Platner’s downfall reveals a political culture where character is sacrificed for winning

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It’s easy to be cynical about politicians. They’re always coming up with something that makes us cringe. But if you need proof of how bad it can get, consider what so many prominent Democrats were willing to say and do for Graham Platner in his bid to oust Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

Until now.

Before news broke that Platner was accused of raping a woman he had dated — a woman who wasn’t anonymous, who didn’t hide in the shadows, but told her story on national television — the red warning lights were flashing. But most of his fellow Democrats who weren’t named with Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) didn’t want to notice.

Platner, a marine combat veteran was one of the Democratic Party’s newest progressive heroes who ran as a champion of Maine’s working class. But there were a few (let’s call them) complications. He had a Nazi tattoo on his chest for nearly 20 years and covered it up only when he decided to run for office. He said cops are bastards. He used slurs to describe people online. He said war was “the most enjoyable experience of my life.” When he was a bartender, he wondered, “Why don’t black people tip?” He sent explicit sexual text messages to women who weren’t his wife. And speaking about sexual assault, he said, “Rape is a real thing. If you’re so worried about it … you might not get blacked out f–d up around people you aren’t comfortable with.”

Apparently all of that was survivable — because Graham Platner was the guy who might beat Susan Collins and maybe even flip the Senate to Democratic control.

But even in our hyper-partisan age, a rape accusation is a bridge too far. Progressives including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who fancies himself as presidential material, pulled their endorsements and said Platner needed to go. Wednesday night, he did.

As I say, it’s easy to be cynical about politicians. For too many of them, winning isn’t just important. It’s everything.

But Frank Bruni isn’t a politician. He’s a journalist — a smart, sophisticated, thoughtful, albeit liberal columnist at the New York Times.

In May, he wrote this:

“Graham Platner isn’t my ideal Senate candidate. Not even close. I’m deeply troubled by the thinness of his political experience, by the primacy of raw anger in his appeal to voters and by the oddities and ugliness from a Nazi tattoo to a fondness for ‘gay’ and ‘gayest’ as put-downs, in his not-so-distant past. It’s a lot to overlook. But if I lived in Maine, I’d vote for him in November.”

Yes, Bruni wrote that before the rape accusation surfaced — an accusation Platner denies. But that isn’t really the point.

The point is what Bruni — along with so many like-minded Democrats — was willing to overlook before that.

His argument, essentially, was that Platner was a Democrat running against a Republican at a moment when Bruni believes Donald Trump represents an extraordinary threat. Trump, he wrote, has “no respect for democracy, no regard for the truth.” To support Collins, in Bruni’s view, would be “irresponsible, nonsensical and perilous.”

Even if you buy Bruni’s argument about Trump — even if you accept every last word of it — there’s still a question worth asking:

When did we decide that the flaws we would find disqualifying in our opponents become mere distractions when they belong to someone wearing our team’s jersey?

That’s the danger here. This isn’t simply a story about the rise and fall of Graham Platner. It’s not only about one race in Maine. The danger is a political culture where character is treated like a luxury item — nice to have when times are calm, but the first thing tossed overboard when the stakes feel high.

And here’s the problem: The stakes always feel high. Every election is “the most important election of our lifetime.”

Character doesn’t guarantee good judgment. Plenty of decent people make bad decisions. But a lack of character almost always tells us something important about how someone will behave when they get power.

Because power doesn’t usually transform people. It reveals them.

If we only care about character when it’s politically convenient, then we don’t really care about character. We care about winning.

And if winning is the only thing that matters, we shouldn’t be surprised when we wind up — however briefly — with someone like Graham Platner.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.