James Joyner has already provided the background on the current rape allegations being leveled at the ostensible Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, Graham Platner, which saves me the trouble of outlining the situation.
Not surprisingly, I keep thinking about how all of this is just another data point in my ongoing discussion of weak parties in the United States and the way in which the primary process used to choose candidates is at the heart of party definition and evolution in the United States, not the parties themselves as institutions.
Let’s consider the situation and note who has the actual power.
Understandably, a lot of Democrats (both office-holders and self-identified Democratic voters) want Platner to drop out. We are currently about to hit the deadline for a candidate to drop off and be replaced.
Note that neither the Democratic Party of Maine, the DNC, nor any other institutional actor can make Platner drop out.
The decision is Platner’s.
Our system is candidate-centric.
The tools that the broader party has to deploy are:
- Removal of endorsements (James provided some examples). While not nothing, it’s not much in terms of actual power. Note, too, that these retractions are actually just a bunch of individuals making decisions, not some actual central action of The Democratic Party.
- Senator Schumer had stated that Platner would receive no money from the Senate Democrats if he continued. While that’s not nothing, it is far from everything, as candidates have their own sources of funding. Granted, I would think that raising money from here on out would be very difficult for Platner, but that would be a collective response from donors, not something The Democratic Party did to him (and would, again, be a set of individual choices).
This short list is hardly the stuff of a strong institutional actor.
It seems worth noting some of the headlines
- Politico: Maine’s Democratic Party leadership calls on Platner to drop out following POLITICO report.
- NOTUS: Top Democratic Leaders Call for Platner to Withdraw from Senate Race.
- The NYT: Abandoned by Allies, Platner Faces Pressure to End Senate Campaign.
Note that there are “calls” and “pressure,” but those verbs underscore where the actual power lies.
Note, too, the nouns. There are “leaders” and “allies,” but the party itself is nothing more than a collective set of franchise members. There are no central authoritative actors here.
All of this illustrates the way in which political parties in the United States farm out what should be their central function: choosing candidates who represent what that party wants to stand for. Instead, in the United States, we rely on a combination of self-selection by candidates and the exigencies of relatively low-turnout electoral contests (primary elections) to decide what the party is.
For what it is worth, I am not saying that having a more robust party choosing candidates would always choose the best option. But I am saying that it is clearly a problem when parties as collective actors can’t really control who uses their label, especially in situation likes this. (I think there are also central problems that affect the representational function of parties, as well as new party formation, but that is a broader discussion.)
There is, of course, the broader issue of how primaries force broad parties to have to adapt against their will, whether it be the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus/MAGA/QAnon factions in the GOP or recent hand-wringing by Democrats over their growing DSA faction.
Much of this dovetails well with my recent piece at Liberal Currents: Primary Lessons.
Back to Platner, we at OTB have written practically nothing about him.
In a tab-clearing post back in November, I noted the following:
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.
James made a similar point in a post about the primaries in May.
Having noted all of that, another aspect of the Platner nomination is the broader implications for the Senate, and therefore for things like the courts, especially SCOTUS. Indeed, I had contemplated writing a post about Platner not dissimilar to the one I wrote about Herschel Walker when he was the GOP Senate candidate in Georgia. There was a plausible argument for Democratic voters in Maine to vote for Platner, despite all his previous baggage, up until yesterday, given that he was the nominee and that seemed set in stone.
At this point, it is clear that morally, Platner has got to go; Strategically, this seems imperative as well. I had already largely written-off Maine, given Platner’s pre-existing problems. Now it is just too much. While I doubt a replacement candidate can beat Collins, given her track record, such a move is the only hope for a Democrat to win in November.
