The Saddest of Ferris Wheels - American Politics, July 2026

Here we go, 250 more!!

https://www.wlky.com/article/mitch-mcconnell-hospital-condition-louisville-kentucky/71768553

https://newrepublic.com/post/212595/mitch-mcconnell-found-unconscious-rushed-hospital

I managed to miss this back on June 14. And the Washington Post was already dead to me, but...way to piss on the Watergate legacy, Bezos!

From the old thread

Tomorrow we can open a new thread. If only it were as easy to move past the shitstorm called the Trump Administration, the 119th Congress, and the Supreme Court.

In Indian traditions, Saṃsāra refers to the cycle of life, suffering, death, and rebirth, from which we are all trying to escape. It is compared to a "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence."

Saṃsāra is contrasted with nirvana, a state of bliss in which the enlightened soul gains release from the cycle of torment that imprisons most of us.

It is often depicted, in religious imagery, as a wheel.

Rather like, dare I say, a Ferris wheel.

was inspired by this headline: A storm, overpriced food and a sad ferris wheel: inside Trump’s dreadful state fair

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/01/donald-trump-great-american-state-fair

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFx298i-FOc

https://preview.redd.it/i-thought-this-was-a-ferris-wheel-for-years-just-now-v0-pacxk64altbg1.jpeg

how is this gonna work... they can't just admit they lost

The Justice Department on Tuesday directed its staff to bring fraud charges in alleged cases of birth tourism as a response to their loss in the birthright citizenship ruling from the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

In the wake of the 6-3 ruling, a memo from the Justice Department’s office of the deputy attorney general said all criminal division staff should “prioritize the investigation and prosecution of birth tourism schemes.”

Don't there have to be laws against "birth tourism" before you can prosecute them?

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1812

S.1812 - Ban Birth Tourism Act 119th Congress (2025-2026)

Sponsor: Sen. Blackburn, Marsha [R-TN] (Introduced 05/20/2025)
Committees: Senate - Judiciary
Latest Action: Senate - 05/20/2025 Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Doesn't seem to have passed

the golden boy brett kavanaugh will be pleased to revisit!

There are.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/birth-tourism-trump

I did hear about a place in Southern California where they were doing this (mostly women from China) but it was for a weird reason: so their kids could pay resident tuition at colleges! Like in 18 years... pretty crazy foresight

That should have said xp, but there are statutes in place that the government has used to prosecute “birth tourism.”

We should all go to the Dallas GOP convention in Sept... I don't think you have to be a delegate, you can just get your freak on

I don't want to get my hopes up, but an 80 year old man with numerous documented health problems and many secret health problems is promising to give a two-hour speech in 107 degree heat next week...

if it happens on July 4th the world may run out of fireworks

ive still never heard how citizenship would be determined birthright is dead but then i’ve not read much about it. anyone know)

https://medium.com/prismnpen/to-the-trans-girl-who-just-lost-at-the-supreme-court-so-did-i-26-years-ago-cb1603082d46

More of this please:

Dave Weigel: “When Fox News is booking you and covering you, might that be for the same reason Republican PACs spend to help progressive candidates? That they see you as easier to beat?”

Abdul El-Sayed: “It’s amazing to me how deeply they’re misjudging this. I’m like: You have never fought a counterpuncher. The number of times I’m gonna define and redefine Mike Rogers! We’re talking about an anti-charismatic old school politician who doesn’t even know what he believes, except for he wants to make himself rich off of the rest of us. You know what I’m gonna do to that man? By the time I’m done, his best friends are gonna look at him and think what I think, say what I say. I’m gonna define him into eternity. Good, help me beat the crap out of you. Little parts of your vestiges — politically — are gonna be scattered all over the state of Michigan, never to be seen again. You say “Mike Rogers,” it’ll be like: “Remember when Abdul just completely demolished that man’s political future?” By the time I’m done with him, people are going to be calling him Five Dollar Rogers.”

Weigel: “Why five dollars?”

El-Sayed: “Because of $5 gas and how he’ll do whatever you want him to do for five bucks.”

Ugh . Per NY Times ICE is upping arrests now but trying to do so without chaos and headlines of the past . But the new sweep has involved the arrest of a Nigerian nun based in South Texas which has gotten attention today.

Federal immigration officials have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days, a major surge that has stemmed from a push within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase arrest rates.

Agency leaders in recent days ordered top ICE officials to focus more of their officers’ efforts on picking up immigrants they want to deport, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with federal officials. ICE officers have arrested people at check-ins, with immigration authorities, during traffic stops and on the street. The push has apparently yielded results, with recent arrest numbers roughly doubling from the 1,000 picked up each day earlier this year.

s. Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, pledged to mount a quieter enforcement campaign following the chaos of a monthlong operation in Minnesota, where federal officers killed two U.S. citizens.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/us/politics/ice-immigrant-arrests-surge.html

Yeah, there was a big operation the next county over from us a few weeks ago where they grabbed more than 100 people in a couple of days. It's completely terrified the local immigrant communities. But they were trying to keep it all pretty low-key, it only became news because local immigrants and advocate groups started spreading the word.

There's an Albania barber down the street from me that was picked up a week or so ago and sent to a detention center in ... Brazil, Indiana? He reportedly came over in 2005 with a fake visa and/or Italian passport, and was allegedly ruled to be deported back in 2008, but skipped. His wife is a US citizen and they have an 8 year old kid. There's a statement from ICE that breaks the record for the number of times it sneeringly invokes "criminal illegal." It's a fucked up situation exacerbated by a complete lack of empathy from assholes that would treat him like shit no matter his status.

That’s the thing, Trump and the Republicans kept saying they would deport everyone, the media kept saying “oh, he only means the criminals”. Tom Homan himself literally said “they’re ALL criminals”.

good morning!

Was glad to see in video clips that there were a number of folks with cowbells, drums, and more outside Malcolm X Park in DC at 8:45 am this morning where Hegseth and Stephen Miller were doing a thank you to a huge number of National Guards standing there. In video clips I have seen you can hear the noise from outside the blocked off park (called Meridian Hill Park by some) while Hegseth is speaking and he then calls the protesters ingrates. The National Guards who stand around DC doing nothing most of the time but looking at their phones cost taxpayers a million dollars a day. Miller referred to them as symbols of the virtues of "Civilization" . I had only heard that Hegseth was gonna be there late last night when I saw on Instagram some flyers about the protest. Malcolm X Park's water fountains that had been actually planned for repair for quite awhile have recently been fixed (via a National Park chosen contractor not a Trump one) and so are working fine and provide a better backdrop. Its disconcerting that Hegseth and Miller and company went to this park that is not down on the mall and is known better and used largely by locals and not tourists and politicians for its Sunday drummers circle, occasional house music events, a Fugazi show, and just hanging out

Florida continues its race to the bottom of humanity

Immigration advocates in Florida have decried a “cruel and harmful” new rule by education officials aligned to hard-right Republican governor Ron DeSantis to ban undocumented students from state colleges and universities.

The Florida board of education voted on Tuesday to bar access to its 28 state-funded institutions to anybody not a US citizen or “lawfully present” in the country. It follows Florida’s move last year to strip discounted in-state tuition rates for certain immigrant students.

Its disconcerting that Hegseth and Miller and company went to this park

It was a show of impunity, that they could come into a neighborhood take over a park named after Malcolm X and do whatever they wanted there. The message: we are the overlords here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/1ulpfy8/stage_falling_apart_at_great_american_state_fair

if it happens on July 4th the world may run out of fireworks

― frogbs, Wednesday, July 1, 2026 6:09 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think about this a lot, especially when I need a pick-me-up: while none of us will ever have the wealth or power of Trump, Elon, et al, it should comfort all of us to know that the response to our demise will not be the deafening sound of champagne corks being popped simultaneously all over the world

they're actually charging that olympic canoeist with a felony count of touching the peeled, floating pool paint

soon to be another L for Jeanine Pirro

They'll get about as far with that as the sandwich-throwing felony count.

well the story is that it's the vandals' fault, not the shitty no-bid contractor or the motorcade that drove across the curing paint

so he'll serve the purpose of supporting the lie until we've forgotten about this whole fiasco

xp why did they design the stage to look like a guillotine

They misread the guillotine order...

Musicology Duck went to the Fourth in DC so we didn’t have to:

https://bsky.app/profile/musicologyduck.bsky.social

NB i live only a couple miles from the fireworks and barely heard anything.

Musicology Duck went to the Fourth in DC so we didn’t have to

did anything interesting happen there which we should read about

sorry, no quite uneventful but everyone gets wet

ideal situation for the duck at least

Is Mitch McConnell dead?

The idea that he's in a coma and on life support in order to avoid calling a special election to fill his seat feels 100% on the nose.

Was Mitch ever truly alive?

Lizards are alive, so I'm thinking it's within reason to say Mitch was, too.

He's 100% dead, and we are being fucked over by the lack of clarity.

everone likes think that it’s an evil prez who ends up a living head in a jar, but not me. it’s instead a moriarty like mcconnell in the glass.

hi mitch— yah, i got you figgered you rat bastard

If he's a corpse on ice the hospital is required to fill in a death certificate and file it. otoh, he could be brain dead and intubated to the hilt, but if there's a heart beat, they can pretend he's alive and on the road to recovery.

David Morris, a journalist and author, also appeared to endorse the theory with a brutal jab at McConnell and his legacy.

“Mitch McConnell remaining technically alive for an extra three weeks because of a manipulative procedural maneuver is exactly how he would have wanted to go out,” Morris wrote in a social media post on X.

lol

including independent journalist and crypto commentator Adam Cochran, have a theory

hmmmm

wow we should def believe what this crypto commentator thinks

“at long last sir, have you no shred of decency?”

*laughter thru bubbles in jar*

AI Mitch is in charge now

like Superman 3 when the lady turned into a scary robot

Rigor Tortoise.

(saw on facebook)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/06/memphis-national-guard-troops-shoot-man

apparently Platner has cancelled upcoming town halls and rumors are circulating some other shit is about to drop. who knows. I'm so sick of Maine.

could also just be that the polls are showing him losing to Collins

this country and maine fucking deserve susan collins is how i break it down to an extent. which extent is not humor, that’s for sure.

the Patriot Front is... it's BIDEN

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) on Monday called for an investigation into the Patriot Front white nationalist group after its Independence Day rally and march across Washington, D.C.

“What I find odd about Patriot Front is how under Biden they were never investigated. Well funded. Never investigated,” Luna wrote in a post on the social platform X.

that can't be true; joe biden is Q

“What I find odd about Patriot Front is how under Biden they were never investigated."

this is so silly it's sad i have to ask, but, is/was patriot front investigated under TRUMP?

Platner accused of sexual assault: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/06/graham-platner-sexual-assault-allegation-00987737

xp Biden was too busy persecuting Catholics instead, which is SO diabolical because... he IS one

“FBI under Biden looked into Catholics instead. So, looks like @GOPoversight should do some digging,” she added, referring to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Racicot previously described “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior by Platner to The New York Times, but says she didn’t go public with the specific assault claim because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim.

Racicot said she later felt compelled to go public about her experience because the reaction to the Times story was dominated by controversy about another woman, Lyndsey Fifield, who alleged Platner mistreated her and faced attacks because of her ties to the Republican Party. (Contacted by POLITICO, Fifield stood by the allegations she made to the Times and declined to comment further.)

“My part of the story was just a read-over,” Racicot said in an interview. “And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated.”

Racicot said she was torn over coming forward in part because she agrees with Platner politically.

...

