- Via the AP: Michigan lawyer says a Halloween terror plot that FBI Director Kash Patel described never existed.
- Via CNN: Hegseth bars military officials from discussing drug boat strikes with Congress without prior approval.
- Via Wired: Nancy Mace Curses, Berates Confused Cops in Airport Meltdown: Police Report.
- Via The Hill: Cruz, McConnell slam Heritage president’s defense of Tucker Carlson.
- Via Axios: Scoop: Trump pours millions into Virginia, New Jersey races.
- Via Politico: Ingrassia withdraws nomination after racist texts. An older story, but it is encouraging that there are still some lines left.
- Via Politico: Platner says he’ll remove tattoo that resembles Nazi symbol. I have to say: being too ignorant about getting, and then keeping, a Nazi tattoo is disqualifying for the Senate, in my mind. And that is the best interpretation.
A Stack of Monday Tabs
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20 responses to “A Stack of Monday Tabs”
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I have to say: being too ignorant about getting, and then keeping, a Nazi tattoo is disqualifying for the Senate, in my mind. And that is the best interpretation.
You’d think the tatoo, plus the social media posts and not having any political experience would be disqualifying, but… In a cycle where the party rank and file is crying for new candidates, the best the establishment can come up with is a 77yo retiring governor. The only other announce candidate, a center-left entrepreneur, dropped out to clear a path for Mills. In 2020, Collins defeated a progressive Dem by 8.6 points, while Biden won the state by 23% while in 2024 the second district congress critter, Jarrod Golden, a center-right Dem, won reelection by 10 points in a district that went for trump by 20.
My take on Planter is that he came out expressing the frustrations and hopes of a broad swath of Mainers and among the under 50’s, they are willing to ignore/forgive youthful indiscretions. Few baby boomers and even fewer baby boom pols are heavily ‘inked’ and we came of came of age where at worst, our most outrageous statements were quotes in the college newspaper, with the real damaging ones restricted to dorm room political arguments. Emerging pols are very likely to have lots of baggage consisting of social media statements that they’ll need to disavow and quicker that we’d expect, what could be disqualifying today won’t make it through the day’s news cycle.
Someone mentioned that Planter could end up a Feterman or Manchin type and that’s probably true, but a pol that sets hearts a flutter in Cambridge, Manhattan or Georgetown won’t win in Maine.
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As for the Michigan lawyer saying that the Halloween terror plot never existed, the obvious counter-argument is that of course defense lawyers will deny the crime. However, there are still no charges and no updates to the scant information that was initially provided by law enforcement. So it seems that the FBI has either a problem with the facts of the case, or a problem preparing information and presenting it public.
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@Eusebio: This is certainly fair. But I give it more credence because if there really had been an ISIS-inspired terror plot foiled by the FBI, we would have heard a whoooole lot more about it.
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@Sleeping Dog: I take the point, and I have yet to dive into Platner’s social media stuff.
But I will say this: if a lot of Democrats find themselves rationalizing away the tattoo, it is an example of what I often argue: that Dems are also susceptible to rationalizing away red flags if they think doing so will help them win an election.
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Someone mentioned that Planter could end up a Feterman or Manchin type and that’s probably true,…
While that would be bad, if he helps win the senate it might be worth it. Better a half effective Democratic senate, than the GQP senate prostrated at El Taco’s feet.
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@Sleeping Dog: Tatoo has been gone for a week or so, but…
Having a Nazi tattoo on his chest a month ago wasn’t a youthful indiscretion. Lying about not knowing it was a Nazi tattoo on his chest a month ago wasn’t a youthful indiscretion.
Working for BlackWater in 2018 was not a youthful indiscretion.
There are dozens of people who live in the Great State of Maine. Surely there are at least a few who haven’t been walking around with Nazi tattoos, who are at least as qualified as a political neophyte with an oyster farm.
He has no political record, he claims to have changed, so all we have to judge him on is current actions and tea leaves and guesses as to whether being tarred as a Nazi in the general election (which will happen) would be a plus or a minus. Nazi tattoos are pretty big tea leaves. Lying about not knowing what it was until very recently is an action worth judging.
