As of Wednesday morning this week, even after his sexting scandal broke, I knew two things about Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner: I was glad I didn’t have to vote in Maine, and that if I did, I would probably hold my nose and vote for Platner. Senator Susan Collins is despicable, her vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh unforgivable. Defeating her is essential.

It’s Friday morning, and now I know deep down I could never vote for Platner. (I’m still glad I don’t vote in Maine so I won’t be tested on Tuesday.)

Platner, as most of the political world now knows, was accused Thursday afternoon in a New York Times story of behaving in “unsettling” ways, as one of the women put it, to at least three girlfriends, between 2013 and 2021. As many people also know, especially Platner stans, the worst allegations in the article—that he was physically abusive, and that he knew his “skull and bones” tattoo was an SS Totenkopf, which he has repeatedly denied—came from a conservative GOP operative. Do I like that? No. But I believe her, and I don’t believe Platner.

The Maine oysterman has been through a lot since his 20-year-old Totenkopf was revealed in October (he had no idea it was a Nazi symbol, he said. He’d danced with his shirt off at a wedding, in front of his Jewish family!). Then came allegations that he had posted, on Reddit and other social media, various icky thoughts about women, Black people, and gay people. He said both the tattoo and the sometimes outrageous Reddit posts were a product of his PTSD and alcoholism from his military service, which included not only the Marines but a stint at the mercenary group Blackwater. He asked for understanding and compassion. He received it.

But consider this, when you think about whether to trust him: If the New York Post is to be believed, as recently as Tuesday he told Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who’ve endorsed him, that there were no more muddy boots to drop, and that the “worst” of the rumors they might be hearing weren’t true. Then he canceled the rest of his Washington meetings and ran home to Sullivan, Maine, to do damage control on the coming New York Times story. Even if you don’t believe that story, or don’t want to believe the Republican victim, you’d have to count what he told Sanders and Warren as something akin to a… lie, wouldn’t you?

Platner did something similar in his interview with MSNOW’s Chris Hayes last night. When Hayes asked him whether there were other “texts, photos, floating around that will hurt the campaign,” and whether he worried about it, the candidate brushed it off: “I’m not worried about it. There may be things out there, but they’re before I was in politics and a public figure.” He repeatedly depicted the negative stories coming out against him as what happens when you’re “going up against an entrenched political machine.” Disapproval was only coming from “career politicians.” Platner went on: “My journey is one of transformation.”

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And my journey is one of disillusionment, and maybe some regret that I ever believed him. Dude, you got into politics last August. So anything that happened, say, that spring must be forgiven?

Yes, I’m a little pissed off. I’ve been Platner-skeptical since the Totenkopf reveal, but my Maine friends and acquaintances, as well as people I respect in the broader progressive community, love him. But I think Platner’s rocket to political stardom reflects something ugly that’s developed, not only on the right but on the left too: The only acceptable form of “identity politics” now is white-male identity politics. On the left, women and people of color have been told since Kamala Harris lost in 2024, even going back to Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, that we are the problem; our “identitarianism” drove away moderates and white men in 2016, and in 2024, even some Black and Latino men.

Over and over we’ve been told: We gotta support candidates, like Platner, who have a lot of guns, and pickup trucks, and tattoos, and a military background, even if it includes Blackwater; a history of racist and sexist remarks and gay slurs on social media, and a history of shady behavior toward women, because it’s the only way to reach white working-class men.

I’d say that’s pretty insulting to white working-class men.

Let me add a couple of other points on the last two Platner scandals involving women. The sexting—which took place after he was married, and which was revealed by his wife to the campaign—actually bothered me, because it reflected recent behavior, not his post-combat meltdown. And for the record, it wasn’t normal old sexting (who among us?) but use of a semi-anonymous app called Kik, frequently used the way Platner used it. His photo on the app showed him shirtless, and in a towel; his profile was only deleted last week. This disturbs me more than if he had been sending smutty consensual texts to someone he knew. For one thing: When Hayes asked him if all his sext recipients were adults, he quickly answered, “Yes,” though he has no way to know. That it happened after his marriage shows a level of sexual compulsion that’s unnerving in a Senate candidate.

Also, when Hayes asked him when he terminated his sexting, he quickly said, “It stopped when it started.” Is that a koan or something?

In Thursday’s New York Times story, conservative Lyndsey Bifield’s stories of violence—he grabbed her so hard he left marks; during a fight, he twisted her arm behind her back, threw her into a bedroom, and held the door closed until, he told her, she got “calm”—are the most harrowing. But they aren’t the only disturbing information in the piece.

Jenny Racicot, a Democrat who dated him, told the Times: “When I saw the old comments that he made online…I was like, that makes sense. This person does not respect women.” While she said he was not physically abusive, she related a story where he came to her house drunk when she had asked him not to. Racicot found it “reckless” and “unsettling.” She also posted on a Facebook page, “Are we dating the same guy?” after a woman posted a photo with Platner. The woman added that “he popped up on a different dating app. I’m concerned he may have a significant other out there.” Racicot posted confirming that he was indeed married and warned against him. That was in November 2024, a year after he married Amy Gertner.

