Swallwell did, and should have, resigned. But we're poised to nominate a man whose behavior and comments raise all sorts of red flags?

Even if she were a lobsterwoman! People would have criticized her until she was toast. They would have made fun of her.

But a man....oh that's a different story. Even after Platner disparaged women and had a nazi tattoo people still supported him.

This says something about a sizable portion of the American electorate and it's not good.

Let me know when Platner is charged with any crime.

Planter's post now deleted on Reddit?

Victim blaming. A what was she wearing moment.

inebriated as an excuse why he got the Nazi Tat?

He said he and his buddies were as drunk as skunks.


I was just reading his posts over on bsky...And a lot of the comments to him there. I have been keeping an eye on him to see what he is up to. 🤔

I see some what about ism here.

an attempt to distract from Planter's actual Victim Blaming post... now deleted, of course.

Yeah, like "whatabouism" has Anything to do with Planter's Reddit post.

Seems he needs a little more reflecting and growing.

Yet again.

Do we really want a Senator that will be 79 when sworn in?

'Nazi rape apologist?' Me?

Citation needed.

Several posts on this thread show him blaming rape victims.

My statement was quite clear.

You are calling a a Nazi rape apologist.

I see.

Perhaps it should be a rape apologist Nazi?

I agree.

Given me a reason to vote for him.

Equating Platner’s moronic Reddit comments with Swallwell’s potentially criminal behaviour is ludicrous.

Platner was leading Mills by 27 points in the last poll. If that stands (and there is no evidence it won’t), he is going to be the Dem nominee for senate in Maine.

So, get in your digs and smears while you can, because after the June primary such comments may be risky.

No matter how ludicrous.

Crockett’s lead in Texas held, too. Que será será. If Platner is nominated and elected, and turns out great, lucky us. If he is elected and turns out to be another Fetterman, unlucky us. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that a state’s Democrats nominated and elected a Senator, and then experienced buyer’s remorse. My preference remains, but I’m not above hoping for a pleasant surprise, no matter what the outcome.

His comments were far worse than moronic - they are sexist and blame the victim. Do we really want this in our Senate?

There will be a Democrat and a Republican on the ballot. I prefer the Democrat. Even a very flawed Dem.

Oh, but she's an old woman!!11

We will find out soon enough.

A perfect example of society at large condoning and accepting certain behaviors that are wrong but not as bad as another.
These types of victim blaming makes it more difficult for women to come forward.
I personally would not want to be associated with someone who expressed these views let alone have him represent me in the senate.

I see what you did with

"So get your digs in and smears while you can, cause after the June primary such comments may be risky"

Sounds a lot like a threat to remain silent.
Should we not share here if he continues with this type of behavior or do we need to be good little girls and remain silent.

To repeat an actual post is not a dig or a smear, but a fact showing his character and attitude towards women. Men who support women do not make statements like that, those are good Ole boys statements.

My comment was about how DU rules change once the primaries are over.

The “risk” would be in getting posts hidden for bashing Dems.

It was your need to remind us.


Just so you know I have been reading Du since around 2004 by way of Bart Cop. I first joined in 2008 and lost my account like everyone else when DU went down. I continued reading but didn't feel the need rejoin until 2023. So I'm well aware of DU rules

Posting truths is not "bashing" Dems.
Maybe you should ask Graham why he is still using the R slur as late as this year. Seems he still need to grow a bit.

Guess I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t lose their account.

Maine voters can ask Platner whatever they want about his past comments- he’s had 50 in person town halls since launching his campaign last August, with attendance at capacity, often to overflow crowds.

Mills has had a handful of Zoom Q&A sessions with small groups of invited supporters, who submitted questions in advance. She read her answers from index cards.

I trust the Maine voters will choose the candidate they think is best for their state.

But he does have red flags and we should not minimize them.
He made a lot of horrific comments on Reddit, not just about women. That he didn't delete until he decided to run for congress is a red flag. He was still on Reddit so he knew those comments were there.
He still uses the R slur in his everyday language.
Maybe he has changed but I don't quite believe that to be true.
I have met a lot of people like him in my lifetime, some have changed and others just give lip service. My gut felling is he is one of the latter.
We don't need to trash women for truths that they have lived.
There are better ways to present your argument.

In fact I have seen several in this thread.

Edited to add: I should have said locked out when du went down years ago. I chose not to retrieve my account but hubby did.

I talked with someone in Congress yesterday who knows both Platner and Mills.

