I have been increasingly fascinated by Graham Platner, the lefty Dem Senate candidate in Maine, who keeps courting scandals and controversies (he has a Nazi-style tattoo, he’s expressed some socially unacceptable opinions on social media, he was sexting with multiple other women after he got married, some of his former girlfriends say he behaved caddishly).
Yet I think, after his resounding success in the Maine primary on Tuesday, there’s a pretty good chance he wins in November (recent head to head polls show the race tied or Platner slightly ahead). And the interesting thing to me is that if he does I suspect it will be at least as much because of, as in spite of, his “scandals.”
It’s been obvious since Trump won in ‘16 that the old norms that defined appropriate public behavior from candidates and elected officials – norms that were zealously policed by the once powerful gatekeepers of the traditional media and widely accepted by the broader public – have shifted radically (as some conservatives pointed out to me on X, this process really started with Clinton’s public popularity surviving Lewinsky and impeachment).
The old media gatekeepers are still with us, but they are rapidly losing a desperately quixotic battle to preserve their boundary-defining influence. The public may still pay lip service to the old public morality, but it’s increasingly evident that the voters are actually judging candidates according to a new, private morality and alternate code of conduct.
The traditional norms and rules were rooted in a kind of linguistic literalism. You took what a candidate said or did at face value, and judged accordingly. But no longer. Now some candidates are discovering that if they successfully position themselves as outside-the-box anti-establishment insurgents, increasingly disaffected voters are inclined to judge that candidate’s actions or statements according to a different yardstick, rooted in an emerging code of symbolic transgression.
They are taken not at face value, but understood, in these instances, as a form of signaling about the candidate’s relationship to what voters increasingly see as a corrupted and illegitimate ruling elite.
The insightful Salena Zito quip from 2016 that “the press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally” first captured this shift. When Trump said John McCain was “not a war hero” and called him a loser, his voters didn’t see a lack of patriotism; when his “grab ‘em by the pussy” boast surfaced they didn’t see a rapey misogynist. They saw someone who was gleefully and unrepentantly giving a middle finger to a corrupt and illegitimate cultural and political order, a bona fide outsider and change agent candidate deliberately transgressing to get a rise out of a self-serving, self-congratulatory ruling class that his voters hated and wanted to dislodge from their high perches as much as Trump did.
What’s going on with Platner right now is no different.
Under the old literalist norms, getting a Nazi tattoo meant you’re sympathetic to Nazis; having written offensive or inappropriate things (even though they expressed viewpoints we all know a lot of non-college educated people privately hold) meant you were at best a complete cad or jerk, and probably worse. It was disqualifying. But no longer.
Judged according to the new rules of symbolic transgression, to Platner’s voters and much of the public writ large they mean not that he’s a Nazi or a misogynist but rather that he’s a fiercely anti-elitist warrior, an outlaw and a cultural badass whose working class cosplay transgression of the old norms is proof of his determination to act like a bull in the china shop of the old, failed, prissy cosmopolitan establishment.
It’s worth noting that there are still rules at work here, and limits to what is allowed (at least on the Democratic side of the divide). This isn’t the dawning of an anything goes era – just ask Eric Swalwell. If Platner were to blurt out anything that was actually anti-semitic, or if women start to surface saying he actually sexually abused them (the June 4 NYT exposé of his “messy personal life” fell short of that) – if his symbolic transgressions turn out to be literally true – his support will collapse the way Swalwell’s did.
But absent that, or the Rs using some of his orthodox left-progressive issue positions to paint him as too radical or out-of-touch (which I would suggest is actually Platner’s greatest vulnerability), I think the dude is pretty well positioned to ride a growing wave of anti-establishment anger to vanquishing Susan Collins and winning a Senate seat in November, because, under the new dispensation, so far the voters are taking him seriously, not literally.
A earlier version of this piece was posted to Substack, where you can follow Sandeep @skaushik100.
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You might be right (which is sad), but Trump actually did abuse women (and lost a couple lawsuits over it)…and of course we’ll probably never know the full extent of his involvement with Epstein. Unfortunately, the voting public didn’t hold him to account and now we’ve got a new norm (though thankfully many still try to adhere to traditional values). It’s a messy business, politics.
That Platner’s tough guy persona is part of his popularity, and especially in someone who’s talking about taking on the oligarchy, that’s very plausible.
That he’s taking a path pioneered by Trump, not so much. He’s denying the bad stuff, and yes, that depends on some voter credulity, but it at least recognizes boundaries.
