Nothing Is Disqualifying

By Abe Greenwald

Monday, June 01, 2026

 

Graham Platner’s run for the Senate is putting a ruinous proposition to the test: To the 21st-century liberal, nothing is disqualifying.

 

Ten years ago, Donald Trump said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. He was commenting on the unique loyalty of his supporters. Today, we must wonder whether such loyalty is unique. It seems more and more to be the standard disposition of the left-liberal partisan. 

 

If a Democrat has a shot at winning, he can do no wrong. Adam Hamawy volunteered with an al-Qaeda front group in Bosnia and was an associate of “the Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Today, Hamawy is in the lead for a New Jersey congressional seat and has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and the newest neo-Squadnik, Ro Khanna.

 

Abdul El-Sayed is a strong contender in a Michigan Democratic primary battle despite his voicing sympathy for the mourners of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bragging about smashing a bottle in a liquor store, struggling with Israel’s right to exist, and various disconcerting escapades.

 

Of course, the exemplar here is Zohran Mamdani. In his successful run for mayor of New York City, he showed that support for terrorist causes, involvement in anti-American activism, and staunch socialist zeal were more than acceptable in Democratic politics.

 

Platner represents something different from all these. His deficiencies aren’t foremost ideological or political. They’re deeply intrinsic to his character. He’s a messy amalgam of glowing red flags that, in everyday life, would signal, well, human garbage.

 

Like Nick Fuentes, Platner is at once a Nazi admirer and Communist sympathizer. He’s on record mocking a wounded U.S. soldier as a “Dumb motherf-----” who “didn't deserve to live.” Platner has said that women should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f***ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to.” And he was most recently exposed for sexting with women on a hook-up app while married to his current wife.

With a guy like this, it’s a safe bet that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface.

 

It wasn’t long ago that a large majority of Democrats would simply recognize Platner as unfit to serve in the janitorial staff of the U.S. Senate, let alone as a senator.

 

But we are in a different world now, and Platner is all too representative. He carries the worst ailments of Millennial males. He’s a prep-school graduate striving for working-class authenticity, a malcontent drawn to political extremes and transgressive signaling. Platner is married, and he has nonetheless embraced the incel’s penchant for misogyny and digital sleaze.

 

There’s a dwindling number of Democrats who are old enough to see Platner for what he is. And those among them who are in power have decided, en masse, to pretend otherwise.

 

The truth is that the blind support Trump had in 2016 doesn’t compare to the total collapse of moral judgment we’re seeing on today’s left. The Republican Party went to war with itself on the question of Trump’s fitness for office. By contrast, leading Democrats have decreed that there is no such standard. It merely remains to be seen whether Democratic voters adhere to the new rules.