Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: 2026 American Primaries and Elections

Platner Folds

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On July 9, 2026

38 Comments

Update: It turns out the accuser only described the DMs. She did not produce them. So this is she said/he said. Under such circumstances in no way should Platner drop out and yes, this is a political hit. It was coordinated by the party and media, they immediately withdrew all funding and voter lists and had a plan for choosing their own candidate.

 

A while back I wrote that the way Democrats get taken out, especially but not only the left, is usually a sex scandal.

for whatever reason, Americans take allegations like these much more seriously than gross corruption, bribe taking, insider trading, or mass murder.

And now an allegation against Platner which was organized by a Democratic establishment lawyer has lead to Platner quitting.

Which is exactly the wrong thing to do. He says he didn’t do it, the Maine party will pick the new candidate through a meeting of six hundred insiders, so the candidate won’t be a strong progressive, and by stepping down he removes protection from those who supported him.

The reason Stoller is on this is that like me he came up through the Netroots. We’ve seen this playbook over and over and over again. We recognize it.

The idea that it is principled is laughable. I saw Fetterman attacking Sanders for supporting Platner, as if Fetterman doesn’t support Israel, who rapes as policy and raped at least one person to death (and it won’t just be one.) Oh, and that genocide.

The left is getting scary to the center. They won quite a few primaries, and the goal now is to take them out post-primary. The most important thing is always controlling the party, winning is secondary, especially in America where the duopoly means that whichever party is out of power knows it will soon be back in.

This is why Starmer purged the left, including kicking out Corbyn.

Platner may or may not be guilty. I don’t know. But I do know that he just made a mistake in folding. To be fair, practically all his support in the party “un-endorsed” him, but frankly, who cares. At the least he should have stuck firm till he got to choose his successor. Make it clear that they’ll have him around all election season, drawing media attention the party doesn’t want, one way or the other.

Folding never gets you anything. There is no honorable peace between the left and the establishment: there are no rules of war, and the left needs to stop acting as if there are. Platner will be smeared as a rapist either way (even if he’s never charged) and the people who believed in him will be fucked over.

(And yeah, he had plenty of red flags and someone else should have been found. But charisma is a thing, and he had it and the safer candidates didn’t.)

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The Only Thing That Matters Is Winning Primaries

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On June 26, 2026

29 Comments

From Stoller:

Last night, something happened that I’ve never seen in my time in politics – a bunch of Democratic incumbent politicians in New York and Maryland lost to left-wing challengers. New York in particular has an intensely wired Democratic machine, with advocacy groups, unions, and identity rights groups cemented together with big money. This machine rarely loses, and never loses en masse. Yesterday, they did, as voters said no to the entire political establishment.

The winners mostly ran on a platform of opposition to the U.S. alliance with Israel, as well as subordinate themes like opposition to corporate greed. For instance, Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president and a well-respected establishment figure with virtually every endorsement possible from both liberal groups and real estate interests, lost to Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez by more than 25 percentage points. Adriano Espaillat, the head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was unseated by fellow DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier. State assembly incumbents lost, and both the state and Federal delegation are now far more progressive.

The New York machine, in other words, got wrecked.

I came out of the netroots: the blogosphere. We had a motto “more and better democrats” but every time we tried to primary some shitheel Democrat, we got wrecked.

We didn’t have the juice.

And in American politics the most important thing is whether you can win primaries. In a duopoly, even if your candidate loses the general this time, they’ll eventually back into power if the district is competitive. If it’s not competitive, and the party you can win elections in is the shoe in, well, it’s the same as winning the election.

The reason the populist right has been pandered to by Republicans on many issues (but not corporate governance) is that they can win primaries.

The reason Kathy Hochui kept her implicit deal with Mamdani and has given him money for New York and other help is that Mamdani is a powerhouse and a bellweather. Opposing him would mean he and the movement he is the standard bearer for would have come for her next.

This is localized so far, but if it spreads the Democratic party will change. And unlike the Republican right, which can be bought off with culture war bullshit, this a left wing populist movement which is explicitly anti-oligarchy. Mamdani has been very successful so far, coming thru on many of his promises. I recently saw someone earning six figures say that Mamdani’s childcare plan had saved him 30K. That’s not chump change and it dwarfs anything the well off, but not rich, will lose from Mamdani’s other changes. In other words the 80% to 95% benefit, as does everyone under 80%.

That is one one hell of a big coalition.

Democrats and Republicans, since Reagan, have largely refused to compete on doing things for ordinary Americans: at least anything pocket book related. The competition has all been kabuki, symbolic gestures or cultural red meat. Some of it has really hurt people, to be sure (abortion bans for example) but overall the idea has been that money should be given to the rich and programs which help ordinary people’s finances are a no go.

Since the US is a duopoly and you only get to vote for two options, neither of which intend to help, the only solution was to change the nature of one of the parties.

That has now begun. How far it will go and whether it will succeed, I do not know.