Nice try at clouding the real issues, Sandeep. but you don’t get away with ignoring Platner’s stated policy positions, and their stark contrasts with Collins’ voting record. To wit, from Platner’s campaign website:
—
Ban billionaires buying elections
Rebuild our failing healthcare system
Support Small Business – Break Up the Monopolies
Stop the mass deportation machine; pass real immigration reform
Defend our air, our water, our land and our climate
Decisive action on the housing crisis
Defend Medicare and Medicaid
Protect Social Security – before it goes bankrupt
End Billionaire Welfare, Pass a Cost-of-Living Tax Cut
Uphold tribal sovereignty and self-determination
Defend democracy and the Constitution
Strengthen our working waterfront
Support unions, and bring good union jobs to Maine
Defend and support public schools
Keep government out of our private lives; defend the right to choose
Protect Maine’s economy: raise the federal minimum wage
Equality for ALL
The War in Gaza (Platner does not hesitate to call it genocide)
End the failed War on Drugs
Take on waste and corruption at the Pentagon; rebuild American shipbuilding
No more pointless wars
Address the childcare crisis
Support Americans with disabilities
Pay servicemen a fair wage; no more servicemen on food stamps
Defend the VA and support our veterans
Defend the Post Office and establish postal banking
Pass term limits – and hold politicians to their term limits pledges
—
I suspect these issues will count for more with Maine voters than woo-woo bullshit like “poking a finger in the establishment’s eye.” These positions are not “vulnerabilities.” They’re strengths. Except for term limits, which are bullshit.
What you’re ignoring, Ivan, is that Susan Collins says the exact same things!
And she’s not Nazi-adjacent.
What you’re ignoring, “Named,” is her voting record, which is Trump-adjacent.
And what is Platner’s record?
That’s exactly my point. Platner has no record to run against. Collins does. This election is every bit as much a referendum on Collins’ record as it is on Platner’s promises, no matter what you or I, neither of whom vote in Maine, think.
It was Sen. Susan Collins, I believe, who voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, and her “yes” vote helped ensure his narrow 50-48 approval. Disturbing, too was her myopic and silly “I believe Kavanaugh regards Roe v. Wade as established law” statement, repeated frequently. We all know how well that turned out.
An excellent comment. The article is a hit piece hidden behind disguised rationality.
You really think that having a Nazi tattoo is antiestablishment?
Are voters truly that dense?
But not to worry there’s time enough for Platner to lose in November. The best way for him to inoculate himself from Nazi-adjacent claims would be for him to release a hi-res version of the original tattoo before he covered it up.
Then it would be obvious to all that his tattoo was completely benign and that not even a scholar of Nazi propaganda would be able to recognize it as Nazi propaganda. That would solve all of Platner’s problems.
As we know, the cover-up is often times more damaging than the original misdeed or crime.
So I urge Platner to show the original tattoo and that will put the issue to bed. Right?
I lived and voted in Maine for a couple decades, and agree with Sandeep’s analysis. None of the scandals appear to be sticking, and might well end up burnishing Platner’s reputation as a pitchfork populist. He addressed the tattoo controversy almost eight months ago, and Mainers seem confident he is no Nazi symp. (Even in HS, he was known as a lefty.) Feminist friends in Maine cringed at his Reddit comments, but gave him a break as a damaged combat vet. They had a harder time rationalizing the sexting controversy reported in the NYT, but still seem to support Platner over Collins, who has mostly enabled the Far Right while sounding moderate.
I agree with Sandeep Kaushik’s article in that voters are changing how they think of candidates when they vote. I, and many of us, older voters (liberals) are still reeling (disgusted) from how Trump won the election in 2016 and 2024. How could the public vote for a man with such rotten morals and ethics? But as much as I don’t like it, the “norms” are changing. (Nothing to do whether Graham Platner had better values in his campaign than Susan Collins.)
As Mr. Kaushik writes:
“It’s been obvious since Trump won in ‘16 that the old norms that defined appropriate public behavior from candidates and elected officials – norms that were zealously policed by the once powerful gatekeepers of the traditional media and widely accepted by the broader public – have shifted radically (as some conservatives pointed out to me on X, this process really started with Clinton’s public popularity surviving Lewinsky and impeachment).”
At the very least though, Mr. Platner does admit to his past transgressions and says he has learnt from that (we hope) whereas Trump would never admit it.
I can only hope that voters see it that way too.
Everyone, but everyone, is ignoring is that Platner is a war veteran who fought 3 tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Haven’t we learned anything about PTSD? Give the guy a break with his probable PTSD. He seems to be doing very well now, psychologically.
And Susan Collins has a debt to corporate donors.
I’m a student of WW2 history and have more than a passing familiarity with a lot of militaria, and when I first saw the image without other visual cues it just looked like a typical stylized biker/punk/metal skull. I’ll take the word of one of the other guys in his unit who said they had no idea about the significance of the ink
I did recognize that the phrase “immigrants are poisoning the blood of America” basically came straight out of Mein Kampf, though..