By Noah Rothman
Thursday, July 09, 2026
Democrats are patting themselves on the back for
cleansing their party of Graham Platner, and to hear them tell it, you’d never
know that party officials at all levels spent the last week dutifully manning a
defensive phalanx around their troubled Senate candidate. Democrats did rid
themselves of that baggage, but it would be a mistake to see that as an
expression of a revivified party that is once again in control of its own
destiny. As a “condition of dropping out of the race,” Politico reported, Democrats had to allow Platner to do
so in a video in which he spent most of the time trashing the Democratic Party.
As Jim explained, it was a bitter, paranoid, impossibly
self-important speech in which Platner attempted to create a cult of
martyrology around himself. But that is a small price to pay, Democrats have
told themselves, for the opportunity to salvage their prospects in Maine’s
Senate race. And this time, they’re not going to repeat the mistakes of the
recent past that Democrats believe contributed in no small measure to Donald
Trump’s return to the White House.
The Washington Post editorial board summarizes the thinking
among Democratic establishmentarians: “In 2024, party royalty waited too long
to push Joe Biden out of the race. Instead of allowing competition to replace
him, the party anointed Kamala Harris as the nominee and ordered everyone to
fall in line.” The editorial argues that, “unlike the 2024 Biden-Harris
switcheroo, the process to replace Platner can appear legitimate — and has to,
if Democrats want any hope of defeating Collins.”
Maine Democrats have settled on holding a shotgun
nominating convention in which elected delegates and committee members will
pick from a field of Democratic also-rans. That, Democrats believe, will blunt
the charge that the Democrats are displaying the kind of disregard for their
voters that they evinced in the summer of 2024.
There probably were a lot of hard feelings among
Democrats at the time, although there’s no reason to believe that Harris would
not have emerged as the party’s presidential pick from some improvisatory
nominating convention. But that process wasn’t what soured the public on the
Democratic Party. That outcome was achieved by Democrats twisting themselves
into disfigured knots in the attempt to defend the indefensible.
Democrats have done precisely the same thing with Graham
Platner in ways that may haunt not just the party in Maine but the national
Democratic enterprise.
In the failed attempt to defend Platner’s many lapses in
judgment, Democrats smeared blue-collar workers. They insisted that a
pathological liar with a violence fetish who thinks in ethnic and racial
stereotypes and sexually abuses women is just what you get when you meet
the American working class where they live. They slandered combat veterans in a
similar fashion, as though serving your country in uniform invariably
transforms people into monsters. And they made it indisputable that too many
Democrats do not “believe women” when those women do not share their
progressive politics.
None of that will be dispelled by a nominating
convention. Unlike in the final days of the Biden years, Democrats in Maine
were not desperate to slough off a nominee with whom they had been saddled.
Platner was the popular choice. That being the case, whomever the Democrats
select to face Senator Susan Collins in the fall, the replacement nominee will
be able to distance him or herself from Platner only so much. As Platner
himself recognized in his graceless exit from the race, his voters may oppose
Republicans, but they just despise Democrats.
Republicans shouldn’t celebrate prematurely. It’s hard to
imagine that Mainers will find another Democratic nominee as comprehensively
damaged as Platner was. But the convention will not wipe the slate clean, and
the harm Democrats did to their brand in the misguided effort to save Platner
from himself will not be repaired overnight.
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