The third woman the Times depicted as having bad experiences dating Platner is unnamed, and is quoted saying only that she felt like “collateral damage to the world that is his.”

Still, the most damning information comes from Fifield. She also says he referred to women as “hatchet wounds,” referring to our genitalia, she believes, and more than once told her: “If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” but added “it would not be in “a sexual way, not in a gay way…. I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant.”

Again, you can dismiss Fifield because of her politics, or not. I don’t.

But the lefty men who have defended Platner appall me almost more than he does. Substacker Ken Klippenstein, who once worked at The Nation, defended Platner after the sexting story broke as a manly man, unlike the “smoothgroins: real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be.” He named California Governor Gavin Newsom, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg (who is gay) as examples. “When Washington acts like it’s disqualifying, what they’re really saying is that ordinary people aren’t fit for higher office.” Klippenstein’s piece also contains the lovely sentence that Mills got “her clock cleaned by Platner so badly she’s probably still shitting pieces of her dentures out.” Nice violent imagery! Klippenstein captioned a side-by-side photo of Collins and Maine Governor Janet Mills, who dropped out of the race: “Susan Collins and Janet Mills would never be embroiled in a sexting scandal (too much integrity?)” Sexist, ageist—it reminds me of 2016. (Here’s an excellent piece by Liberal Currents writer Alan Elrod about Klippenstein’s post.)

In Jacobin, David Sirota wrote: “If you are part of this political-media elite, you are probably desperately promoting the idea that politicians’ ‘character’ is defined by their manners, civility, family life, and anything else that has no material impact on voters.” So manly populism matters, allegations of assaulting and demeaning women don’t?

The day before the Times story with the women’s specific allegations broke, author Sebastian Junger weighed in with “I just had breakfast with Graham Platner” on his Substack. “I was interested to meet someone who seemed to represent a new political creature: the working-man liberal,” Junger says in the piece. He goes on to man-worship Platner (and himself) by writing that the two were “the only people [in their swanky restaurant] who had been blown up in a war zone” and that Platner was “the only Democratic candidate or congressman I wouldn’t want to mess with, whereas the Republicans have at least half a dozen guys who could put me in a headlock.” That’s what I want in a senator!

Some have continued to defend Platner after these latest revelations. Maybe the worst defense of the candidate came from acclaimed film and television producer Marshall Herskovitz, the man behind two shows I loved when I was younger, thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. I can’t link to Herskovitz’s ludicrous Bluesky posts, because after a few hours of backlash, he removed them. But I’d copied one. The reaction to Times’ Platner accusations, he wrote, “reveals why the Democratic Party has lost men. Is Platner accused of rape, assault, harassment? Nope. Just being a bad boyfriend.”

Actually, Fifield accused him of assault, Marshall. You should at least acknowledge that, even if you want to add that you don’t believe her because she was a conservative.

And DropSite writer Ryan Grim, who notoriously peddled serial liar Tara Reade’s claim that, as a senator, President Joe Biden raped her, long past the point of credulity (Reade was also a known Vladimir Putin worshipper; she now lives in Russia) has taken the lead in itemizing Fitfield’s GOP background. It’s a service, I guess. Still, “I believe Tara Reade but Lyndsey Fifield is a liar” makes me distrust his judgment.

For the record, Lyndsey Fifield has her own complaints about the Times story, saying it left out corroborating details, which she posted on X.

All of this said, I’m still glad I’m not a Maine voter. Defeating Susan Collins is critical to Democrats’ taking the Senate. The feckless Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, who pushed a reluctant Janet Mills into the race, then embraced Platner after the sexting scandal, and then hailed Collins for her 10,000th Senate vote (by the way, it was the vote to enhance ICE and Border Patrol funding), deserves a lot of blame here.

That tilt-a-whirl performance aside, Schumer and establishment Democrats haven’t invested at all in new candidate development or the state party infrastructure that would put them forward. And all Schumer’s Senate recruits are either establishment Democrats or folks who would have run anyway (like former senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio). In Minnesota, he is reportedly encouraging big Dem donors to support corporate centrist Representative Angie Craig against progressive Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan; I could go on but I won’t.

Yes, taking the Senate is crucial, but right now we have no guarantee Platner can. The polls show that the race between him and Collins has already tightened. And if you believe there aren’t more muddy boots to drop, you’re naïve (though I hope you’re right). He already admitted it was possible to Chris Hayes. And while I’m not thrilled that the source of the most damaging allegations is a Republican, I also think: If she were doing this for Collins, wouldn’t she have held this dirt until Platner had the nomination?

Anyway, this is a mess that I mainly blame on establishment Democrats who are afraid of genuine populist, anti-corporate insurgents, as well as on toxic lefty men who’ve tried to shame anyone who raises doubts about Platner into silence. There’s still a potent strain of misogyny on the left, and I’m not going to shut up about it. Mainers, vote your conscience on Tuesday, whatever that is.