“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

congrats, Maine!

how these monsters even get the notion that they should be running for any political office is beyond me.

he'll just say he was in "a bad place, because war, but that's not who he is.."

they already had a response - his campaign just said it wasn't true and that it was politically motivated, coming a week before the election, etc

the election isn't until November though

lol, god, stick a fork in me. true.

a week before the ballot deadline is what they mentioned. the statement:

“These allegations are very serious and Graham vigorously denies them. They are also coached and coordinated by out of state establishment operatives. For a year, opponents of this campaign have thrown everything they can at Graham –– calling him a Nazi, a war criminal, and a communist. None of it has been true and this is no different. It is not a coincidence that this story comes a week before the ballot deadline, just as the previous false allegations came a week before the primary. Graham began this campaign to fight for a Maine where everyone is treated with dignity and where Mainers are put first, and no amount of desperate smears will stop this movement from seeing that vision through.”

he also says this, dude is toast

So regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward"

I hope so, that article is damning. So were all the reddit posts, the tattoo, the slurs, and the previous story though, so I guess we'll see.

I don't know Maine election laws, if he dropped out before the ballot deadline (which I don't expect), could the Democrats put someone else on?

bluesky folx are saying he's got a week and he can drop out and they can replace him on the ballot

I don't know Maine election laws, if he dropped out before the ballot deadline (which I don't expect), could the Democrats put someone else on?

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Monday, July 6, 2026

Yes.

What a shitshow. Obviously the Dems don't have a good track record with last-minute candidate substitutions, but they still should. Put Janet Mills on there, the centrists can calm down about everyone going socialist. And then Collins still probably wins anyway, but w/e. At least you don't spend from now til November defending a rapist.

fuck no don't put Mills there

Well, whoever. I don't get the feeling the Maine bench is deep.

oh wow i'm so shocked another story came out about platner

I mean, if you want a world where rape is disqualifying for public office, then you have to make it disqualifying.

lots of platner apologists on bsky waffling about now

as in "ok now I'm out" or trying to justify this?

just being weird. parker molloy, who is usually reliable, suddenly got very positive on him in the past few weeks because she saw him as better than Collins. She was doubling down on this line of thought as recently as yesterday. Today it's "Jesus, this guy". Uh yeah, wtf did you expect?

Wajahat Ali, who took a similar stance, is now just saying "well people voted for him so if you're going to replace him you'd better find someone who can win" as if Platner could have actually beat Collins to begin with.

these people are going to need to work real hard to prove that they ever gave a fuck or even do now

a useful lesson anyone can take from this is that a nazi tattoo is never going to be the one and only skeleton in the closet

Seeing some people like this guy — former president of the Maine Senate. He ran for governor this year and finished 3rd in the primary, so I don't know that there's any reason or mechanism to stick him in the Senate race. But he sounds OK!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Jackson_(politician)

If he drops out, whoever they replace him with is going to lose to Collins by a bigger margin than Sara Gideon did six years ago. He's a piece of shit, but he's also a very talented politician with a message that appealed to a whole lot of Maine Democratic primary voters. Whoever the institutional Democratic Party puts up in his place is a) not going to share that message, will probably explicitly reject much of it, in fact, and b) will be seen by many Maine Democratic voters as "the quisling that Washington forced on us after the guy we actually voted for got shoved out of the race over a bunch of bullshit." (I put that last part in quotes to make it clear to even ILX's stupidest posters that those words do not represent my personal opinion.)

god not even this will stop you, will it

If he drops out, whoever they replace him with is going to lose to Collins by a bigger margin than Sara Gideon did six years ago. He's a piece of shit, but

whoever replaces his is probably going to lose, true. that doesn't make sticking with him a good choice. there are only bad choices, and unfortunately him dropping out and the replacement getting their ass kicked is probably the best one.

‪Mat Johnson‬
✧@matjohn✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 7m
This Is Just To Say

I told you so
about that thing
you disagreed
with me about

of which
irrefutable proof
has now emerged

Forgive me
it is too delicious
too sweet
not to remind you that
you were wrong

hey unperson while you're mind-reading every D voter in the state of Maine—and definitely not ventriloquizing your own fucked up opinions—could you double check that none of them are thinking "I don't want to vote for a rapist"?

parker molloy, who is usually reliable, suddenly got very positive on him in the past few weeks because she saw him as better than Collins.

Her position as I understood it is that any Democrat in the seat is better than a Republican who votes with her party 90% of the time. She was arguing with people who said that Collins would be better or that there would be no difference. I don't think she "suddenly got very positive on him" as much as she expressed the reality of the situation in which Platner is now the Democratic nominee.

Ugh unperson just stop dude

The Maine Democratic Party leadership is calling for him to withdraw. I'm guessing they don't like him to start with, but also they're right.

he can always go back to oystering

yeah you gotta pull the plug on him now. even if it means losing the seat I think Dems really do have to be serious about character right now and embracing a guy like this is just gonna solidify the perception that the Democratic party is just as unprincipled as the GOP.

in the last few minutes of that interview he did with chris hayes a few weeks ago, he was asked about the possibility of more allegations dropping etc, and he handled it the best he could for someone who must have known that this was out there and that happened and knew it before he ran for office, but it was pretty clear he was cooked

platner should drop out now while the party at least can come up with someone else

I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible. Graham Platner should drop out from the race. I am withdrawing my endorsement.

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) July 6, 2026

xp what about Stephen King

thats what pisses me off about this guy. he had to know this was out there. along with the sexting story. and the tattoo. and all those Reddit posts. obviously if you're a Republican this shit is fine, maybe good even. but don't bring this to the party that's supposed to be *fighting* the bad people.

Sounds like Ro ^^^^ was fine with it all until a couple hours ago

Cooper Lund
One thing that I think is under-considered in this is that AOC was a bartender before she was a congresswoman and I have to wonder if she saw Platner and immediately went “I know that kind of guy”

‪Eric Michael Garcia‬
✧@ericmgar✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 2h
AOC not getting behind Graham Platner looks like a chess move now.

He'll be the Republican Senator from Maine soon enough.

yah if he’s serious about this line of work he’s in hahaha. they have fake indie angus king already, maine is made to indie. susan collins should run as indie too, everyone can pretend to be concerned about it.

grassroots independent, a new voice for the beleaguered oystermen in months without an R

xp what about Stephen King

― Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, July 6, 2026 6:36 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Graham Platner may drop out. (I hope he doesn't, but.) Meanwhile, the Abuser in Chief just keeps on keepin' on.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 6, 2026

cool bro

In case we needed more evidence that tribalism exists on the left

I imagine there's quite a few like King.. 'concerning' by not a deal-breaker

Sounds like Ro ^^^^ was fine with it all until a couple hours ago

― Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, July 6, 2026 6:45 PM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

to be fair to ro khanna, this is another level and it is corroborated.

but i am surprised so many people were willing to get on the platner train. obviously he was a fucked up guy with trauma who was not being 100% honest about his past.

i know we all want progressive policies and i am fine with "imperfect" candidates but the types of red flags this guy had were really alarming.

Sometimes I feel like shitlibs are actually saying "if we exclude sex criminals we'll have no candidates", which if that's what you believe and accept, it says a lot about you.

i know we all want progressive policies and i am fine with "imperfect" candidates but the types of red flags this guy had were really alarming.

― treeship., Monday, July 6, 2026 7:36 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yup

his bullshit evasive explanation for his tattoo should already have been disqualifying.

xp i don't think it was the "shitlibs" who liked platner, it was the progressives. and i get why he was appealing -- guy who came across as manly, working class, and a veteran whose positions were consistently progressive -- but he was never what people wanted him to be.

yes

His support seemed like an odd combination of liberals who saw him as an electable tough guy outsider and leftists who hated the Schumer establishment and liked his current politics. And the opposition was both centrists who hated his line on Israel and leftist positions, and leftists who thought the totenkopf and various other red flags were a bridge too far or that he’d do a bait and switch once he got into office. Anyway, shows the limits of defining a guy solely by his enemies. AOC comes out of this looking pretty smart.

Warren finally calling for him to drop out.

Schumer and (DSCC Chair) Gillibrand, too

also DNC gonna cut campaign funding

He still has Michael Tracey.

A thread:

Gwen Snyder is uncivil

Follow
No one remembers this anymore I guess but there was an entire movement of women staffers from the Bernie 2016 campaign who organized on the eve of the 2020 campaign to beg Bernie to take a proactive stance against the systemic sexual misconduct they'd experienced on the 2016 campaign

i would want a source on that other than Gwen Snyder, she kinda makes stuff up a lot.

the metaphoring continues

Washington records world’s worst air quality for a city after 850,000 Fourth of July fireworks
Washington DC residents breathed in “unhealthy” air for hours after a 40-minute Independence Day fireworks show over the National Mall on Saturday night, with the country’s capital briefly recording the worst air quality of any major city in the world.

not quite accurate, the air in the 10 foot radius around Trump at all times has been considered a public health issue

Has anyone actually apologised for their endorsement of Platner and if not why not? The sunken cost fallacy has made fools out of so many people over this appalling man. Not exactly reaching for the skies trying to find a non-rapist non-Nazi tattoo having candidate. I’m sure there’s at least one other mediocre white man in Maine that fits that category.

Great that people finally decided a sexual assault accusation from the right kind of women was where they drew the line but were comfortable supporting the Totenkopf tattoo and the story from the woman he abused. Oh wait, she was a conservative so that didn’t matter.

Michelle Goldberg did today in her NYT column.

Naomi Klein has apologized on bsky and done a decent job, haven't seen any men do it though

mostly they are either still defending him or grudgingly accepting that he's lost enough support from prominent Democrats that they will be forced to walk away as well

It's an unfortunately unbalanced war of attrition here. The GOP has just as many sex pests and criminals or close connections to both as the Dems, possibly more, for sure as many or more known and high profile, including the highest elected official in the land's connection to one of the most conspicuous sex criminals in history, but they will never do anything about it (aside from vote for them). The Dems (sometimes) will. Hell, even the GOP will sometimes do something about it, but the wayward and feckless Dems will always be at a disadvantage against an even more completely cynical, absolutely amoral party. Don't know the solution. I suppose that's what Stephen King's gross post was about. Politics, the country ... it's all so fucked up.

Anyway, I've seen a lot of apologies, but I have no idea if they apologized weeks and months ago for all of that loser's other well known transgressions. Does Naomi Klein have a position on transgressive tattoos?

From Goldberg's NYT column:

While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself. Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.” If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.

One person who tried to alert Democrats was Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald. She quit when the first Platner scandals emerged and has been increasingly outspoken against him. Progressive operatives made her seem like a vindictive person eager to curry favor with Maine’s political establishment. In retrospect, she looks much more like someone who took a profound professional risk to do the right thing. I can’t be the only one who regrets not taking her more seriously.

I am glad that Goldberg wrote that piece last night, though I think it should be stated that her October 2025 column was less an endorsement than an attempt to understand his continued popularity in Maine after the Nazi tattoo came to light. I am not sure she ever explicitly endorsed him, though she clearly recognizes that her column may have made him look more attractive, or at least helped people take him more seriously.

i try not to be “i told yall” too often because it’s unseemly af but i told yall.

What did you tell us, o wise one?

saw a insta pundit yesterday who said his Blackwater employment should have been the immediate deal breaker, long before anything else came to light... pretty good point

and the tattoo, which I assume is what table was referring to

Platner gives a bad name to guys with Nazi tattoos.

