class who are willing to excuse these vices and say, no, it's proof of their virtue.

[Seth Mandel]

Right.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

I mean, can I, I just want

[Abe Greenwald]

to say that, you know, we saw something like this on the right. We've seen it for years, since Trump has first came into politics, which is the reality, is that people with wild, reckless views, reckless views are coterminous with reckless character. When you want people who are going to play the game beyond the normal yard lines, way out of those bounds, you're gonna get people with all sorts of problematic baggage.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I mean, that's what I was gonna say, the King David thing. Right. There were a lot of people on the right who said, just as King David was chosen in part because he understood the, the human weaknesses and therefore could lead A people and understand their problems or whatever. Right? Trump was a King David sort of. We heard that a lot. And you know, it really depends on the experiences, you know, that I think I like what Elian is saying rings true, which is, does he have problems?

[Jon Pod Horiz]

Yay.

[Abe Greenwald]

Not.

[Seth Mandel]

What are those problems? What are those experiences?

[Abe Greenwald]

Not.

[Seth Mandel]

He's been through this clearly fully recovered, come out the other side a different person. And therefore he can speak to people who are having this problem. It's. Is he a, you know, a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

[Eliana Johnson]

Great.

[Seth Mandel]

And that's like that, that is sort of mind blowing that that's where we are. Because you can take a guy who's had to deal with, with failure or temptation or whatever and see that he has become a different person and say that, you know, in a way George W. Bush had that. That was part of the story with George W. Bush that he had, you know, he would drink too much. And now he's very clearly on the right side of that. And therefore, you know, evangelical voters were not put off by some of the stuff in his background, although there was the ddy late in the race and all that. But, but the general, the general narrative was you could be comfortable with a guy who very clearly wasn't that guy anymore. Ro Khanna got up there and said, you know, you got to believe in redemption. But here's the thing. He was still, he being Platner was still lying about everything. Platner is still the guy that he was in all these, these stories that are, that we now talk about as baggage. He's still that guy. He's still lying about everything. And he did this to his own campaign team, which left them flat footed and all that. But had Platner said, look, obviously stupid and embarrassing that I got that tattoo. You know, we thought we were all, you know, doing something really cool. We thought we were tough guys. And you know, obviously I knew what it was and it was really stupid and I'm ashamed. But tattoos are hard to get rid of and I realize that now. But instead it's, I didn't know what it was. And then you have a situation where he's on, on MSNBC or M. Snow or whatever it is now with Chris Hayes, where Chris Hayes goes. You know, it's kind of interesting, but it appears that your ex girlfriends knew you had a totenkoff before you say you did. How could, how could that be? And he just stand, sits there staring dumbly into the camera. And you could see, you know, in fact that was this moment that lives in my mind of when Chris Hayes was, like, gazing into the void and realized there was no way back from the void, which is you. The moments that hurt Platner with Democrats are the moments where they can no longer publicly pretend to believe him. Right. There were just these things that were. But if he's still having those moments, he's still that guy. If he's still telling Chris Hayes, oh, I don't. I don't. I. Yeah, I know. She must have known what the Totenkopf was before I did or whatever. He's still that guy.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

But he was always. He was always that guy. And I think Eliana's point is. Is amazingly perceptive and deep, which is that they want damaged people because it is the axiom of a certain type of modern, post liberal person that everybody is damaged. Everybody's a racist. Everybody. Everybody's, you know, sex is rape. Everybody is. Everybody is terrible in every way. So just get somebody who comports with your views. Stephen King, of all people, said this yesterday, right? Maine's most famous resident, Stephen King, who said, graham Platner may have to get out of the race. But if you took everybody in Congress and you saw what they did in their private life, are you sure that everybody would. This would be terrible. And. You know what I mean? I'm sorry, but there are 535 members of Congress, and almost all of them are not rapists. And the admonition that you are supposed to take the moat out of your own eye before you go at the moat in your neighbor's eye has to do with conventional bad behavior. It has to do with selfishness or vanity or gluttony or any of the seven deadly sins. It does not have to do with whether or not you say, it's okay for somebody who has been credibly accused of really vile things and put a vile thing on his body to say, everybody does it because it's not true, Everybody doesn't do it. Everybody is not a criminal. Everybody is not a racist. Does everybody have baggage?