I don’t get why so many progressives are so set on this guy. This dumb fuck guy who is going to be tarred as a Nazi (fairly or not) in the general election, likely lose, and be used by Republicans on a national level to say that Democrats are the real antisemites.
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What’s going on in Maine should be a lesson for every Democratic State Party organization across the country.
I don’t know how the Maine Democratic Party goes about candidate recruitment, but good lord did they step in it here. Mills is TOO OLD. She’s 77 (she’ll be 78 on Dec. 30), and running for a six-year term. No. Just no.
My guess is that someone’s decided that name ID is going to supersede everything else, and that running a 78 year-old against a 73 year-old is a wash.
Platner is still, apparently, speaking to packed rooms. The getting of the tattoo was dumb, but from what I’ve read it was a group of drunk Marines in Croatia and he picked a skull and crossbones without a whole lot of careful consideration (snark intended). The keeping of it after learning what it was, now that’s a problem.
Again, back to the state party: candidate recruitment is SO important. You must have a deep bench, and be able to read the mood of the voters. Mills is not a terribly popular governor, and she’s old. This is not how you build party strength. The passive approach to recruitment by Democrats, to me at least, is their biggest weakness. Everyone’s worried about it looking like they are putting a thumb on the scale, and what happens is…this. If you aren’t *actively searching out candidates who can win*, then WTF are you even doing?
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Did Nancy Mace get a big jump on drinking before the flight?
When officers quickly located her, according to a supplemental incident report filed by one of the officers, the congresswoman immediately began “loudly cursing and making derogatory comments to us about the department. She repeatedly stated we were ‘Fucking incompetent,’ and ‘this is no way to treat a fucking US Representative,’” the report states.
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BTW: I understand the calculus that Plattner is better than Collins for Ds in regard to controlling the Senate.
But this leads to two related points that I think a lot of readers here tend to want to reject.
1. Then, when R voters give a pass to one of their Nazi-adjacent candidates, it is the same thing, right?
2. The same dynamic that will allow many Ds to rationalize Plattner is the same pathway that allowed a lot of R voters to rationalize Trump (which is why I don’t like the cult frame for explaining his wins).
3. This all interests pretty well with the post I just wrote about Lee Drutman’s analysis of contemporary electoral politics. -
@Steven L. Taylor:
@Steven L. Taylor:Can’t disagree with you, but what I’m taking away is that at one level, Dems are tired of being responsible.
Guess those are issues that the Dems in Maine will need to weigh. From what I’m seeing and hearing recently is that we’re a year from the election, 6 months to the primary and Maine Dems are being offered 2 choices and for a large number of them one of those choices is uninspiring.
I’d also speculate that Planter might be closer to the profile of the typical Maine voter than either you or I are.
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1. Then, when R voters give a pass to one of their Nazi-adjacent candidates, it is the same thing, right?
No, when Democrats do it it’s a lot worse. Next the GQP could nominate ten or fifteen various candidates for office, the least extreme of which is named Elon hitler IV and wears an SS uniform, and any complaints by anyone will be answered by a republiqan finger pointing at Plattner.
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1. Then, when R voters give a pass to one of their Nazi-adjacent candidates, it is the same thing, right?
As with so much of the political “trash talking” these days, “this is not that. False equivalency.
Plattner may have established a bad look for himself in his younger days, but is hardly comparable to R’s who give platform to the likes of Nick Fuentes et. al.
Was Al Franken’s boorishness towards women equivalent to Pete Hegseth’s drunken womanizing? Of course not, but look who resigned his seat while the other now manages our entire DoD (DoW).
Dems have long attempted to act their conscience in respect to values (more often than not, but admittedly not always). But the new breed of Repubs have completely cast aside any moral/ethical congruency in favor of raw power —– “In your face, baby!”
This is war. Scorched earth. Dems need to dial back on their proclivity for circular firing squads, and get down to business.
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@Rob1:
This is war. Scorched earth. Dems need to dial back on their proclivity for circular firing squads, and get down to business.
