Scott Jennings tears apart Graham Platner’s former defenders: what changed?

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Now that Graham Platner is in serious jeopardy, having paused his campaign following credible accusations that he had sexually assault a former girlfriend, it’s worth taking a good hard look at how we got here.

Platner is a candidate who came out of nowhere, foisted on Maine Democrats by far-left progressive activists who hate the establishment of the Democratic Party. And he was ardently backed by committed leftists like Ro Khanna, Elizabeth Warren, Hasan Piker, Cenk Uygur and others. These people have for the most part turned on him now, expect for Uygur, and are calling on him to drop out so that Democrats can pick a different candidate.

Of course, that’s hardly democratic! The voters already chose the candidate, and they chose Platner, despite being well aware, if not specifically of his sexual assault accusations, of the red flags associated with him. His Nazi tattoo didn’t matter to them. His weird reddit posts. And it didn’t matter to the high-profile Democrats who endorsed and pushed him.

Over on CNN, Scott Jennings slammed Platner’s former backers, asking what changed?

Indeed, there were plenty of reasons to think that maybe this Graham Platner character is not the guy for the job. That’s why I predicted weeks ago that there would be more scandals to come. But this is what Democratic voters wanted. It’s also what the left flank wanted.

The reason for that is the left convinced itself that Platner could speak working class. The only thing that led them to conclude this was that he appeared, in a very surface way, to be working class. Even though he came from a perfectly affluent background and education. He seemed gruff, and had said some crazy things. He’s working class! He doesn’t respect women. Just like a normal dude! Seriously, it’s so insulting to the actual working class, it’s incredible that they tried this.

But of course, progressives don’t really understand the working class at all.

They don’t understand that non-elites, people who aren’t highly educated or super affluent, differ from them not just on style but on substance. For instance, they are more culturally and socially conservative. They don’t want trans women competing in women’s sports, for one thing. They don’t love DEI and cancel culture and wokeness run amok. Those are the issues you want your candidate to talk about if you want working-class appeal.

But the left has convinced itself that it just needs a bombastic guy who reflects all their exact policies — namely, their own contempt for the super rich and embrace of explicitly socialist policies. Well, I’ve got bad news, progressives: support for socialism is an elite phenomenon. The working class doesn’t want that.

Democrats did not stumble into Graham Platner. They went looking for him.

For a decade, the party has been losing men — young men, blue-collar men, veterans, the guys who fix your truck and pour your beer. So the smart set decided they needed a man who could win those men back. Not a policy fix. A vibe. And when they went hunting for the most aggressively masculine figure they could find in a swing state, they landed on a Marine with a Nazi death’s-head tattooed over his heart. That should tell you something about how the modern left thinks masculinity works. They didn’t want a good man. They wanted a hard one, and they weren’t careful about the difference.

And I’ll add, they didn’t want a man whose policy views actually align with what working voters believe. They wanted the kind of person that they like: a rabid leftist with socialist-esque economic views, simply dressed up as a rural working man and combat veteran. Well, I hope you’re all happy with how this turned out.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.

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Cenk Uygur

Elizabeth Warren

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Maine

Ro Khanna

Scott Jennings

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