What did you tell us, o wise one?

i said that dismissing all the concerns about him was wrong and insane, and was called an idealistic fool by certain posters here and less unkind things by others.

saw a insta pundit yesterday who said his Blackwater employment should have been the immediate deal breaker, long before anything else came to light... pretty good point

similarly, Buttigieg’s time with McKinsey and his volunteering for military service should be disqualifying, but whenever people raise that issue people just say “but he is gay!”

gonna go out on a limb and say those are 2 very different situations

you work for McKinsey you might as well have a totenkopf tattoo afaic

how would one depict a passion for manipulating bread prices in tattoo form

https://i.ibb.co/B5F1G74p/images.jpg

there were weak justifications of his blackwater employment posted here at the time iirc. people really wanted someone to defeat susan collins, i get it. but nothing revealed about platner since the reveal of his nazi tattoo has surprised me. i hope some of the men in this thread understand why none of it even remotely caught me off-guard

i am aware, everyone in the country is aware that many republicans in power are evil misogynists and rapists. fucking, duh. i know they don't care

but i want people who should know better to care enough about women to not support or even make weak-ass justifications for putting a rapist in office

the thing i care about most in this stupid horrible hateful world is integrity, because integrity doesn't make money, because integrity doesn't "win" because it doesn't care about winning. what people have shown me in the past two years is how little integrity they have when it comes down to it, and i think less of them as a result. i do not relish this. it depresses me beyond all measure

I TOLD YOU SO. SEE? SEE??! I TOLD YOU SO! I SAID ONE THING AND ANOTHER PEOPLE SAID ANOTHER THING!! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME MY EGO MY EGO MY EGO

parker molloy blocked absolutely everyone who commented negatively on her 'soft' endorsement (ie "he's better than collins"). before she did that she was kind of pretending she thought he was bad all along.

god could you imagine the Stephen Miller head explosion if they actually went through with this:

The Treasury Department has scrapped plans for Harriet Tubman to be on the $20 bill, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday.

In response to a question about the status of the bill from Spectrum News, Bessent said the Trump administration was “not at present” planning to place Tubman’s likeness on it.

parker molloy blocked absolutely everyone who commented negatively on her 'soft' endorsement (ie "he's better than collins"). before she did that she was kind of pretending she thought he was bad all along.

I don't think "better than Collins" and "bad all along" are mutually exclusive.

I TOLD YOU SO. SEE? SEE??! I TOLD YOU SO! I SAID ONE THING AND ANOTHER PEOPLE SAID ANOTHER THING!! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME MY EGO MY EGO MY EGO

It’s unseemly to care about how so many people - and my post was referring to pundits and the commentary class btw - are so comfortable handwaving the comments of a guy who’s saying that women should hold blame for their rape, yes. Definitely none of those people deserve a little shame or reflection. How mean of me! Wild you were actually more likeable under your previous username, which was awful.

not sure how popular he is in Maine, but better than nothing I guess... Collins has a warchest but maybe the DNC will throw some money at this guy

Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson (D) took an official step toward entering the state’s U.S. Senate race on Tuesday amid a pressure campaign for Democratic candidate Graham Platner to step down following a new allegation of sexual assault.

An exploratory committee filed paperwork on Jackson’s behalf with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, which tees the Democrat up to replace Platner if he chooses to exit the race

(insert picture of Collins smoking a cigar on a balcony here)

Jackson's appeared at rallies with Platner, so ideologically they're not that far apart. Who knows? Maybe if he turns out not to be a piece of shit, the media will start talking about all the fucked-up things Susan Collins has done, said, and voted for, instead of just repeating "she's politically invincible and nobody can figure out why" until November.

I TOLD YOU SO. SEE? SEE??! I TOLD YOU SO! I SAID ONE THING AND ANOTHER PEOPLE SAID ANOTHER THING!! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME MY EGO MY EGO MY EGO

gfy

But yeah Kenny Klips really fucking fell off huh

https://archive.is/YDZk2

All of these people took the present accusations against Platner seriously and promptly addressed them (and good on them for that). But it’s unclear to me what exactly they’re apologizing for other than not being clairvoyants able to foresee this week’s accusation before it happened.

Let me explain this very slowly for my imaginary audience of Kenny Klips and maybe two disengaged ilxors.

The stuff that was known before the rape allegations? Was already disqualifying. Where we disagree is on that matter. Nobody needed to be a “clairvoyant.” They needed to have a better fucking moral compass.

I stand by my previous defense of Platner. Drunk tattoos and sexting-out-of-wedlock struck me as the most Marine shit ever. I literally know Marines who’ve done both but later grew up and became decent guys. (Hi if you’re reading this!) I still believe in my bones that people like that deserve to have a shot at public office and that our country would be better for it. But the Marines I’m describing were never accused of more serious things like sexual assault.

I feel like anyone can get and regret a drunk tattoo. I don’t feel like anyone can keep that tattoo for literal fucking years, particularly when it’s a Totenkopf? Is having to explain basic shit like this irritating to anyone else?

By the way, the US military? Has its own Wikipedia page about its sexual assault problem. Clairvoyant Ken must know all the good ones. ☺️

”But there were so many red flags,” the argument goes, pointing to the sexting, tattoo, and Reddit posts. Think about that argument for a moment: it means that people should be disqualified from public office for things there isn’t evidence they actually did, just “red flags” from which they can supposedly be divined. Ruling out anyone with Reddit post-level flaws bars millions of otherwise decent people from politics. The only people left are the exact kind of squeaky-clean, McKinsey consultant politicians that was the entire point of my Platner article in the first place.

Nazi tattoos and posting about how women should bear responsibility for their rape are not “Reddit post-level flaws”. Most people, even in the doldrums of social media, are not that awful. Bad yes, but they are just not.

I will keep saying it: we are not reaching for the fucking stars here. You could shoehorn almost any random citizen into that candidacy and not expect even a quarter of this shit to come up! Most people are venal, but they are not this, and I feel mildly insane as a lifelong pessimist having to explain that?

I’m certain that’s still the case, regardless of how hard the media commentators try to gaslight you into thinking willingness to look past lesser flaws is the same as defending rape, misogyny, and so on.

And again I’m confident in what is handwaved here as “lesser flaws” would have been broadly disqualifying for far less important political office not all that long ago.

But why admit that the people who said Platner was a bad candidate might have a point when you can grandstand about the unimportance of issues that simply don’t strike you as disqualifying?

I think everyone who supported Platner has to apologize (not being slick here. Fuck that guy). But I also think that about everyone who supported Hillary Rodham Clinton. She aided and abetted a serial rapist for years and has never seen a war or a genocide that she didn’t support. In fact, fuck to Bernie and AOC and their mealy mouth “the Biden administration is working Tirelessly to end the genocide in Palestine.” Like seriously, kill yourself. Also anyone who joined the military after Viet Nam or anyone who supported Israel after like 2006. Go get your head fucked. And anyone who was internet lawyering whether kHaaamas was bombing their own hospitals well into 2024? Literally prison.

cosign except cannon into the sun except prison

and honestly my response to a lot of that is that those people need to fix their hearts

It’s unseemly to care about how so many people

my post wasn't for you

i try not to be “i told yall” too often because it’s unseemly af but i told yall.

this is what i was responding to, meant to be tongue-in-cheek partly but still managed to rankle i see, in spite of the admission that it's nagl. oh well! my basic observation would be that there's no position or opinion one can take, no matter how noble or correct, that can't be poisoned by one's ego. it's all about tone really and sometimes it's pretty annoying. sort of a separate question to whether people should apologize (yes) or whether platner has always been a bad candidate (yes)

I think everyone who supported Platner has to apologize (not being slick here. Fuck that guy). But I also think that about everyone who supported Hillary Rodham Clinton. She aided and abetted a serial rapist for years and has never seen a war or a genocide that she didn’t support. In fact, fuck to Bernie and AOC and their mealy mouth “the Biden administration is working Tirelessly to end the genocide in Palestine.” Like seriously, kill yourself. Also anyone who joined the military after Viet Nam or anyone who supported Israel after like 2006. Go get your head fucked. And anyone who was internet lawyering whether kHaaamas was bombing their own hospitals well into 2024? Literally prison.

ha, OK buddy, congratulations.

Every time I think I’m comfortably left enough to tolerate the infinite purity testing, it just takes one visit to this thread to be reminded I should have apparently committed suicide at 21 for the good of the order

it's just emotion that's taken me over

And fwiw I’m not here to defend some fucked up dweeb from Maine that I have frankly no interest in; I don’t live there, I don’t donate to their races, I don’t have enough time in the day, I am thoroughly disinterested tbh. Maine can do whatever they want.

But man, there are many different ways to be a stooge, and it’s easy to be a left stooge too

herp derp fuck all veterans and bernie and aoc and also all the people who literally aren’t myself herpity durrr

don’t you work for a spy agency?

I've been thinking of how to engage with this in a way that's not too combative. It seems like what's being said is that any criticism of Platner must necessarily go hand-in-hand with criticism of most, if not all, Democrats, which is fine, I guess, but makes me wonder why you would opine on Democratic primaries and candidates whatsoever. For me, pure morality and politics are two separate but related areas that never form a perfect circle. Politicians and parties support a cluster of issues that represent the competing priorities of various constituencies. If you are inherently opposed to the concept of consensus building, compromise, and all the mess and disappointment that comes with politics because every last politician fails to line up perfectly with the one or two specific items that interest you, then there is nothing that will happen in the realm of US politics any time in the foreseeable future that will make you happy.

If you are inherently opposed to the concept of consensus building, compromise, and all the mess and disappointment that comes with politics because every last politician fails to line up perfectly with the one or two specific items that interest you, then there is nothing that will happen in the realm of US politics any time in the foreseeable future that will make you happy.

This is exactly what I so often find frustrating about this thread. Re Platner specifically: I really didn't care that he was a piece of shit, because the political positions I saw him espousing were things I wanted to see manifested. Was he going to be able to unilaterally separate the US from Israel, jail billionaires, establish Medicare for all? No, of course not. Those things probably still would not even be subject to debate on the US Senate floor. But having someone loudly and repeatedly arguing for those positions would "move the Overton window" and bring the US government incrementally closer to possibly implementing something in that direction. Politicians are tools. We vote for them in the hope of getting things we want. They are not moral avatars. I don't need them to be nice, or good people (though their personal behavior is certainly a weapon to be used against them come election time); I need them to do the things I want done, and if they don't do those things, they can fuck off. All that said, Platner has now moved past my personal threshold for being a piece of shit. (I understand that others' threshold is much lower, and I don't care.) I would like someone else to be the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, and I hope all of the following things come to pass:

1) The new Democratic candidate supports all or most of the things Platner claimed to support;
2) The Democratic voters of Maine agree to vote for someone in the general election that they did not get a chance to vote for in the primary;
3) The media that has spent so much time digging into and attacking Platner devotes at least some time to digging into and attacking Susan Collins, who is also a piece of shit with a decades-long record that somehow just never seems worthy of attention.

I have very little hope for #3, but #1 and #2 are still within the realm of possibility.

don’t you work for a spy agency?

No

But even if I did, how about gfy

I’m a spy, but on your side, you see

OK, really.

Just to be clear: I'm not arguing that morality has zero place in politics, just that you can only reasonably expect limited alignment between your personal morals vs the overall set of policies and issues a politician stands for, let alone what they are willing to vote for in Congress. But if someone goes way beyond the acceptable line into committing sexual assault and abuse, and flirting with fascist imagery, it should not reasonably call for a thorough accounting of the failings of every last politician you don't like to accept throwing out the offending party. There's 10s of millions of people who identify as Democrats, who will gladly support replacement-grade candidates, knowing they will fail and disappoint sooner or later. These people are not hypocrites for wanting to rid themselves of someone who fundamentally breaks core party values like supporting liberal democracy over fascism, racism, and antisemitism, and supporting, respecting, and believing women when they bring to light disturbing behaviors that should prohibit anyone from holding office.

