admin
Maine’s U.S. Senate contest has suddenly become a national story as a scrappy outsider — oyster farmer and veteran Graham Platner — vaulted from relative obscurity into the center of a chaotic Democratic primary that could decide whether conservative Susan Collins keeps her seat. Platner’s working-class pitch and viral campaign moments gave Democrats hope they finally had a fighter who could crack Collins’ three-decade hold, and his rise has forced national strategists to scramble.
But that momentum has been slammed into the rocks by revelations no campaign should ever shrug off: a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on Platner’s chest that many experts say resembles a Nazi Totenkopf symbol, and which has now been altered after the video of him shirtless at a family event made the rounds. Platner insists the ink was a drunken Marine-era mistake from 2007 and has tried to get ahead of the story, yet his explanations feel thin when you consider how damaging symbols like this are to decent, patriotic Americans.
The tattoo wasn’t the only ugly surprise. Reporters uncovered deleted Reddit posts and other online comments in which Platner made crude, insensitive remarks about race, tipping, and sexual assault — comments he has since apologized for but that reveal either a pattern of thinking or a disturbing lack of judgment in his younger years. These aren’t minor gaffes; they’re the kind of raw, offensive material that mainstream Democrats used to excoriate opponents for — until now, when the left rallies around its own. Voters should consider whether apologies after the fact are enough to erase years of reckless online behavior.
The campaign has been disorganized in the fallout, with senior staff departures, allegations about NDAs for departing employees, and a scramble to hire outside operatives to patch the mess — classic signs of a candidacy that wasn’t ready for prime time. Democrats throwing their weight behind an unvetted, internet-era favorite and then rushing to cover up the problems is politics-as-usual for the party, but Mainers deserve better than chaos and damage control when we’re talking about a Senate seat.
Yet the left’s media machine keeps trying to write a different ending: Bernie Sanders and other national progressives have publicly stuck by Platner, and his fundraising and grassroots buzz put him on the radar as a potential Collins nemesis. That show of loyalty says more about the Democratic Party’s priorities than it does about judgment — ideology and optics trump basic vetting and accountability when your primary aim is to defeat a Republican at all costs. Conservatives should point out the hypocrisy with clarity and force.
Meanwhile, Susan Collins remains the only proven statewide figure in the race, a known quantity who has governed by instinct and experience for decades. Whether you agree with her on every vote or not, replacing her with an unvetted, controversial newcomer from the far left would be a risky experiment for Maine — and the stakes in the Senate are too high to gamble on a candidate whose past keeps exploding into the headlines.
Americans who love this country and cherish common-sense values should watch this saga closely and ask plain questions: why would Democrats elevate someone with red flags this glaring, and why are some on the left so quick to excuse glaring lapses in judgment so long as the politics line up? Call it accountability or common sense — whatever name you give it, Mainers deserve a clean, competent choice, not scandals and spin.