Said member of Congress would be a LOT more comfortable with Mills as both candidate and Senator. The Congressperson also told me (my apologies if this is common knowledge, but I was not aware) that Platner’s “just an oyster farmer” routine is misleading, and that he comes from a wealthy family who bought him the oyster farm. He doesn’t rub me the right way, so being told this didn’t change my preference in the Maine Senate primary.

...recasting one's upbringing to grab some "workin' man" cred -- along with "self-made man" implications to explain current wealth and privilege -- needs close analysis by people wiser and with more time than me. JD Vance is of course a prominent example.

that people can still be on the right side even if they grew up with wealth.

And then you have someone like Reagan that's the opposite.

He came from nothing, but acquired wealth through his show biz career, mainly because he happened to be born with genes that gave him a resonant voice that was perfect ror radio and a photogenic face that propelled him into movies. So of course he thought everybody else should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps the way he thought he had. As if being a tall, handsome (he WAS handsome back in his younger days) white male had absolutely nothing to do with his success. Never mind that most people don't have a fraction of the assets he aqured free of charge by winning the genetic lottery.

Reagan was a classic example of the so-called "self-made man" type who is oblivious to his own privilege, unsympathetic to the struggles of those who can't achieve the success he did, and very quick to blame the poor for being poor.

Sorry about that.

On the off chance that I wasn't clear about why I referred to JD Vance, I went down a rabbit hole and found an excellent Rolling Stones article summarizing the many lies in Hillbilly Elegy. (I'm not saying Platner is as egregious, but it sounds like some vetting is still necessary.)

J.D. Vance’s Stolen Valor: ‘He Puts on Poverty Like You Put on Makeup’

In light of Vance’s admission [that he makes up stories to prove a point, like the "eating dogs/cats" lie], a close re-reading of Hillbilly Elegy by Rolling Stone uncovers a hollow claim at the center of the book. Namely that J.D. Vance “grew up poor.”
Vance frames the book as a chronicle of overcoming severe economic disadvantage. But the details of Vance’s own writing don’t point to a childhood of material deprivation. Instead — despite the myriad troubles faced by his mother with substance abuse — Vance was raised in middle-class comfort. At one point, his parents enjoyed a six-figure income. And he was spared economic distress by a broad safety net of extended family that provided him with frequent out-of-state vacations, golf lessons, a modeling audition, and therapy. Most importantly, he benefited from a buffer of generational wealth created by his “Papaw,” who retired with a “lucrative pension” from his union job at the local steel plant. ...

The central conceit of Hillbilly Elegy is already a stretch. Vance wasn’t raised in Appalachia. He was born and brought up in Middletown, Ohio, a small city on the road to Dayton. His mother was also born in these suburban Ohio flats. “The guy is from north of Cincinnati,” says Rob Lalka, a Tulane University business professor who has researched Vance’s life for his recent book, The Venture Alchemists. “There are no hills, much less hillbillies.”

Plenty of Texans are more prepared to accept a $3 bill than that bit of visual fantasy.

That's what it was when it was bought as a prop.

I remember the clearing brush bs.

Said it would make him look more "Reaganesque" even tho GeeDumbya is skeeeerd of horses. Fk that guy with a barrel cactus, he and his overlord, Cheney The Dick (R-Hell) should have gone on trial in The Hague for war crimes.

.. was president (of vp I forget)

Those Texas investors are a generous bunch.

The fumes do have a familiar scent, all the same.

There is a natural limit, and some people are tired of seeing candidates poised for decline before their term is over. That has just gone way too far. It's an obvious loser with voters now.

Platner has considerable ick around his past. Mills is 400 years old, and excites or interests no one.

But she interests plenty of people, especially those who have either worked with her (I haven't) or talked with her on a more than casual level (I have). Platner give me the creeps via his media appearances, but I have not met him in person. It would do him no good to offer me any oysters, either, since I can't stand oysters. Some machos in the German right wing tried the "old-and-used-up" routine to try to push Merkel out, too, and she was from their party! The left tried it, too, of course, but the Germans weren'tthat gullible. The voters ignored the tired slogans and returned her to office as often as she wanted.

I don’t think she’s a very compelling candidate. She’s going to need more than casual acquaintances and friends from the summer cotillion circuit to get elected. The other guy is a creep. It’s a bit of a mess. But it’s a mess for Maine voters to figure out.

...the polling disagrees with you.

Platner, as far as I know, hasn't raped anyone. Big difference. I agree he has an appalling attitude towards victims.