This is exactly what I so often find frustrating about this thread. Re Platner specifically: I really didn't care that he was a piece of shit, because the political positions I saw him espousing were things I wanted to see manifested. Was he going to be able to unilaterally separate the US from Israel, jail billionaires, establish Medicare for all? No, of course not. Those things probably still would not even be subject to debate on the US Senate floor. But having someone loudly and repeatedly arguing for those positions would "move the Overton window" and bring the US government incrementally closer to possibly implementing something in that direction. Politicians are tools. We vote for them in the hope of getting things we want. They are not moral avatars. I don't need them to be nice, or good people (though their personal behavior is certainly a weapon to be used against them come election time); I need them to do the things I want done, and if they don't do those things, they can fuck off. All that said, Platner has now moved past my personal threshold for being a piece of shit. (I understand that others' threshold is much lower, and I don't care.) I would like someone else to be the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, and I hope all of the following things come to pass:

I agree with you generally, but these points don't address Platner. I don't think the guy with the Nazi tattoo with an indifference to his sexual conduct women would have, to be kind, gotten any closer to achieving what I want from a Democratic senator.

I can't overstate how his entire persona screams sanger to me.

*danger

But even if I did, how about gfy

if you did i would use stronger language than i have. hope this helps.

Ok sorry all. Day drunk from football activities and I got a little loose with it. Certainly don’t want anyone to self-harm. Not even Bernie or AOC. And ftr this wasnt meant to be some kind of “oh well if you think Platner is bad (he clearly is), then everyone is equally bad” gotcha.

But I also don’t think that our absolutely psychotic foreign policy basically since WW2, and ramping up after 9/11, can just be reduced to a pet item on a purity test designed (by the Chinese or Russians, obv) to stymie liberal/ left unity. Or, at least not any more than things as elemental as slavery, civil rights, women’s suffrage etc would be.

It feels like there’s a notion among the Smartest and most Respectable that this is a black box issue, mostly chugging along in the background regardless of the party in power, and that they can just give the hogs a culture war busy box and these dopes will think their vote means something. I believe fewer people than ever all falling for this and can see that there’s a direct line from how this mindset has played out globally, and what happens here. ie, the frontier always comes home. There’s clearly an appetite for candidates who will not only speak to this, but actually deliver on it. Democrats would be insane not to capitalize on it.

I think people wanted to forgive the nazi tattoo and reddit posts because they assumed it was all part of his trauma and difficult adjustment to civilian life. Many people were thrown into combat zones as part of the “war on terror” and came back as not the best versions of themselves. I can even see how someone would be inspired by one of these types becoming a progressive champion, working to fix the broken system that treats human life as disposable, a system he once served and was used by. That was kind of the whole story with him. But I don’t think people wanted to think too closely about what it meant for him to have had a past as a “messed up” guy.

I don’t think the people who wanted to forgive him were motivated always by bad intentions.

The big problem, to begin with, was the us senate was too big a stage for someone in the early days of a redemption arc. He was obviously being dishonest about the tattoo and other things and it is now not surprising that something like this came out.

It sucks though bc collins is likely to keep her seat and trump will continue to control the senate.

The fact that Platner has never served in any public office, but is running for a seat in the US Senate as a party renegade and disruptor means to me he is an analog to a variety of MAGA politicians, most notably Trump himself, who went straight from reality show host to the US president, but also such yahoos as Tommy Tuberville, MTG, Boebert, and Santos. The difference would be that he would be an idiot, a demagogue and a powder keg in the service of a different agenda, while still being a vile person and a scandal waiting to erupt.

The fact that his scandals are already evident and vile is just confirmation of this predictable reality. But it is also predictable he'd mostly vote with the Democrats rather than the Republicans, which is the biggest political fact in his favor. As my Dad used to say, "you pay your nickel and you take your choice."

I'll let the Democratic Party of Maine handle this one.

i view most if not all public officials in the same way i presume a shopkeeper views potential shoplifters

lmao the nazi-tattoo rapist thinks he has a say in who his successor will be. bro watched too much succession.

https://bsky.app/profile/babsvan.bsky.social/post/3mq3yu3wask2d

If you are inherently opposed to the concept of consensus building, compromise, and all the mess and disappointment that comes with politics because every last politician fails to line up perfectly with the one or two specific items that interest you

"Purity test" whining is a joke of a strawman every single time. Oh you're so high and might and unrealistic and refuse to support a politician who isn't your exact doppelganger and that's why you're suspicious of the guy with a Nazi tattoo who went to do war crimes for profit!!!!!" (pre-sexual assault and abuse allegations)

It's never true, of course, and to pretend that you don't have lines in the sand is either a lie or an attempt to broadcast that your entire political ideology is centered around supporting the team that makes you feel like a smarter, more cultured person for supporting them.

Wow, you are wildly misreading me. Of course everyone has lines, but criticizing Platner and saying he should drop out should not also require you to apologize for every last Democrat ever because they are all horrible war criminals or whatever. The things he did can be judged on their own without throwing out the whole party.

Or to put it another way, if you think I am complaining about people wanting Platner to drop out, I have made it clear for a very long time that I didn't want anything to do with him the moment I learned about the tattoo.

I’m not sure I agree with the way the word “compromise” is often used in politics, a lot of these issues are life and death, there really isn’t a “middle ground” for a lot of issues that mean life and death (genocide, trans rights, etc). Idk I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

I TOLD YOU SO. SEE? SEE??! I TOLD YOU SO! I SAID ONE THING AND ANOTHER PEOPLE SAID ANOTHER THING!! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME MY EGO MY EGO MY EGO

flagged you for this, you most-shitty of ilx posters. thank you for telling on yourself.

If he drops out, whoever they replace him with is going to lose to Collins by a bigger margin than Sara Gideon did six years ago. He's a piece of shit, but he's also a very talented politician

Just curious as to whether there are any data points leading to this conclusion.

i’m haunted by something that someone in last month’s thread —I forget who—said that the same people who recruited Platner to run were just randomly knocking on doors in his neighborhood and then when they knocked on his door, they were like “do you want to run for senate?”

Platner wasn’t exactly blowing away Collins in the polls and you think a rapist and liar is going to get more support over the next four months?

Xp That was me. They told me they were looking for people to run in WI CD1 against Bryan Steil.

Since that has been brought up I'll repeat what I said about Platner back when he was "just" the ex-mercenary with a Nazi tat: Stand for nothing and you'll fall for anything.

I think this wsj piece from last month was posted in one of the threads. It mentions one of the people who came to my house looking for people to run and she referenced Platner in her pitch. Her fiance is the main focus of the piece. (Archive link bc paywall)

https://archive.ph/FbSdr

The thing is I agree with their ideas at the core. I do think that working class people should be running and winning and pushing left politics forward.

That said, the methods they have apparently employed, which from what I can tell amount to moving fast and breaking things, have backfired. There are GOOD left candidates in my state (Fran Hong, Ryan Clancy, Darrin Madison, Chris Larson, Angelina Cruz, et al.) but they have been working for years to build power through collaboration with unions, activists, DSA, etc. The notion of flying into town, getting out and knocking doors to find a diamond in the rough to run for national office is naive at best. And now we see the results of that approach in ME.

ugh that guy is such a toad, complaining that people want candidates that are perfect and grown in vats

yeah that’s the thing, an outsider with no political experience is not necessarily going to be effective at advancing their stated goals, no matter how right-on they are, at least at any level above local government.

and in “political experience” I include organizing, union activity, activism, etc. working with other people on a common goal doesn’t necessarily mean compromising your beliefs

Anyway Platner isn't out yet, no matter how much everyone's assuming he will be. Hope he does it soon.

apparently they're sorting out his exit: https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/08/politics/graham-platner-campaign-strategy

good morning!

Platn't pending

so are we going to find out two years from now how he profited from this?

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/08/oil-prices-brent-wti-iran-us-hormuz.html

trump already made $1.4B from crypto last year alone, even as the -definitely going to crash very soon- crypto market was steady/falling

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-has-made-more-than-1-billion-from-crypto-in-a-year-how/ar-AA276fJN

it's a great time to have a lot of money, be completely corrupt, and to not care at all about the lives of other human beings

Negronis for everyone!

there's a few articles around about maga yokels who blew their life savings on trump crypto shit and meme coins, oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

in Maine it's always ME ME ME

oh, i think almost all the "investors" lost money on the trump meme coins except the trump family and their friends, it was a huge surprise

here we go with the Chavista-style SOCIALISM

The White House has launched 25 “Freedom Fuel” gas stations in an attempt to provide Americans a cheaper option at the pump.

“The FIRST Freedom Fuel Network gas station has LANDED in Philadelphia, lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th President,” the White House wrote on the social platform X on Tuesday.

$3.47 is still a lot higher than it was before he attacked Iran for no reason

they really are just content creators

In an accompanying video posted by the White House, multiple customers tout the new gas stations as helping them save money. One man said he was “very happy” about cheaper fuel, while another girl remarked she was “super pumped” about the new options.

“When I saw it I thought it was fake news, but I’m glad it’s true. I definitely couldn’t believe my eyes when I just rolled past,” said another man, who added the Freedom Fuel station saved him “a lot of money” on a trip to the Jersey Shore.

xpost also that station isn't in Philadelphia

25 gas stations across America thank youn mister turmp please fuck my underage daughter

btw isn't this exactly the sort of thing an actual socialist government would do

hey the MAGA socialist gas is the same the same price as the Costco gas a few miles away

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
·
1h
Trump: "I would be the greatest communist in history. I'd be right up there with Leneeen."

Insteent Karma

xxp that was a Hugo Chavez thing.. heavily subsidized gasoline. He even offered cheap gas to the U.S. in 2005, to 'help the poor'

Fifteen Counts of Arson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=346c4Dt1gmg

hey the MAGA socialist gas is the same the same price as the Costco gas a few miles away

In the future we will power our vehicles with rotisserie chicken

as someone who drinks way too much sherry, this is actually alarming news... I can't drink Christian Brothers

“Spain is a wasted cause. We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain anymore by the way,” Trump said, sitting alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the group’s summit in Ankara, Turkey.

Sorry Spain, I love your peanuts

I'm loading up on piquillo peppers and the makings of gildas.

We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain

who is 'we' you stupid oaf

"trump already made $1.4B from crypto last year alone"

at least it wasn't a rug pull
narrator voice: when something falls 97% after you've tokenized a billion it doesn't matter

there oughta be a law. and heads in baskets.
good luck murka

Apparently he also said today that we were attacked by the "Islamic Republic of Japan".

Also called Zelenskyy Putin

y1h
Trump: "I would be the greatest communist in history. I'd be right up there with Leneeen."

Walter: Shut the fuck up Donny

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7dc2ec7iadso4vahsndlpofu/bafkreie6ivf5tlswuyg6xjkwwy5hbjjf2jbbnvso3c23lftny7o6mkdz7u

when the talking points are too specific

Their conversations were substantive and corporeal

The Mitch Is Back

Life’s a Mitch, Then He’s Died

Platner out

it's a wrap

Graham Platner, the oyster farmer whose populist platform took Maine by storm, dropped his Senate bid Wednesday night as controversies over his past stacked up, leaving Democrats without a nominee to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) this fall.

His dropout video is something else.

when you've lost King

Author Stephen King deleted a post on social media defending Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner (D), who is facing widespread backlash after his former girlfriend accused him of rape.

if you did i would use stronger language than i have. hope this helps.

