Graham Platner Dropped Out, but His Shadow Lingers Over Democrats and U.S. Politics

There was a time, not long ago, when Democrats could have branded their organization as the sane party. With Republicans moving in a sharply nationalist/populist direction that looked more over time like a cult of personality for Donald J. Trump, there was an opening for the donkey party to offer refuge to normies. All Democrats had to do was hold the ground against crazy.

They didn’t rise to the moment.

Instead, Democrats told the country to hold their beer while they embraced socialism, antisemitism, and hostility to western civilization. Inevitably, we arrived at a moment when they eagerly supported Graham Platner through his Nazi tattoo, self-described communism, attacks on Jews and Israel, and abusive behavior towards women, not to mention his phony posturing as a working-class hero. They are finally drawing the line at allegations by an ex-girlfriend that he forced his way into her home and raped her.

At least they still have standards. Of a sort. If only Platner was the full extent of the problem.

I wrote last month that Platner is a symptom of “a movement that seemingly holds ideological lunacy as its highest value.” All can be forgiven by the rising force of progressives so long as a candidate voices sufficiently radical ideas—all can be forgiven, that is, except unelectability. Platner’s train wreck of a life was no problem so long as Democratic primary voters seemed in a forgiving mood; once the horrifying revelations threatened to alienate the public, his support was cut off.

But if Platner is out, the Democratic Party’s rejection of sanity continues. High-profile New York congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier has also endorsed communism, while Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson sticks with garden-variety socialism, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Washington, D.C.’s presumptive new Mayor Janeese Lewis George and her city council allies. The same is true of a wave of progressive primary winners running as Democrats in upcoming mid-term elections.

Most of these left-wing candidates and officeholders are formally affiliated with or at least supported by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the not-a-party that’s rapidly displacing old-fashioned Democrats and wearing their organization like a skin suit. Despite its name, though, the DSA doesn’t really offer a democracy-friendly alternative to totalitarian brands of socialism.

Jonathan Chait wrote last week for The Atlantic, “In 2025, the group’s convention voted to officially remove its founding language allowing for the expulsion of members who worked for communist cells, and added a provision calling the Palestinian ‘right to resistance’ a central tenet of the DSA.” He added that the DSA is run by far-left factions that “have realigned the organization in firm opposition to liberal democracy.”

A key—even mandatory—part of modern progressives’ ideology is hostility to Israel and its American supporters that is largely an overt rebranding of old-school antisemitism as antizionism.

“For many Jewish Democrats, the Democratic Party is just the latest institution that welcomed us and is turning hostile,” Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson told Axios.

It’s also turning hostile to the U.S. Chevalier once commented online that “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” That was after founding a group calling for “total eradication of Western civilization.” Mamdani gave an Independence Day address that described his city as one of “contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world—one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections.” That dim view of the United States permeates progressive/DSA thinking.

But, on the plus side, most of these politicians have avoided allegations of home invasions and rape.

Some normie Democrats are alarmed by the radical drift of their party. A group of House Democrats put together a “Promise to America” group promising to bring “common sense back to the Democratic Party.” They say, “we are capitalist, not socialist,” and that “we are proud, not ashamed of America.”

But, a group of elected officials trying to reclaim one of the two major political parties from socialists who are ashamed of America suggests that maybe they’ve waited a bit too long. Recent YouGov polling finds that, among supporters of the two major parties and independents, Democrats are the only group that favors socialism over capitalism. Sixty-two percent of Democrats say they would vote for democratic socialists, compared to 24 percent of independents and 3 percent of Republicans. And Democrats aren’t exactly proud to be American, according to Gallup polling.

So, the Democratic Party passed on its chance to be the sane party. That’s unfortunate because the other major contender is still consumed by the populism, nationalism, and Trump idolatry that has marked it for a decade since it stopped being a generally conservative party and morphed into a vehicle for the ambitions of one man.

President Trump, of course, has his own messy life to contend with, including a civil judgement finding him liable for sexual misconduct. He’s joined by such Republicans as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who agreed to pay $300,000 to settle securities fraud charges and is running for the U.S. Senate as a Trump favorite.

Ideologically, the GOP now represents the president’s latest whims more than consistent ideas, though Vice President J.D. Vance, a likely heir to Trump, is openly hostile to free markets.

That said, the cult-of-personality Republican Party may actually be the less crazy of the two major parties at the moment, though that’s not saying much. If the Democrats remain on their current path, perhaps Trump’s exit from politics in 2029 will create an opportunity for the GOP to offer itself as the sane option by comparison to the party of socialism, antisemitism, and hostility to the U.S.

But I wouldn’t hold out hope for that eventuality. If the last decade has demonstrated anything, it’s that America’s politicians see their enemies’ radicalism and stupidity as opportunities to venture further towards the fringes themselves. Graham Platner may be on his way out, but his shadow lingers over a rotten political culture that is infested with bad people who endorse terrible ideas.