[Host]

Yes.

[Jon Pod Horiz]

But that doesn't mean everybody is not running for office. Everybody is not trying to hide the baggage. And it's a slander against humanity. It's a slander against our political system. And it is the antisepsis of political campaigns that people get into races. And they have to be aware that they're gonna be dug into. Right? Their lives are gonna be dug into. The interesting thing is Platner's life was dug into. A lot of bad stuff came out and Then people in Maine and the people who were support didn't say, okay, well, he can't, you know, they supported him anyway. They didn't go over to Janet Mills. They didn't say, well, Janet Mills, at least we know she's a vet. She hasn't, you know, ever. She hasn't killed anybody. So she's probably better than this guy. That's the interesting break. And that's where Eliana's generational or thematic, I don't know what you would call it, cultural break comes in that there's an enormous number of people living in the therapeutic culture for whom the therapeutic culture has become not a way for them to save themselves from their own failings, but has become an excuse for them to do whatever they want to on the grounds that everybody is damaged and bad and that therefore no one should be judged on the basis of their behavior. That is a perversion of therapeutic culture. But it is a thing in therapeutic culture. Like, if you are an actual AA person, you're not supposed to decide that, oh, now I'm great that I've gone through AA and I now no longer drink and I go to meetings and all of that. You still have the sense that at any day, at any moment, you can fall off and you can go right back where you were. Then you have to climb back on the horse, that what you've done in the deepest way is an admission of weakness and sin. And it has changed you because you are heavier and deeper and more reflective on who you are and what it is that you were supposed to do. You're not. It's not your get out of jail free card to say I was an alcoholic and now I'm not an alcoholic. You're always an alcoholic. You never stop being an alcoholic. According to the AA doctrine. I'm only using that to say that now we have the. Well, he was young and he got a Totenkoff tattoo. Well, if that were true, and it's really painful to get off a tattoo, if you had one on your body, it would be worth the pain to take off that tattoo. That's a disgusting thing you did to your body. Appalling. And it exposes you as who you are. It's the scarlet A that literally gets embedded on Chillingworth's skin at the end of the Scarlet Letter. Like God burns the A into his skin so that everybody. He'll never be able to escape what it was that he did. And that's what the Totikov tattoo was. That should have been enough, right? And the fact that it's not and that this is, as Eliana says, this is a feature and not a bug, just like the antisemitism is a feature and not a bug is a sign of a very deep sickness on the Democratic left. I mean, we've been talking about the sickness on the Democratic, on the Republican right, and the Fuentes stuff. And, you know, all. I mean, I have no problem saying this without. Because I feel like I've acknowledged the illnesses on my own side, but let's see them acknowledge the illnesses on their side now. I mean, John Fetterman is the only person who said, I don't want to be in the same party as this piece of garbage out of 400, out of I don't know how many 270 Democrats in Washington. He is the only one, I believe who said, I do not want to share a party with this person. One person out of 270.

[Seth Mandel]

That was what was so great about Richie Torres tweet. You know, Richie Torres, the congressman from New York who tweeted that he has no endorsement to rescind because everybody was out there going, I can't back this guy. You know, Elizabeth Warren a few weeks ago going, this is my kind of guy. Saying, you know, well, this is not my kind of guy. It's like that Austin Powers scene where, you know, he's like, oh, that's not my bag, and going through the airport security, and then the next thing they take out of his luggage is a book that says, that's my bag, baby. You know, it's like, this is. This is your guy, you know, And Richie Doors was like, I never said,

[Jon Pod Horiz]

I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to. Seth, I'm gonna have to cut you off there because our. Our connection is. Is getting. Is getting pretty scrambled. So we have a special show tomorrow. We'll be back on Thursday. For Abe, Seth and Eliana, I'm John Pod Horiz. Keep the candle burning.