Please feel free to use the strongest language available according to your talents, inclinations and cultural background. I truly give thousands of shits what you think of me.

The Maine Democratic Party approved tentative plans for a nominating convention in the event Senate candidate Graham Platner drops out of the race, it announced Wednesday evening.

The convention would include roughly 600 people who would be selected by county-level Democratic committees, according to two people familiar with the specific plans and granted anonymity to share them. Every county committee would have to meet prior to the state nominating convention to elect 500 of those delegates, and the 100 current state committee members will also serve as delegates. State committee members voted to approve the plan Wednesday evening at the end of a lengthy emergency meeting.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/08/congress/maine-dems-convention-platner-replacement-00991253

How much smoke will be in the rooms?

rip oysterman

His dropout video is something else.

― every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in f (President Keyes), Wednesday, July 8, 2026 7:40 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're one of those people who did Nazi it coming.

And yet you’re still the bigger asshole

I can live with that!

guys, guys

weak parties get weak candidates
needful dangerous times? same
hopium is powerful drug

apparently the Platner campaign reached out to Barbara Boxer (???) on Monday to see if she would support him.

why her? does the camapign think that the support of an 85 year old retired senator from California means anything to anyone?

she once spoke fondly of On Golden Pond

across the nation, people are asking “where is barbara boxer"

as goes boxer so goes the maine

flagged you for this, you most-shitty of ilx posters. thank you for telling on yourself.

honestly shit like this is so rude and uncalled for! be better

but anyway, what did i tell on myself, that i find it tasteless and offensive when people take allegations of sexual violence as an opportunity to settle scores? just the same when people poke their heads up when an artist or filmmaker they don't like gets caught, and now they feel the need to inform us that they never cared for them. good for you!!! btw i have never once defended platner nor am i about to start now

obviously we all vent and lash out on this, the most-shitty of ILX rolling threads, but i would never speak this way about e.g. table even if i was grumpy and in a mood. so yeah i'm going to keep posting about maptap and led zeppelin and words that annoy me and i don't give a shit what you think about me

sorry to dig this back up, i'm done posting about this idiotic guy and on this thread for some time

his whole unit maybe had the tattoos? fwiw i dont know anything about this just saw the post

Kate Glenn findingtangle.bsky.social‬

It is remarkable we have multiple allegations of an entire unit of marine vets, possibly coerced by a commanding officer, walking around with Tottenkopfs on their chests procured on active duty in a foreign country where such symbols were politically toxic and I’ve yet to see any direct follow up.

https://bsky.app/profile/findingtangle.bsky.social/post/3mpzaixy7uc2o

I'm pretty sure it's been known for a while they all got the same tattoo.

someone should look into what those guys were up to

Just being murderous nazi buds

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/graham-platner-rape-accusation-maine-senate

the whole platner saga is such a clear example of rape culture, promoting an unstable violent man and using all sorts of dishonest manipulative arguments to counter anyone who pointed it out

The problem, as I see it, is how much of the media of “the left,” however you define it, is dominated by men who appear to have no understanding of sexual abuse or intimate partner violence, but do have a pretty hefty sexist streak that they either aren’t aware of or don’t care to remedy.

https://losingmyperspicacity.beehiiv.com/p/we-have-an-even-bigger-problem-than-graham-platner

the whole Platner saga was people being desperate for a candidate with Platner's political positions.

Who also had the ability to beat an establishment Dem in the primary.

might want to take a breath big guy

maybe I can synch up my breathing with your self-back patting.

i know youre feeling defensive but you dont have to lump yourself in with the people who did this shit you could read the article think about if any of its accurate

It's the worlds smallest back pat to say you weren't cool with raping Nazis, but even then, some were cool with it, I guess.

The narrative is going to be "Women were screaming about this guy, and podcast bros forced him down our throats!" but Platner had plenty of female supporters, in Maine and elsewhere. Emma Vigeland of the Majority Report was one of them, and she gave an interview to Slate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR-cS4z9vvI

well you what bell hooks said the patriarchy doesnt have a gender, women who rode for him shouldnt be let off the hook any more than men

i do think fwiw the (pre explicit rape accusation) i dont care if hes a shithead if he can do the politics i like is at least a clear honest argument, which in this case was obviously wrong, and which imho is generally pretty suspect, having said that i thought it was better him than collins just for structural reasons, but i had no faith that he was going to follow through on the good parts of his rhetoric because he was obviously an unstable dishonest shithead who had no business near the senate

The narrative is going to be "Women were screaming about this guy, and podcast bros forced him down our throats!" but Platner had plenty of female supporters, in Maine and elsewhere.

You're worse at taking the L than Platner. He's at least dropping out.

i dont care if hes a shithead if he can do the politics i like

This was always my argument.

a clear honest argument, which in this case was obviously wrong

I don't see any evidence of that. He's been credibly accused of rape. That's enough for me to say that he should drop out of the race and let someone else run, because it renders him unelectable (and he was dropping in the polls before that). But there's never been any evidence that he's lying about his political positions. This is the United States of America. Being a leftist gains you nothing. Joining the right is the path to riches, always has been.

no business near the senate

This is bullshit, too. The Senate is a nursing home/insane asylum that should be burned down with all its current inhabitants locked inside. No one is unworthy of being a US Senator. But Platner's crimes make him unelectable, so from a pragmatic standpoint he needs to go, preferably to be replaced by someone who shares his stated positions but is not unelectable.

you thought he was electable and he wasnt due to the issues everyone was pointing out then you were wrong

so you don’t want him to run because he’s unelectable, not because he’s a rapist Nazi?

the problem with the instrumentalization argument is that it fails to take any kind of ethical stance in favor of what amounts to horse race betting. in itself, instrumentalization lacks ethics.

having a nazi tattoo and going on a nazi podcast and saying you were a long time fan are pretty clear signs that you do not have closely held leftist politics, nazis are considered a right wing politics fyi, obvs theres other stuff too, the guy just got fired up about how unequal out economic system is, hes like elizabeth warren if she were a pretend oysterman

outside of my drunk outburst the other day I have stayed far far away from the Platner thing. But I’m definitely in the camp of people who think left and liberal Mainers saw a viable opportunity to get rid of Collins, more than some grand plan to butch up the Dems. I believe it was about his putative policies and not presentation—something that dem aligned media STILL pretends not to get, cf Mamdani. And I (perhaps naively) refuse to believe that they wouldn’t have preferred a candidate who didn’t have the Blackwater/ tattoo/ creepy stuff with women (and now credible SA accusation). The oyster farming manly man bullshit just doesn’t matter if you’re just going to get to DC and give Peter Thiel and Israel eleventy trillion dollars.

And for the next person who says “politics has nothing to do with ethics” it actually absolutely does. everyone compromises, yes, myself included— i am not making a holier than thou argument. but to say that a politicians’s personal ethics have nothing to do with who they are as a politician has been proven wrong again and again and again.

the goal shouldn’t be to match the fascists and conservatives in their fight and griminess, but to match them in their fight and best them via a strident progressive ethic that is both personal and political.

I keep harping on this but there have to be plenty of activists, community and union organizers in Maine on the ground doing the work, but many instead went gaga for the white beefy beardo nazi tatted army man who had no record of any progressive action but was making the right noises after being a racist until like, last year.

so you don’t want him to run because he’s unelectable, not because he’s a rapist Nazi?

Yes. Politicians are tools to achieve legislative goals. They are not moral avatars. (To run for statewide, never mind national, political office, you must be a narcissistic monster. I am not aware of any exceptions.)

xxp

And now, with Platner out of the race and thus no longer of even potential value, I really have nothing else to say about him.

it’s not like you have much of note to say about anything else

“blah blah i am a reactionary misogynist but also a leftist blah blah

never going to forget how the june story was dismissed as "bad boyfriend behavior" by unperson, who didn't have to make that point, who doesn't have to continue talking about this, but he does

the goal shouldn’t be to match the fascists and conservatives in their fight and griminess, but to match them in their fight and best them via a strident progressive ethic that is both personal and political.

― out of the cradle endlessly party rocking (the table is the table), Thursday, July 9, 2026 10:20 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

utterly otm. if you aren't rising to this level you're basically untrustworthy to me as a political ally!

the goal shouldn’t be to match the fascists and conservatives in their fight and griminess, but to match them in their fight and best them via a strident progressive ethic that is both personal and political.

100%.

Maybe I'm too gay to fall for the look of a performatively masculine oyster farmer with or without a Nazi tat.

there are still people here saying "who cares about a guy's actions if he's saying the right things," folks the actions often tell you more about someone than what they say

Not that it matters now but I wouldn’t mind seeing some polling of democratic and independent (and possibly even GOP) women voters in Maine who I can only assume are still seething over Collins signing off on Kavanaugh. Before the latest accusation obv

i dont think the macho shit even plays that well, look at grumpy old man bernie he prob cant even operate a chainsaw, or urban intellectual aoc, what people connect with is the populist politics and plain talk

there are still people here saying "who cares about a guy's actions if he's saying the right things," folks the actions often tell you more about someone than what they say

― ivy., Thursday, July 9, 2026 10:30 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

a true rule to live by

It annoys me that lag∞n is so right on hoops AND politics.

you should try reading my terrible soccer takes for balance

ivy otm. I never understood the argument of "he may be a bad guy but at least if elected he'll vote democrat", like why assume that would occur, especially when we have the real-time example of Fetterman getting elected and using it as a license to instead say "fuck your feelings dems, I do what I want bc I'm a strong manly man"

I mean there are still people here who stan Hillary, not to mention Joe Biden who made liquidating 70,000 (but let’s be real you know it’s at least twice that) Palestinians the capstone of his life’s work.

ya in retrospect the fact that this guy decided to run for Senate cold is a huge red flag and a sign that this guy has a grifter mentality. a lot of Dem Soc candidates are politically inexperienced but at least have won State Assembly seats or have a history of community organization.

John Ossoff didn't have much experience either before his 2017 House run, but he'd worked with Hank Johnson and was at least a documentarian.

*Jon

yeah you def want some history of working with others to advance political projects, doesnt have to be elective office could be activism union stuff etc

right, I mean even Fetterman was mayor of some dinky town, not saying you need much (especially since it's clear that getting into politics "the right away" produces nothing but rotten and completely corrupt candidates) but you have to show some willingness to do things on the ground. you have to be the sort of person who voters can trust will still be organizing and doing community stuff even if they lose the election. if Platner lost to Collins I feel like you'd never hear from him again. as opposed to say Kat Abu who is still on the ground.

platners a prime candidate to go on the cancelation hysteria circuit, pays better than the senate

omg yes

tho tbf in the long run the senate pays much better

he looks like an angry stepfather and doesn't code to me as a male model to look up to who cares what his politics are. if he's the kind of bartender who takes his shirt off halfway through a shift to show off his tats that tells me more about him than any of the "right" things he says about politics

if i went to a bar and the bartender was taking his shirt off i'd be like hey i'm at the wrong bar see you guys later

I think the major issue we're having today is that our entire political system has become a reality show which means you can't trust anyone running for office actually wants to make things better any more than you can trust that someone auditioning for The Bachelor is doing it because they're finally ready to settle down but just can't find the right girl. You're seeing this a lot on the right with people like MTG, Bobo, Madison Cawthorn, Spencer Pratt, George Santos, etc., for them Trump opened up an entire new "celebrity" career in right wing grievance politics. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way and I think we have to be really careful not to let any of those types of people in.

if i went to a bar and the bartender was taking his shirt off i'd be like hey i'm at the wrong bar see you guys later

― a (waterface)

oh right you're not gay

hahaha

i was like countdown to alfred post as soon as i saw that

Gotta gay up this serious thread on occasion.

regarding the electability stuff, it just warrants mentioning that platner was ahead in the polls. he was absolutely electable prior to this latest story, at least by the people in maine

i thought about it but i knew Alfred would beat me to the easy layup

electable is not important if the person is a shithead

the people in maine!!!!

how electable is a poorly vetted guy with a ton of baggage, something to think about, in this case he was not at all electable

electable is not important if the person is a shithead

were it so but we have 250 years of evidence to the contrary

We've even had a couple outright white supremacists as president.

i thought about it but i knew Alfred would beat me to the easy layup

― out of the cradle endlessly party rocking (the table is the table)
.
I'm not sure if I'm insulted.

to be clear, I think he should have dropped out, as I said several days ago. I just keep seeing some of you guys say “and he never would have won anyway!” for the past few months when the polls in fact showed him ahead

he was also walking around with a grenade strapped to his neck so

can't trust anyone running for office

Not the whole quote, but sums up the sitch. Running for office in this freak show era is almost in and of itself disqualifying.

how electable is a poorly vetted guy with a ton of baggage, something to think about, in this case he was not at all electable

― lag∞n, Thursday, July 9, 2026 8:14 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

think you can def say he wasn’t electable in the sense that another shoe was likely to drop, and you would have been right, but then again the good country folk of maine were more or less asked this exact question and said they planned to vote for him

it definitely has the feel of poorly scripted “reality” show WWE match that you’re not allowed to turn off

He was losing points to Collins in the lead-up to the revelations iirc.