I do know that if it does, the Democrats will rule for another 50 years, like they did from 32 to 80. Republicans will get in sometimes, but they will be like Eisenhower: ruling in a populist left fashion. The mirror of Clinton or Obama, who in most respects might as well have been Republicans. They were certainly arch-neoliberals.

This is your moment of actual hope. Not the fake Obama stuff, the real thing. It’s not certain, of course, there is a ton of power opposing it, but it is real hope.

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Establishment Attacks On Platner Are Classic Woke Attacks On The Populist Left

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On June 5, 2026

36 Comments

I think everyone who’s observed American, indeed, Western politics is aware that whenever a strong economic left winger comes along the attacks on him are almost always primarily about violations of “woke”.

Corbyn was attacked for anti-semitism, when he might be the most anti-racist person on the Earth. The idea that he was anti-semitic was laughable on the face, he’d be the first person putting his body on the line if there were actual threats to Jews.

What was remarkable about the smears against Corbyn is that the guy is practically a Saint. He’s as pure as driven snow or aquifer water run through a triple filter.

Not everyone is. Al Franken did some inappropriate things, though none of them rose to the level where he should have stepped down.

Woke is used because it works, especially sexual harassment allegations. It doesn’t just work against the left. New York Governor Cuomo was taken down for sexual harassment, which I always found hilarious, because this is a guy whose policies killed thousands of people during Covid when he stuck Covid patients in old folks homes. That’s gross negligent manslaughter, in my books, and he should have gone to prison, not just lost his job, but it was the sex stuff that took him down.

That doesn’t mean the Democratic establishment wanted him gone. Oh no. They supported him to the hilt against Mamdani in the NYC elections. Anything can be forgiven if you serve corporate interests, nothing can be forgiven if you don’t.

Platner’s the latest target, and man is he ripe. There’s the skull and crossbones tattoo: Nazi symbology which he got as a soldier twenty years ago.

They attacked him on that. It didn’t work. It didn’t work for the same reason attacks on Trump didn’t use to work: because Platner appears very anti-establishment (and unlike Trump, probably is.) He’s a left wing economic populist. This is from the top of his policy page:

So out came the sexual allegations. First the fact that near the start of his marriage he sent texts to women. That caused marital issues (surprise!) but Platner and his wife got counseling. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner:

“It makes me really angry, disappointed,” Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, said in a direct-to-camera video Platner’s campaign released Saturday night. “And I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on.”

One might wish to discount this: political wives are famous for publicly dismissing scabrous behaviour. But it was years ago, and she has stayed with him.

Of more interest, I think, is this:

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Gertner told Platner’s campaign about the sexually explicit texts last year, near the start of his Senate bid. Her disclosure came during a conversation with campaign officials about potential opposition research into Platner, the two outlets reported, with the Times citing a former senior official in Platner’s campaign and the Journal citing people familiar with the matter.

I believe this falls under “the call came from inside the house!” Platner and his wife were foolish enough to trust Democratic officials, not realizing that the Democratic party is the opposition, far more than the Republicans.

Now we have the New York Times, doubling down:

Amid the turmoil, Mr. Platner worked the phones, rolling through calls to ex-girlfriends who might publicly acknowledge that while he may have been a bad boyfriend, he was, in fact, a decent guy.

In interviews with The New York Times on Wednesday, several women did just that, describing Mr. Platner as a fun and caring partner, and saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day, years after their relationships ended.

But in extensive conversations over the past two months, three other women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner offered a far more complicated assessment, describing volatile and “toxic” relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.

Mr. Platner could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful.

OK. Sounds like some of his ex-girlfriends like him, and others don’t. But there’s no allegation of rape or assault, only “once physically threatening” and you know that if there were, they’d have run with it.

I don’t think Platner sounds like the greatest guy with women, but I think it’s also unlikely you’ll find many people, men or women, who have had multiple relationships and all their ex’s don’t have anything bad to say about him. I also don’t think that any of this is disqualifying for office.

Serious war crime allegations, since he was a soldier, would be. A pattern of corruption in business would be. “Has, on occasion, been a jerk to women and unfaithful” is laughable. Neither FDR nor JFK were faithful, their behaviour was far worse than Platner’s, and FDR, at least, was arguably the best President America ever had for ordinary citizens.

But for whatever reason, Americans take allegations like these much more seriously than gross corruption, bribe taking, insider trading, or mass murder.

Or—they did. Because so far this doesn’t seem to be working against Platner. Americans are finally getting their priorities straight again: certainly rape or assault should be disqualifying (though neither were for Trump), but sexual immorality? Please.

The woke attack takedown, perfected and used for a couple generations now, is beginning to fail. Voters are looking at the actual issues and thinking “actually, I care more about the fact that I can’t afford rent, food, gas and healthcare.”

In this I finally see some hope that Americans voters might be growing up. For may years now Americans have basically gotten the politicians they deserve, with some exceptions. To deserve better they have to stop being suckers. The takedown of Thomas Massie by the Israeli lobby was a bad sign. The failure, so far, to take down Platner is a good one.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

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