I'm sure no one wants to hear this, but suggesting women are responsible or share the blame for victimization is a VERY OLD concept, still accepted by many. And reinforced through decades by misogynist cultures that simply can't fathom the exalted male would be guilty of any wrongdoing (unless of course he was victimized by the siren call of a woman's sexuality)



Just seeing the current social media pushback on Swalwell's victims coming forward
"assuming it's true"
"why did she wait so long"

Ugh. I'm not sure people realize how long it took for women who are out dRinkinG in sHort skirtS !! to even be believed. We have a long f*cking ways to go

The fact that women have been treated like slaves and garbage for millennia, and yet we are not the ones who do that mass shootings is proof right there that we should be in charge.

and all encompassing. I agree social media posts are not the same as some of the horrific behavior we are uncovering lately, but they could be a worrisome red flag. We cannot afford too many "surprises" that make us look like we are hiding misogyny and violence towards women. That is Republican behavior. I am glad we are rid of the two latest perpetrators in a timely manner, but I would have been happier if they had never been elected in the first place.

He has disavowed them and has not been accused of any assaults. If all he did was say something stupid on the Internet a dozen years ago, I'm willing to give him a pass. Eric Swalwell he is not.

Let's see who wins the primary and give that person our strong full support whoever it may be.

But from my non-Maine resident perspective, I don't know what he's done to demonstrate that he's grown from then. Not saying he hasn't, but I would feel a lot more comfortable if I had something I could use as evidence.

have grown from that time. And again, what did he do? He said stupid stuff on the Internet 12 years ago. What if he was a Republican back then?

Wouldn't that be as bad or even worse? If he then became a Democrat afterward, wouldn't we accept him? I would hope so! I would hope we would welcome any former Republicans into the tent as long as they are sincere in their beliefs, and I believe he is.

Even though a bunch of Platner's stuff is horrendous. Relating the two makes zero sense.

Because yeah, a lot of us men are not who we should be.

When is irrelevant. When did he disavow them? When he decided to run for Senate?

Oh but Mills is old so she must be disqualified.

There’s a lot I don’t like about mills: age, accepts lots of corporate money, etc. , but, she is serious about prosecuting trump. That’s what we need above all else.

I see shades of Fetterman in him.

Not to mention the audacity of telling people they have the power to change the system and take it back from the oligarchs and corporations and wanting to create a movement to change the system from within! To eliminate the root causes of despair and grievance that led to Trump. The nerve!

And of course those Reddit comments are infinitely worse than killing a Bill to expand Maine's Indigenous tribes' sovereignty or one creating a new top tax bracket. Or pissing off unions so much they tried to publicly draft a candidate to primary her.

/S

Heaven help us indeed.

He was also forcibly removed by the Secret Service when he skipped school to protest the Iraq War at an airport where GWB was visiting.

OK, clearly he has not changed any "system" - he's been an outsider - but he has worked outside the levers of power to effect changes locally. His campaign is about change and power-building from the ground up through organizing, to unite the working class and social and labour movements. His message and vision are clearly resonating with Maine voters.

His comments about LGBTQ....I have read them all. Vile stuff.

Granted, it was years ago he said them, but he only just deleted them when they came into light during his Senate run.

I have higher standards.

At what point does it stop being a script?

Obviously we aren't in a position to assess Platner's authenticity because he no record.

But suppose he (or 'one') does maintain issue discipline / leadership. When does the script morph into ideology?

I guess I am willing to 'forgive' if I get a candidate I am more ideologically aligned with, but I don't know if that just makes me cheap

Robert Byrd for example. Like you I'm a little skeptical because he doesn't have a record of service. But any candidate can change. It's always your best guess based on what you know/believe at the time.

There is a lot more that he posted on reddit...a LOT. Things I haven't seen before. Yikes!

I am not going to post them here, though I could send you a few links.

I can't believe we're about to do this again.

Will also send you a couple of links, mcar.

He is authentic! Working class! The establishment is TERRIFIED!

when they were exposed".

We really have to smarten up when it comes to some of these politicians. Platner has a Nazi Tat and has blamed women for SA, but yet that doesn’t disqualify him but Mills and her age are disqualifying?

Platner told me all I need to know when he gets confronted on his past and blames the “establishment” for trying to destroy him.

I feel like there are red flags. I'm not in Maine but... please someone vet him.

In the general, I will vote for whoever is running against Ms. Concerned.

His comments are a slap in the face to every woman. Democrats can and should do better.

If you leave the house without a male family member you're just asking for it, really....