I do think the notion of having some longstanding ties to the community, having people who are out there doing good work who can vouch for you, etc is key in re-evaluating platner’s case. he really just came out of nowhere

Maybe I'm too gay to fall for the look of a performatively masculine oyster farmer with or without a Nazi tat.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, July 9, 2026 10:28 AM (fifty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm straight and had the same issue

polls weren't decisive from what I was seeing, and you could def interpret them as enthusiasm waning, likely due to the constant revelation of new reasons to hate this guy

yeah again not saying it was a reason to keep supporting him or anything

Also Collins carpeting media with negative ads

This came out before the Politico story and has an entirely different thesis fwiw: https://newrepublic.com/article/212683/maine-senate-polls-graham-platner

Two Maine Polls Just Dropped. Is It Time to Fret About Graham Platner?
The Democratic Senate candidate is pretty much tied with Susan Collins, but she’s trouncing him with working-class voters. Why, and can he turn that around?

i dont think he was a strong candidate, polling months out from the election is kinda whatever, obvs good year to run as a dem maine is a good state to flip a seat in, all things considered did platner have high electability levels id say no, which isnt to say he wouldnt have won if itd played out different but also he mightve lost too

Also Collins carpeting media with negative ads

― every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in f (President Keyes), Thursday, July 9, 2026 11:29 AM (fifty seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh no negative political attack ads, how could a candidate possibly survive that

Collins had a huge money advantage because big Dem donors weren't giving to Platner.

I read that story when it came out rob and couldn’t make sense of it at all. getting crushed in the no-college degree demo who thought he had bad morals but also leading with women, etc, pretty nutty

the good people of maine

ivy I hope it was clear I was being tongue in cheek about that lol I don’t really know anyone from maine. I did have one friend from med school who was from maine she was pretty nice I guess

also, lol at the narrative of "how could the maine dem establishment pick someone like platner?" when the state has continuously reelected collins

the maine dem establishment didn’t pick platner… do you guys read anything except bluesky lol

Collins winning comfortably two years after Kavanaugh confirmation and furrowing her brow while voting w Trump like 9 out of 10 times does not speak well to Maine’s ‘independent’ reputation

I read that story when it came out rob and couldn’t make sense of it at all. getting crushed in the no-college degree demo who thought he had bad morals but also leading with women, etc, pretty nutty

― k3vin k., Thursday, July 9, 2026 11:32 AM (five minutes ago)

yeah agreed, I posted it because I'd actually misremembered what it said lol. I think the bit about the race being nationalized making it more about national red vs. blue affiliation makes sense but that's a lot of interpretation for a who you voting for? poll

a lot of that probably has to do with the gender gap in education, women being more dem-leaning overall, and “morals” being interpreted by largely non-college degree men as being a commie rather than what we’d hope it means

It might just be a coincidence that this final nail in the coffin came after those most recent polls, given all he's made it through/past so far. What was the longest stretch he ever lasted without some horrific revelation?

https://paydayreport.com/platners-guru-daniel-moraff-asked-me-to-lie-for-him-i-didnt/

​As we examine what went wrong with Platner, we should question the political consultants and influencers, such as Moraff, who shape public opinion. When reporters like me raised questions about Platner’s character, we were repeatedly dismissed by left influencers, who said we were applying “purity tests” to folks like Platner.

​While none of us knew that he was a rapist, it was very clear that he was an abuser. As an oddball, autistic kid who was bullied and beaten up by folks like Platner, I knew the type: domineering, dismissive, and dishonest—classic traits of a narcissist.

​Platner even mocked a soldier in a viral video, who was crying for help while wounded in Afghanistan. Ted Daniels, the soldier, who Platner mocked, had struggled with PTSD himself and rejected the idea that PTSD was an excuse for abusive behavior.

“PTSD is a real thing. I've dealt with it myself, and I've had to learn to live with it. It is not an excuse for dirtbag behavior,” said Daniels. “It's insulting to every veteran, every first responder, every sexual assault survivor who suffers from PTSD. There are good people out there suffering and getting the help they need and functioning every day in society.”

When we raised these concerns about clearly narcissistic and abusive behavior, we were dismissed as applying “purity tests,” but those of us who have suffered abuse from those like Platner knew the warning signs all along.

When I first heard that dude’s vocal fry I was not sure if he was doing a bit or had some kind of condition

meanwhile republicans out here treating racism like a competition https://bsky.app/profile/paleofuture.bsky.social/post/3mq7vxsi7zs2c

that shot where she breaks the cookie then looks at the camera

they're really leaning into this 'communist' thing, good luck with that

It still works on people in their 80s.

feels like a rare ad that actually comes off as *less* racist than it was intending to simply because it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Chinese people don't eat fortune cookies! they were invented by an American! she's clearly not even in a Chinese restaurant!!

I like this comment on the fortune cookies: And everyone loves them. Idk if “watch me destroy this thing you and your kids love” is going to get the job done

i feel like if we get to “but fortune cookies arent even chinese,” we’ve lost

I don't know how this will look, but we had an Authentic White Guy in a national role a couple years ago: the governor of Minnesota. Guess he lacks muscles and oysters.

also he kinda looks like Don Rickles

he had good political instincts too but the campaign told him to stop calling weird republicans weird

yup

yes, they should have used him MUCH more on the stump, they silenced him

That itself was so weird. If you can't call a freak show a freak show when you see one, then what's the point of anything? So many of these MAGA reality show goobers are objectively weird.

Walz was damn good. Now he has the taint of loser.

it wouldve fucked with their plans to check notes use liz cheney as their prime campaign surrogate

I stg dem consultants are paid to lose

democratic campaign strategists need to be sent to the reeducation camps

feel like the Dems have been cowed ever since "basket of deplorables", like it's been their #1 priority never to say anything bad about conservatives even as they gleefully repeat completely false stories about immigrants eating pets and vote for people who call Democrats the spawn of Satan who are poisoning our bloodstream and what not. it might actually have been a mistake in 2016 but now that millions of friendships and family relationships have been permanently frayed by Trump it seems kind of important to put out candidates who seem at least half as frustrated by them as the average Dem voter

doesnt help that theyre beholden to big donors who dont want them to say what needs saying

tho thats understating the problem, they actually agree with the big donors

The lesson they should’ve taken from “basket of deplorables” is don’t say things that are bizarre or overly baroque or snobbish.

If she’d called them “assholes”, problem solved. Except of course she is also an asshole.

The lesson they should’ve taken from “basket of deplorables” is don’t say things that are bizarre or overly baroque or snobbish.

How hard is it to say "These people are all criminals and I'm as angry about it as you are"? Almost impossible, it seems.

When reporters like me raised questions about Platner’s character, we were repeatedly dismissed by left influencers

who are the left influencers who supported him because everyone on the left that I follow thought he was deeply suspect? are they talking about piker and other dumb youtube idiots I ignore because they suck shit?

the problem with 'basket of deplorables' is that everyone knows you get deplorables in a bucket, not a basket.

i wouldve gone with tranche of untouchables

Now he has the taint of loser

I like Walz but don't want to think about his taint

deplorables in a bucket, losers in a taint

taint misbehavin'

yea it does feel right now that the first person who explicitly promises to bring Trump, Musk, and the entire cabinet to justice is gonna open up a big lead here. so sick of the Democrats talking about how they don't want to participate in "lawfare" or escalate tensions while JD Vance gleefully goes on TV to brag about how his administration is so openly corrupt that even Watergate would've been a one day news story at most. the President literally pardoned thousands of insurrectionists and is now promising them large swaths of taxpayer dollars, oh and he also bombed a children's school just for fun, Elon took a hatchet to a ton of essential government programs and killed a bunch of kids for zero actual benefit (not to mention stealing a ton of personal data), ICE is murdering people in broad daylight and doing god knows what behind closed doors, obviously I could go on and on and on - even saying nothing about how many of them directly implicated in the Epstein files! Bringing these people to justice has got to be the bare minimum for anyone thinking about 2028 right now

frogbs is already more qualified to run democratic campaigns than anyone involved in the last three presidential elections

Jon Ossoff's star has been rising because he is one of the few prominent Senators willing to go on the attack

the inverse of Fetterman

new polling from that lefty rag the WSJ:

Support for capitalism among Americans has dropped within the past 10 years, according to a new survey.

In the poll, released Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal and NORC Research Center, 48 percent of respondents said American capitalism is functioning “very well” or “somewhat well,” while 51 percent said it is functioning “not too well” or “not at all well.” According to the Journal, about 37 percent of respondents in 2015 said it was not functioning well at all.

Oh I think it's functioning just as it was designed to.

Didn't they just run a poll a few weeks ago showing that Americans want the Dem party to be both more conservative and more socialist?

more:

Another 52 percent of respondents leaned toward the belief that power held by corporations and business owners harms consumers and workers and that the “government should do more to limit the influence of corporations.”

Roughly 45 percent leaned toward the belief that “America is successful because of its respect for free markets” and “when governments interfere with businesses, or seek to own private companies, they make America weaker,” according to the poll.

xpost Well, in general Americans want free stuff for us, but not them

Yeah, "they" suck.

Even my 81 year old mom rails against capitalism.

it's just one poll but it's a pretty decent margin for the anti-capitalists

Ossoff's also 32. He was a young man during the financial meltdown and the Obama years. He doesn't remember the bipartisan comity.

checks out

So proud of @ImagineDragons & esp. drummer @DanielPlatzman with whom, for the record, I sang “Build Me Up Buttercup” in 8th grade

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) January 27, 2014

he just lost me

That guy seems to be positioning himself for ... something (an easy cue for Soto if ever there was one).

https://i.ibb.co/SXCwr1t6/source.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztJlZ3Ndbw4

GOP ad that shows Ossoff playing Han Solo in a skit and doing a Billy Joel parody.

oh they hate when people had fun in their youth, remember the AOC dancing video

Why he can't he do wholesome manly American things like my governor and wear blackface at a frat party?

I can't prove this, but all the news articles in January 2021 about Jon Ossoff's Imagine Dragons tweets were because I dug through his old tweets and retweeted one of them ("@pitchforkmedia Looking forward to your writeup of the new @Imaginedragons album"), which then went viral. (I should've quote-tweeted!)

lol

How hard is it to say "These people are all criminals and I'm as angry about it as you are"? Almost impossible, it seems.