Exactly.
Democrats need to learn that a street fight is not conducted on Marquess of Queensbury rules. Our long-term goal is justice; our current goal is power.
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Well, OK, now we are getting somewhere. Nate Silver has Trump 12.9% underwater. That’s a new low, a statistically significant new low. Previous record: 10.3% under. In Nate’s slow-moving model, 2.6 points is not nuthin’.
And again I’d point to the fact that Trump’s floor is also his ceiling. He’s at 42.9% approval. (He’s not looking good for 2028). I have in my mind the number 37. No particular reason, but if his support gets down to the mid-30’s, that will be ball game for his dictatorship.
I don’t think I’d bet on an octogenarian showing signs of mental and physical decline, actively hated by more than half of the population and not beloved by the military, and with a so-so economy, becoming Mussolini.
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@Jen:
Platner is still, apparently, speaking to packed rooms. The getting of the tattoo was dumb, but from what I’ve read it was a group of drunk Marines in Croatia and he picked a skull and crossbones without a whole lot of careful consideration (snark intended). The keeping of it after learning what it was, now that’s a problem.
The lying about it is what gets my goat. Without a record to judge him by, I don’t know if he’s lying about being dumb and not knowing, or not being a white supremacist or antisemite. And yes, we absolutely have those in the Democratic party.
A nazi tattoo answers a lot questions that his Blackwater career and his internet posts ask, in a bad way.
I could wrinkle my nose at a “it’s bad, it was dumb, its embarrassing, I’ve known that I need to get rid of it for a while but never found the right thing.” Not great, but not nearly as bad as transparent lies.
(And a twitter poll to pick the covering tattoo could be fun — obviously it would have to start with “here are the three options” so he doesnt just end up with a blackface minstrel show across his chest or something…)
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Democrats need to learn that a street fight is not conducted on Marquess of Queensbury rules
But that is not my point.
If you are willing to rationalize the Nazi tattoo guy because it helps your party win in the Senate, I understand how you get there.
But this is the same logic many R voters are using to rationalize their votes.
It is the same reason MR calls them cultists.
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It is the same reason MR calls them cultists.
No. Cultists are not ruthless pragmatists, which is what we need to be. None of our politicians are telling us the sky is green, we are not neck deep in bizarre conspiracy theories. We are quite aware of what we’re doing, we’re not in denial. And if we’re a cult of personality, who exactly is the personality.
“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”
That’s not cultism, it’s the Chicago way.
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@Michael Reynolds: Granted, the imprecision of the way “cult” gets used in these conversations obscures a lot of meaning.
But the bottom line is this: rationalizing someone with a Nazi tattoo because he helps you win some higher goal is exactly what a lot of Evangelicals did when they rationalized voting for Trump because of abortion (and they won that gamble).
I am simply pointing out how people behave.
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(Sorry, hit “post” too soon).
And I will admit to noting the ways in which we all haweve a way of justifying this kind of behavior when we do it while also seeing it as morally deficient when they do it.
And also to note that this is what happens in a polarized two-party system with no other options. See my other post about Drutman’s graphs.
I would note that some readers tell me that Dems don’t behave like this. Well…
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@Steven L. Taylor: Yeah. That.
The Right’s moral justification is that Liberals are amoral and deadly, and will kill everything dear to them. It seems silly to us. They are battling like there is no tomorrow.
This, of course, is in serious conflict with the religious teaching that they purport to adhere to: Souls are immortal, and everything else is vanity and dust. Faith means letting go.
Having been taken over by Trump, they see suffering as “losing” which is deadly to them. Meanwhile, others see suffering in this world as inevitable, with no particular moral meaning attached.
In other news, things I keep observing remind me that even though liberals have lost many political battles, we have not at all lost in our quest for a more equal, more tolerant society. They are backlashing against it as hard as they can, and still, we had a vibrant Pride month this month. Obergefell might get overturned, and it will simply delegitimize this Court even further. I will do what I can to help those more vulnerable than me, because we will suffer. And we will advance.
It won’t stop the signal. You can never stop the signal.
