So the Platner campaign put out a statement this morning. Not a concession. Not a fight-on. A statement that he’s “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.” Which is a hell of a way to describe a man standing in the driveway with his bags already packed, still telling the cab driver to hold on a second, he might not actually be leaving.
I had a White Russian over this one. Cream’s still separating a little, which feels appropriate, because that’s about where the Platner campaign is right now too — separating, slow, in front of everybody, and nobody’s stirring it back together.
Couple posts back, writing about that Reddit quilt of his, I said the ugly stuff was a Christmas tree that just hadn’t been plugged in yet. Well. Somebody found the outlet. Except here’s the part I didn’t call correctly: it wasn’t the Republicans who plugged it in. It was Politico, and Jenny Racicot, on the record, using her own name — and the extension cord ran straight back through his own coalition. Sanders told him to withdraw. Warren pulled out. Schumer, Gillibrand, Ro Khanna, all out. Even Hasan Piker, man. When the internet’s most online socialist bails on you, that’s not an oppo hit. That’s the load-bearing wall coming down from the inside.
Walter has some thoughts on succession planning
“He wants to WHAT?”
Walter set his ball down so hard three pins fell over on lane six that nobody was even bowling on.
“The guy loses Bernie. Loses Warren. Loses Schumer, for Christ’s sake, and Schumer doesn’t lose ANYBODY, that man endorses like he’s spreading mayo on white bread, wall to wall, no edges left uncovered — and THIS guy managed to lose Schumer. And now he wants to pick his OWN replacement? This is not ‘Nam, Dude. This is a resignation. There are RULES.”
“Walter—”
“You don’t get to lose a vote of confidence and then submit a nominee for your own funeral! That’s not how a funeral works! Nobody hands the dead guy the program and says ‘pick the next casket, champ, you’ve earned it!’”
“He’s not dead yet, Walter. He’s reflecting.”
“He’s a dead man walking who wants to pick his own pallbearers, Dude! There’s a difference, and the difference is called ACCOUNTABILITY!”
Donny asks the only question that matters
Donny had been quiet through all of it, working on his frame, and then he set his ball down and said, real slow: “Wait — so, the guy everybody just fired... gets to hire the next guy?”
Nobody answered him. Walter just glared. But it was the only sentence in the whole news cycle that actually made sense, and Donny said it in eleven words while eating a pretzel.
Maude’s math didn’t account for the pace
Maude came by later, after her thing, still in the smock. I told her about the Racicot story and she didn’t even blink.
“I told you this would come out metered. August, maybe September. Something new closer to October, when it would do maximum damage and minimum time to recover.”
“Well, it came out in July.”
She set down her drink — vodka, straight, she doesn’t do the cream — and thought about that for a second.
“Then the priors calcification was worse than I estimated. I assumed the erosion would need external pressure, paced by people who wanted him gone slowly. I didn’t account for the possibility that his own coalition would do it themselves, in one week, without being asked. That’s not an oppo operation, Dude. That’s a base withdrawing consent in real time, once the record contradicted the story they’d already decided to believe about him.”
“The avatar broke.”
“The avatar was never load-bearing. It was decoration. Marine, oysterman, harbormaster — every fact checked out individually, which is exactly why nobody stress-tested the pattern they made together. A fabricated candidate has a seam somewhere. He didn’t have a seam. He had a shape everyone wanted to see, and the shape held right up until it didn’t.”
No rug left to pull
Here’s the thing, man. Everybody keeps saying the rug got pulled out from under this guy. It didn’t. There’s no rug left in the room at all. Bare floor. You can see the outline where it used to sit — a little lighter than the rest of the boards, sun-faded, a shape where something used to tie the place together and doesn’t anymore. The Maine Democratic Party’s got until July 13th to figure out what goes down on that floor next, and I’ll tell you what I hope they don’t do: run out and grab the nearest rug that looks nice in a photo. Because that’s basically what happened here the first time — everybody fell for the pattern on the thing instead of checking whether it’d actually hold up to foot traffic. A rug you pick because a guy’s beard reads authentic on a podcast is not a rug that survives a Politico story. What actually holds a floor together is boring. It’s a guy who ran for county commissioner. A woman who did two terms on a school board and everybody in town already knows exactly who she is, good and bad, because they’ve had years to find out. That’s not as exciting as an oysterman-Marine hybrid built in a lab the Pod Save bros would’ve ordered off a menu if they had one. But it doesn’t come apart in your hand the first time somebody tugs on it.
Abide, man
I’m not gonna sit here and tell you Susan Collins is toast now, or that she isn’t. Maude’ll tell you the polling’s got a Collins-shaped hole in it going back to 2020, and she’d be right, and I don’t feel like arguing with her about it at the lanes. What I know is this: the guy’s still “reflecting,” the clock’s still running, and somewhere in Augusta a party’s gotta figure out how to lay a new rug down on a floor that’s been bare and a little embarrassing for about a week now. That’s not a tragedy. That’s just Tuesday, in this business. The Dude abides. The rug does not. And somewhere out there, a guy who used to sell oysters mostly to his mom is still reflecting, man. Take all the time you need.
My priors on this:
Fuck. OK, "fucking lucky" there's still time. Christ almighty, can't they just pick a Millennial or Gen-Z woman who's smart and otherwise checks the same policy boxes that pushed Platner? White guys always gotta be fraught.
Maybe it’s because I grew up watching so many Popeye cartoons, but doesn’t Graham Platner bear a striking resemblance to Bluto?