It’s pretty easy to understand— they are also criminals, just not as open about their criminality

something a bit Buttigieg-y about this one:

Jon Ossoff
@ossoff
·
Follow
@ablaze I was going to link to a Lil Jon song but I don't want someone to ask why I linked to profanity in 15 yrs so instead I wrote this.
9:18 PM · Oct 30, 2012

Ha, that could be quite prescient if he's a presidential candidate in late 2027.

If (Platner) drops out, whoever they replace him with is going to lose to Collins by a bigger margin than Sara Gideon did six years ago. He's a piece of shit, but he's also a very talented politician

Just curious as to whether there are any data points leading to this conclusion.

Checking back on this.

Ossoff's also 32.

Please don't post stuff like this, the grip of mortality is already looming too closely.

Platner is dragging his feet and will not file paperwork until the absolute last minute: https://www.axios.com/2026/07/09/graham-platner-exit-maine-senate-race-deadline

xp Ossoff is actually 39, anyway

"the guy with no political experience who was barely ahead of Collins (and far underwater with the white working class who he's supposed the avatar for) and can't stop lying is a very talented politician"

admittedly lying is an asset for a would-be politician, but they have to be plausible

An essay by Rebecca Traister, who lives and votes in Maine. It's paywalled, so I'm posting the whole thing.

What Women Saw In Graham Platner

In June, just before Maine’s primary and the day after the New York Times reported Graham Platner had behaved abominably with two former romantic partners, the beleaguered Senate candidate held a town hall in Bar Harbor at which he received a lengthy standing ovation. Reading reports of a crowd roaring with applause for a man alleged to have referred to women as “hatchet wounds” felt like a bellyful of poison.

But contrary to the gloating perception in some quarters of social media, these voters were not necessarily celebrating what leftist Matt Stoller called “a rejection of Dem HR lady politics.” At a town hall two days later, girded for Graham bros, I was instead surrounded by white-haired ladies cheering their hearts out, adding their names to a homemade sign reading WE ARE YOUR GRAHAMILY. On television, Platner can look skeezy, like he has a pornstache, but in the dozens of rooms I’ve seen him in this year, he comes off as an apple-cheeked kid who might remind white resistance moms of their very good boys — a young man who hates war, supports Gaza, and wants to build a future that includes health care and housing.

The national narrative has offered a simplistic view of this crucial Senate race, pitting the oysterman Platner, working-class cosplayer and dirtbaggy avatar of the male left, against a hidebound Establishment. Now that his campaign has been suspended, the question of where women fit into that cartoonish proxy war has been less discussed and even less understood.

Platner certainly is a burly white guy, but a Times–Portland Press Herald–Siena poll taken in June — after the Times story about his former romantic partners but before Politico reported in July that he’d allegedly raped one of them, which Platner denies — showed him performing better with women (winning 52 percent) than with men (45 percent) and having no firm hold on the guys he was supposed to look like, with only 36 percent support from men without a college degree. By many measures, Platner was in fact the women’s candidate in the race.

This was true even when he ran for the Democratic nomination against Janet Mills, the 78-year-old sitting governor. Anxiety about Platner’s personal misdeeds, which included revelations that he had a Nazi-ish tattoo, was outweighed by recognition of Mills’s weaknesses and the vast damage done by five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins, a woman who has enabled accused assaulters, including Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, to hurt not only individual women but millions of them. And yes, the fact that many women supported Platner because they cared so much about women makes this juncture extra enraging, heartbreaking, and horrible.

Among the many hard lessons of the Me Too era was that when men abuse women, the blast radius is unfathomably wide. In Platner’s case, the concentric circles surely begin with Jenny Racicot, who claims Platner raped her at the end of their on-again, off-again relationship in 2021, and Lyndsey Fifield, who recounted her bad experiences with Platner to the Times only to be written off as a right-wing operator. The circles move out quickly: to the women on his campaign watching months of grueling work blow up in their faces, the endorsers and voters who supported him and are now being blamed and mocked for their perceived errors in judgment.

Establishment Democrats and moderate pundits are taking unseemly pleasure in wagging fingers at all those women who foolishly fell for Platner’s populist façade. A local writer named Shay Stewart-Bouley, who writes under the title Black Girl in Maine, has described being called “a Nazi sympathizer and a star-struck gullible tool” for interviewing Platner and writing about his outreach to Black and immigrant communities. Elizabeth Warren, labeled “Judas” for not endorsing Bernie Sanders in 2016, is getting roasted for having endorsed Platner this cycle. The Somali American community leader and Platner supporter Safiya Khalid wrote on Facebook that social media is “filled with ‘we told you so’ posts, finger-pointing and people treating this as though they had been vindicated.”

Easy-bake appraisals of women’s choices have been particularly irksome because, over the past ten months in Maine, where I live and vote, I have watched the women around me — of every age, race, and flavor of left-of-center Democrat — struggle mightily to come to sound conclusions about this complex race. I have heard from longtime friends of Mills’s who had to tell her directly that they were not supporting her even though they love her. I know women who voted for Platner while their husbands voted for Mills. I also have female friends who could not stand Platner and were cast as the wet-blanket enemies of fun, hope, and movement politics.

Me? I thought Platner was terrific. He was smart, inspiring, a generational talent on the stump. He made people feel good and hopeful in a time that wasn’t good or hopeful. I saw how he made them googly-eyed with irrational fanaticism, a quality that is irritating but also rare and powerful in politics.

Part of what I liked about Platner was that he sounded so much like some of the female politicians I have believed in and who have lost again and again and again. Women running for office are almost never able to make people googly-eyed. He said the same things they did but in a register that was received as inspiring, not hectoring; as populist, not professorial.

Platner understood that too. On a recent podcast appearance, he conceded that his self-presentation as a “relatively healthy white man that comes across in a very masculine way” permitted him advantages. He acknowledged Betsy Sweet, a Maine leftist who ran insurgent campaigns for governor in 2018 and Senate in 2020. “Betsy literally ran on pretty much everything I talk about,” Platner said. “And they went after her, called her a witch … Then I get to do it and people are like, ‘This sounds reasonable.’ That’s insane to me. But it is also a reality.”

He was right: It is insane and it is reality, and his ability to think that through is partly what led me to trust him. Well, the joke’s on me and the many other women who thought hard about this race and chose to take a risk on a guy who had a very bad history but very good ideas, a guy we hoped had grown. We can now be cheerfully jeered for being hypocritical dummies.

But it’s also pretty rich that many of those eager to remind us that they Told Us So are the same people who also Told Us in recent years that it was a feminist insistence on Me Too–ing too hard that got us where we are now — that an unwillingness to forgive good boys who made mistakes was what ultimately drove them to the manosphere and provoked the reelection of Donald Trump and his rape-forward Cabinet of monsters.

What’s a girl to do? Give a guy a break? Or not give him a break? Anyone who pretends Platner’s candidacy represented an easy moral and philosophical calculation is wrong. Figuring out how to maintain moral clarity is awfully hard in a world where half the potential political candidates start with a gender disadvantage and the other half are raised in a world that accustoms them to power over female bodies.

In our political system, women are too often forced to depend on men. And those men often catastrophically fail us. Which brings us to whatever happens next: We are in an emergency. Caused by Graham Platner. And, honestly, by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who was criminally negligent in clearing the field for Mills, a candidate who was wrong for the moment, rather than one who could have offered a legitimate alternative to Platner.

It seems quite possible that the candidate chosen to replace Platner will be a woman. A woman who will be asked, as Kamala Harris was two years ago, to mount a terribly difficult campaign in a terribly short amount of time — knowing that no story about her will ever be told just about her but rather about her in relation to the men who got us into this mess in the first place.

its crazy that this info about the apple cheeks has to be hidden behind a paywall

Women running for office are almost never able to make people googly-eyed

Kat Abughazaleh to thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc7qJE9Nzo8

i'm sure nobody wants to relitigate the tattoo discourse but i hate this so much:

a Nazi-ish tattoo

"a configuration of lines at right angles similar to one historically seen in 1930s Germany"

it wasn't a swastika... it was the same skull that Ian Astbury used to have on his hat

very good Traister piece

Women running for office are almost never able to make people googly-eyed

Kat Abughazaleh to thread

AOC to thread

For someone so important to #metoo, it's kind of weird Traister wasn't bothered by this:
“Holy fuck, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to? Men and women, you make a choice to consume enough of a substance to lose your self control. So if you don’t want to be in a comprising situation, act like an adult for fucks sake.”

gee wonder why everyone responded to the apple cheeked white “reformed” bad boy in a way they didn’t respond to a woman holding the same policy positions

xp i know it was the skull but just how hard is it to say its a nazi tattoo, you can even pretend to believe that he didnt know it but objectively the image itself is still a nazi image full stop, in the same way the swastika has a long and ancient history in many varied cultures and religions and is also 100% a nazi symbol.

at base I feel his whiteness and maleness was what made (supposedly) everyone swoon and attribute qualities such as “inspiring”’ or ”generational talent”

i keep being told reliably that no one on earth was aware this was a nazi symbol until yesterday.

and to be called a “generational” talent I feel you have to actually win an election first.

yeah anyone that's seen any WWII movies with evil Nazi dudes would recognize that symbol

to the extent that people responded to him it was because he said he would wrestle chuck schumer to the ground and put him in a dog cage

jesus christ people are really contorting their brains into some fucking wild ass positions trying to convince everyone why it was okay, actually, to support the Nazi-tattoo sporting sexual assaulter

don't forget ex-mercenary

My favorite Zevon song!

havent thought of that name in a long time

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he's a Boer, must be a south african refugee

I don't know what people like Morris Katz, Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan were doing. How was it not obvious to them from the beginning that he was person who's personal history would come down on him? People here definitely saw the warning signs

For someone so important to #metoo, it's kind of weird Traister wasn't bothered by this:
“Holy fuck, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to? Men and women, you make a choice to consume enough of a substance to lose your self control. So if you don’t want to be in a comprising situation, act like an adult for fucks sake.”

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Thursday, July 9, 2026 3:07 PM (one hour ago)

you're so right about alcohol addiction being a moral choice, more people should say this

I didn't really see the warning signs, but I honestly wasn't paying a lot of attention to a Maine Senate race... the fact that he even ran for statewide office instead of Congress or state senate or something should have been a warning as well

I'm wondering about the NH Senate race. Jeanne Shaheen (D) is retiring, and a gay guy who I like Chris Pappas (D) who is a congressman is running against Chris Sununu (R), who has served two terms as governor and is from a prominent family.

The NH senate primary isn't until September.

This race seems to have gathered no interest so far, but it could easily flip

lord when we will we be free of the wicked sununu clan

I don't think you are you being sarcastic, but I can never tell with you

im serious i been hearing about these sununus since i was a kid

it is an amazing name tbf but still

My dad was presented with an award by John Sununu. He said he was an asshole.

what the shit

Sununu was born on July 2, 1939 in Havana, Cuba while his parents were visiting Cuba on a business trip.

anchor baby

I went to Cuba and all I brought back was this piece of shit kid

My ancestral country, calling in the chits.

But in present day life can Chris Pappas in NH defeat Chris Sununu?

I think Susan Collins will pull it out of her ass as always against any opponent they now put up. And Platner has not officially withdrawn. He needs to do it by Monday, and the Maine Democratic Party is not conceding any demands from him

I would love for James Talarico to win in Texas, I'm still a little bit hopeful, but in my heart I don't think he will.

