If No Political Candidate Is Perfect, Is Everything Forgivable?
Another day, another political scandal averted (fingers crossed). In Maine’s senate race, Democrats had already forgiven their great white hope, Graham Platner, for his white supremacist tattoo. They chose to believe that he didn’t know of any Nazi link when he got it. They suspended their disbelief that over the next twenty years, no one told him it was problematic. They believed he made a mistake during a drunken night out with his buddies, fellow Marines, in Croatia. Boys will be boys, right?
Over the weekend it came to light that Platner’s wife caught him sending explicit text messages (sexting as it were) with several women shortly after they were married… in 2023.
Did these women consent to receive Platner’s explicit texts?
I did see a reference to an “exchange of messages”, which would indicate they were in conversation, however I can’t say for sure. I wonder if they knew he was sexting with six other women (according to Platner staffers), would they have been as enthusiastic?
But that was three whole years ago, and besides, that’s between him and his wife. Who are we to judge what happens in someone else’s marriage? That was the argument made by writer and founder of The Lever, Dave Sirota when discussing the topic on The Left Hook with Wajhat Ali.
For some reason, this framing didn’t sit right with me, and that was BEFORE I learned about some of Platner’s old comments online. According to the New York Times,
In 2013, he posted that women afraid of rape should not get so drunk that they ‘wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to,’ a remark for which he has since apologized.
Platner’s comments didn’t stop there. Up until 2020 he was still reminiscing about his glory days in the service, debating whether,
West Coast Marines were more ‘chill,’ arguing that ‘they get to bang LA chicks, whores in TJ, and hit up Vegas,’ an apparent reference to Tijuana, Mexico.
Where Mr. Sirota sees a private domestic matter I see a pattern of dehumanizing women, a lack of impulse control, an attitude of entitlement, and zero consequences for bad behavior. To be clear, there is no evidence that Platner’s behavior has continued or escalated since 2023. I can’t say the same of other politicians.
Less than six months ago Eric Swalwell, (D-CA), was forced to resign from the House of Representatives and drop his bid for governor of CA when dozens of women, including junior staffers, accused him of rape and sexual assault. Although Mr. Swalwell’s alleged behavior was potentially an open secret on Capitol Hill (several male legislators admitted that they’d heard whispers about him over the years), the story broke because women risked their jobs and reputations to unmask him.
Patterns may not predict the future, but they certainly inform it.
What I’m seeing now is the repeated failure by men to create or maintain safe working environments for women.
I’m seeing men, specifically white men, continue to “fail up” at the expense of women’s mental and physical health.
I’m seeing patriarchal systems of influence, control, and domination put men in powerful positions despite overwhelming evidence, in some cases even criminal and/or civil convictions, of their violence against women.
Both centrist and progressive Democrats see Mr. Platner’s latest “misstep” as one wife’s hurt feelings over her husband’s cheatin’ ways. It’s something they can downplay, even work around because Platner is their best chance to beat the incumbent, Susan Collins, (Sen-R) from Maine.
My question, again, is at what cost to women?
People may tell me to “look at the larger picture,” as if I don’t understand that if the Democrats flip enough seats they will have the majority in the Senate. The problem is that no candidate is perfect, purity tests always fail. However, over and over again, this one particular thing is considered redeemable, fixable, and overcomable: harmful patterns of behavior targeting women.
If, at this point, you cannot see the connection between the dehumanization of women and girls and an alleged sex-trafficking cabal enmeshed within the highest levels of government worldwide, then I see that as a pattern of willful ignorance.
Question for the comments:
Given that no one is perfect, what, if anything, would make you stop supporting a candidate for political office? Is there an issue that you will not compromise on?
At the risk of being flippant, my answer is Assholery! It's exhausting and, frankly, depressing. Could we imagine any female candidate for office with anything near this kind of history being given a free hall pass? Remind me again how it is that men still rule the world?
None of it is forgivable. Until women have equal representation in national and local governments nothing is changing. And those elected women have to be ones that see through the patriarchal propaganda and their own conditioning.