In a 1988 SNL skit featuring Jon Lovitz playing Mike Dukakis debating George H.W. Bush, Lovitz said “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”
The line, which became iconic, must be what Maine’s two-term 78-year-old governor was saying leading up to the Democrat primary for U.S. Senate.
After the votes were counted on what became that fateful June 9th, Mills had indeed lost to “this guy” – by a staggering 50 points.
“This guy” was a man named Graham Platner, a 41-year-old Blue Hill, Maine native, son of parents who divorced when he was just 6 years old but otherwise lived a privileged life.
Graham Platner, grandson of a renowned American architect, went to boarding school then George Washington University, later joining the military.
He ended up serving four tours of war duty as a U.S. Marine, a tenure that reportedly left him with PTSD.
Platner, 41, was recruited by a pair of out-of-state socialist Democrats who thought he was the perfect antidote to five-term, 73-year-old U.S. GOP Sen. Susan Collins.
Platner became known for a chest tattoo he got as a soldier that turned into an emblem of a scandal-plagued campaign for the U.S. Senate.
He denied it was a Nazi insignia despite overwhelming evidence he knew what it was.
Then the sky began falling with newly discovered social-media posts of Platner calling cops bastards, rural people stupid and blacks cheap.
Then it was a post blaming victims for their own rapes and sexts he sent to women or girls or both on a website frequented by pedophiles.
Legacy media got hold of women who accused him of physical abuse.
Through it all Platner muscled on, even to the point the betting markets gave him big odds of beating Collins.
Older women, a key demographic, loved the bad boy.
The beginning of the end came a few days ago when a Washington news outlet quoted a former Platner girlfriend saying he raped her.
By then the polls were narrowing between Platner and Collins.
Democrat party leaders who previously ignored his misogynistic behavior suddenly cared about women when they saw him losing to Collins.
Platner for some unknown reason quickly went limp, canceling campaign rallies, going into hiding.
The fight in him was suddenly nowhere to be found.
The radical workingman’s hero was curiously scared, befallen. He’d looked in the mirror and seen his hamartia.
The spirit left him.
By Wednesday night Graham Platner was out.
He said the campaign was over, claiming that the party apparatchiks left him powerless to raise money.
Platner went from being a very likely United States senator to just another loser making a farewell speech, claiming of the rape allegation “it’s false.”
Just another loser male candidate on the pile of bodies of men who were political heroes one day and suspected women abusers the next.
Dime a dozen.
“You’ll be remembered as an accused rapist,” U.S. Sen John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania, said Wednesday night on Fox News. “Adios, trash bag.”
Graham Platner. One day on top, a worldwide celebrity. The next just another small-time loser.
“I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” – Maine Gov. Janet Mills
He is also flipping off all the Mainers in the image above.