With Graham Platner, Democrats Are Playing with Fire

By Christian Schneider

Thursday, June 04, 2026

 

On a recent episode of Hot Ones, the internet show in which celebrities give interviews while eating spicy chicken wings, Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost decided to cool his mouth down not with milk or water but with a glass of hot sauce. In other words, he’d “fight fire with fire.” It didn’t turn out too well.

 

Democrats have adopted a similar strategy, but it’s threatening to burn the party down.

 

Over the past decade, Democrats have seen their chokehold on working-class men all but dissolve. As Donald Trump has saturated politics with unprecedented crassness, mini-Trumps have cropped up and won over hard-hat-and-lunch-bucket voters most commonly associated with union labor. It was no surprise that Teamsters President Sean O’Brien received a prime speaking spot at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

 

To counter the race for voters with dirty fingernails, Democrats have rolled out candidates cosplaying as working folks. Enter “oysterman” Graham Platner of Maine, who is running against Republican Senator Susan Collins. Republicans have their own gruff candidates, and Platner promised to be in the same mold, just on the left.

 

This weekend, reports surfaced that Platner had made a habit of sending sexual messages to six women who weren’t his wife. In fact, Platner’s actual wife, Amy Gertner, told her husband’s campaign about the texts back in 2025, warning them that his extramarital indiscretions could become a political liability.

 

But Platner’s candidacy has been nothing but a political liability all along. Virtually every bit of his résumé is mendacious self-mythologizing, from his working-class upbringing (he attended one of the nation’s most expensive prep schools) to his current wealth (his father, a Dartmouth-educated lawyer, floated Platner a $200,000 loan to buy a home in 2017).

 

He has had to answer for past statements in which he suggested that women who worry about being raped should “not get so f***ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” He has made crude jokes about masturbation. And, of course, there is the small matter of the Nazi tattoo on his chest, which he proudly displayed for two decades. (He claims he didn’t know what it meant, but associates of his have said Platner knew exactly what it meant well before declaring his Senate candidacy.)

 

And now, we are forced to gaze upon the undressed torso of a Senate candidate, his lower half obscured only by a towel.

 

All of this could have been avoided by some rudimentary vetting, but Democrats’ thirst for a “genuine” candidate catapulted a genuine reprobate to the national stage. For a decade, the left has hammered away at Republicans for being interested only in gaining power, and now, because Platner is the Democrats’ best chance at retaking the Senate, they have to pretend that Platner is next in line for the papacy.

 

It is true that since Trump hit the scene, Republicans have been guilty of pushing candidates distinctly lacking in character or political skill. For a decade, conservatives have promoted freak shows like Herschel Walker (Georgia Senate) and Mark Robinson (North Carolina), or they’ve backed political incompetents like Dr. Oz (Pennsylvania Senate). The current secretary of health and human services is a lifelong Democrat with a long history of drug use and brain worms.

 

Right on cue, this year Republicans have nominated the unconscionably corrupt wretch Ken Paxton to be their Senate candidate in Texas. Now, otherwise sensible people have to pretend that Democratic weirdo James Talarico being overly entrenched with ephemeral wokeism is somehow worse than Paxton’s bribery charges and marital infidelities.

 

Every thinking person understands that if Graham Platner were a Republican, all the same people delighting that his embarrassing sexting shenanigans have come to light would be excusing that behavior. Instead, it’s liberals like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Chuck Schumer who have to choke on their Platner endorsements.

 

Elsewhere, Democrats have decided that performative masculinity is their way back to winning majorities. It’s why Pete Buttigieg now has a beard and why Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff has dedicated himself to a Captain America–style push-up regimen. (Seriously, Jon — drop the pec routine in the comments.)

 

But they have also emulated Republicans in gaslighting the public into thinking their worst candidates are viable public servants.

 

Documented sex pest Eric Swalwell was fully on his way to a California gubernatorial runoff election before a cadre of women came forward to expose his priapic exploits. His behavior was well-known before last month’s bombshell allegations, but other Democrats kept quiet. In the same primary, mean girl Katie Porter seemed to be starring in her own version of Wicked: For California. Democrats’ effort to cover up President Joe Biden’s obvious mental flaws during the 2024 election remains a national scandal.

 

And so, Democrats march on with Graham Platner, pretending there is nothing to see here. They will try to cast Susan Collins — one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict Trump — as a right-wing threat to the republic.

 

It may be entertaining to watch Democrats toss sticks on the bonfire of their own party’s immolation, but the Platner spectacle, like the Paxton variety, will leave our politics a charred husk.