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.
He needs to flip off Washington .
STAY IN THE RACE GRAHAM
156,000 of us voted for you once and we’ll do it again .
Screw he politicians in Washington . They threw you under the bus .
Turnabout is fair play . Screw them .
He IS the tragic hero .
He wasn’t smart enough ( despite their assurances ) to know all this dirt from his past would be revealed .
The Washington democrat elites blew him full of hot air and sent him up into the wind .
For a while it was working like they planned .
When the air came out , they threw him on the heap of losers , and will merrily go looking for another puppet .
As much as I don’t like the guy , I think he should stay in the damn race .
There aren’t any viable options in their list of qualified successors anyway , and certainly non that can beat Collins .
Rub the democrats noses in it …..they created this pile of shit ….let THEM wear it .
Mr Platner …..YOU should stay in this race ….maybe there’s a snowballs chance you CAN beat Collins .
Nobody else can ….if there ever was the democrats would have run him / her in the first place .
Marines don’t quit when the odds are against them . They fight harder .
SO SHOULD YOU .
He was elevated to statewide power in the Bolshevik Party here in Maine by out of state national political machine players like Bernie Sanders, then claims his replacement must be a grassroots candidate like “himself”. Good one Graham. Sanders selected him for national strategy reasons and not out of some concern for what is good for Maine and all Mainers, not just the DSA radicals. The real problem with this man and the DSA is much more sinister than the sexual assault accusations. He is a hardened political violence extremist who is promoting and working for a violent Marxist revolution in this country. The whole of the DSA and many of the ordinary Democrats who voted for him are enthusiastic about the prospect of a civil war and the chance they hope to get to kill their local Republican neighbors. They are very clear about this among themselves on reddit and elsewhere and we need to take that seriously and hold them accountable.
Platner went limp…… bahahahaha
Well said and funny.
One thing I know is that for the rest of my life I will always think of Platner when I see a porta potty.
The whole chapter is ineffably sad. Sad for Platner and his wife. Sad for the fools who swooned over him. Sad for Maine that we could be so easily used and bamboozled by puerile political hacks from D.C. and elsewhere. Sad for our country that the likes of Sanders and Warren can ignite the DSA idiocy so easily. Let’s hope Susan Collins remains in the Senate after November. She ain’t perfect by any means, but at least she’s not a complete enemy of all this nation stands for.