I also think Michigan is a Senate seat that could easily flip to Republican. El-Sayed is a very flawed candidate

We won't flip the Senate. Maybe flipping the House and dividing Congress will be good enough, but I'm not even sure of that anymore

El-Sayed is a very flawed candidate

Explain. Every interview I've seen with him has impressed me. He has good ideas, he articulates them well, and yeah, he's a Muslim (booga booga) but there are a lot of Muslims in Michigan. And his Republican opponent is not some beloved figure, as I understand it.

but there are a lot of Muslims in Michigan

yeah was gonna say... it's a feature, not a bug up there

Reminder that this thread exists for prognosticating about races for which the candidates haven't yet been finalized.

Doomposting containment thread

yeah Dan S you're kinda being an Eeyore

he doesn’t like any candidates left of bill clinton. it’s a pretty clear pattern

Fuck off. I hope if El-Sayed wins the primary that he will be elected. He is a worthy candidate.

But I think he has similar flaws. He is arrogant, waves any criticism away without even addressing it, is unable to apologize for anything at all ever, and is frankly misogynistic. In short, your typical straight male

how’s he misogynistic?

He is arrogant, waves any criticism away without even addressing it, is unable to apologize for anything at all ever

I saw an interview with a CBS News journalist where the reporter began a question with, "Let's talk about what the Republicans are going to say about you..." and El-Sayed interrupted and said, "How about instead I tell you everything wrong with my Republican opponent," and proceeded to do exactly that. Is that the kind of thing you mean? Because good for him.

Similar to Platner? His flaws went quite a bit beyond that. His campaign didn't die because he's a typical straight male.

lmao

Best I can gather is he’s pals with Hasan Piker who I think is a turd

ah yeah. shut it down in that case

My main impression of McMorrow came from that embarrassing first line dance with someone who had a giant cut out of her face, I’m glad she dropped out.

Too bad El-Sayed has taken over the cringe dancing from her.

Well, maybe Haley Stevens (D-Jerusalem) will pull it out...

Remember that time when Haley Stevens went to an Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) event, got drunk and thought she was at an AIPAC event? pic.twitter.com/JFwhrbDrCC

— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) July 8, 2026

Is she drunk?

cosmic brain

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ugh, stfu, go away already, retire, spend time with your grandkids or whatever

there should be a law that if you lose a presidential election you have to go away

Don't want to listen to Hillary, don't want to listen to Rahm, especially don't want to listen to Hillary about how we should listen to Rahm.

"23-State Solution" vs. "Seven Nation Army" vs. "31 Flavors" vs. "Heinz 57."

there should be a law that if you lose a presidential election you have to go away

I can't think of the last time I saw or heard from Al Gore, or John Kerry. Hell, Mike Dukakis is still alive.

but he no longer wants your turkey carcasses

XP about Al-Sayid's supposed misogyny, the attack ads against him on this topic are kind of hilarious: "He has called Michelle Obama misguided and uninspired!" OMG what a monster!

Arizona Young Democrats have retracted their endorsement of progressive U.S. house candidate Kai Newkirk, citing “concerning patterns of behavior.” #AZ04

Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) barred Graham Platner recruiter and campaign strategist Daniel Moraff from her 2022 congressional campaign following at least three complaints of sexual misconduct against him. Justice Democrats also ceased working with Moraff after the complaints.

Blaring from my mom's TV, lol at CNN reporting some bs "intelligence" from Israel of an allegedly specific Iranian plot to assassinate the big guy. Sure. Double lol at anyone else stupid enough to report this bullshit as anything but.

I think that means Israel is going to kill DT

Def. not goading him into behaving even more erratically.

cool cool

The Trump administration has forced out the three remaining members of an independent, bipartisan commission that supports states in administering their elections, the White House confirmed on Thursday. The move comes as President Trump seeks to cast doubt on the outcome of the upcoming midterms and impose control over how ballots are counted.

Mr. Trump terminated, effective immediately, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, two members selected by congressional Democrats to serve on the Election Assistance Commission, and accepted the resignation of a Republican member, Christy McCormick.

The board has no other remaining members, as its fourth commissioner resigned this spring.

I can't think of the last time I saw or heard from Al Gore, or John Kerry.

Al Gore still pops up every now and then due to his ongoing involvement in the battle against climate change.

And his eponymous rhythm is all over social media

yeah both those guys have remained low-level active and don't really annoy me. Al Gore is rich as hell

Kerry was the Secretary of State

As was Hillary Clinton, I thought we were talking about post-WH life

Xpost Union's been on strike, he's down on his luck, so tough

his ongoing involvement in the battle against climate change

Who's winning?

bro invented the internet, so...

bro invented the internet, so...

We have a new contender for History's Greatest Monster.

As was Hillary Clinton, I thought we were talking about post-WH life

― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, July 10, 2026 1:16 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Kerry lost in 2004 and afterward became Sec of State under Obama. Clinton was Sec of State before losing to Trump.

for those of you who remember Norman Vincent Peale and the “power of positive thinking” I’ve often joked that Peale is history’s greatest monster because Fred Trump would take young Donnie to Riverside Church to hear him preach. And Peale’s “power of positive thinking”obviously is Trump’s whole deal.

trump got the PMA!

donnie loves the Bad Brains ROIR tape

the purge of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission mentioned above is surely just the beginning... they've already made clear that there should be a republican takeover of elections, they're not even pretending to seek free & fair elections because they know they're in for a midterm shellacking

prices creeping back up

Critics of the Freedom Fuel model have questioned where the subsidies are coming from, seeing as experts have claimed the stations must be taking a loss, based on the current price of oil. Tom Kloza, an energy advisor for Gulf, told The New York Times that these kinds of promotions are unsustainable, and “the period where one sells at the disadvantaged prices is measured in hours and not days or weeks.”

Others have likened the idea behind the Freedom Fuel stations to socialism, despite the White House denying being behind the network. And there were plenty who blamed the Trump administration and its war with Iran on the rising gas prices, which were well under $3.47 nationally a year ago, according to AAA data.

gas here shot up 30 cents overnight

Why did Biden do that?

What, you can't afford .30? Get a job, hippy, 30 cents is cheaper than literally anything else you can buy, what are you complaining about? Name me one other thing you can buy for 30 cents. That's right, nothing. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

the White House denying being behind the network

just some do-gooder trying to beat Costco at their own game, I get it... wonder if they sell Freedom Fries inside

XP about Al-Sayid's supposed misogyny, the attack ads against him on this topic are kind of hilarious: "He has called Michelle Obama misguided and uninspired!" OMG what a monster!

― BrianB, Friday, July 10, 2026 6:21 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I heard he doesn’t even worship at the altar of kamala harris

https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/us/politics/new-air-force-one-defensive-countermeasures.html

The new Air Force One, which President Trump flew on earlier this week to Turkey, lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities, according to multiple officials who have been briefed on how the jet was retrofitted.

Experts say the absence of those capabilities on the Boeing 747-8 aircraft, which was donated by Qatar, creates potential risk in using the jet abroad, a dynamic underscored by the abrupt decision on Wednesday for Mr. Trump to leave Turkey on the old Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service.

not the end of the world imo

apparently he's expressed interest in taking the Qatari gift home after his term ends... I know he thinks he's 'rich' but having your own 747 is a really big expense - crew, maintenance, fuel, storage... none of which will be covered by the taxpayer. It's not like a Lear jet

Hopefully he won't be alive long enough to find out

Imagine having such a sense of self-regard that you boast how much people want you dead.

he may end up spending quite a bit of time in it, at little to no cost to the American taxpayer

I know he thinks he's 'rich'
He’s made billions off the presidency this term he actually is rich now

He'd just toss the 747 into some kind of real estate deal with Putin if he'll build him a Trump tower in Moscow right near Red Square.

many xp I don’t think I even believe a lot of what I posted about El-Sayed. My venting was just a personal reaction because something about his responses in the interviews I’ve seen have bothered me. Maybe I'm becoming more conservative but I’m now questioning the lens I’m seeing politics through.

He has been very impressive for the most part, he is nothing like Platner and he will be a fine Senator. He did very well in the debate. He will probably get the nomination and I hope he wins. He is, of note, also a first-time candidate for any kind of political position though, so there will be a definite learning curve, and the Senate is a big position to just step into.

I like Haley Stevens too btw, and think because of my own personality I will always favor women in politics (and in every other sphere).

whats the point of keeping mitch mcconnells condition secret

so they don't have to call a special election

He'll be 'resting' til Aug 3rd

These escapades (e.g. McConnell) would all be titillating to read about if they'd happened in some ancient decadent empire, but they're just so dreary to live through.

it does have a touch of Poe though: southern gothic, the family waiting for him to croak and read the will but he gets the last laugh

why do they care if theres a special election theres going to have to be an election eventually

Imagine how long it would take them to admit Donald died

that i could see but mitch mc who cares man dump him off at the cemetery move on

his wife is with her lover in Beijing, she's not too worried about it

Oh shit, Mitch’s wife is the horrible woman that Trump was horrible to, right? I can’t keep up with all of the demons, there are too many.

yeah his family is keeping the secret what is going on here this is very odd

Pretty sure if someone is dead you can't hide it/keep it a secret. Desecration of a corpse type stuff, legally. But brain dead on down, it's a HIPAA thing, I imagine.

no, he's been affably chatting on the phone with Republican colleagues for exactly 20 minutes apiece, they swear he's in fine fettle and ready to get back to obstructing legislation, soon

emts loading him up like theyre headed to the morgue https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/10/politics/mitch-mcconnell-video-stretcher-ambulance

redecorating his house https://www.tmz.com/2026/07/10/mitch-mcconnell-house-has-carpeting-and-tile-workers/

yeah but the bipartisan Bodybag Caucus is still doing important legislation, it's unfair to single out those without a pulse

He is, of note, also a first-time candidate for any kind of political position though, so there will be a definite learning curve, and the Senate is a big position to just step into.

El-Sayed has been a health department director for Detroit and then Wayne County, and ran for Michigan Governor in 2018 (lost in the primary to Whitmer).

xxxxxxpost Supposedly they are worried that if there is a special election for Mitch’s seat, Thomas Massie will run while the Iran War is still a motivating issue.

i did see that theory but it seems like a pretty big stretch to me

ohohwoh big ol bribe airliner
carries old trump faraway

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...

I am curious how all that stuff gets treated by the next president.

Honestly, it will probably all pop off easily since it's a bunch of cheapo bullshit

its like someone went manic with a label maker

I wonder what those photos/portraits are printed on.

that trump...say what you want, but that guy has CLASS. look how non-tacky that looks! they're gonna put that photo on the cover of Elegant Typography magazine, it looks really, really good

Ugh serifs

its like someone went manic with a label maker

looks like there was a 90% off special on fake gold plated shit at a Joanne's going out of business sale

i sorta think joe gop sees normal objection to this shit and is like: “lol, libs think there’s like an award for tastefulness, dumbfucks. we want women and browns enslaved or dead and no gays or man-women. taste is for losers. let’s go.”

i been here forever and i still can’t tell when suzy is being arch sometimes.

Obvs serifs are the least of our problems here!

phew i got ya

It looks like a fucking Buffet at Vegas hotel … “CARVING STATION” … “PATISSERIE” … “CATCH OF THE DAY”

And the thing is, jokes aside, it is purely decorative... if those were signs so that his brain-melted ass knew where he was, they'd be black all-caps Helvetica.

Agree with this:

Forget whether Kentucky law allows it – Beshear should just commence with the special election & call republicans bluff

Make them produce something resembling proof of life for McConnell or concede to filling the seat

It's what Mitch would have wanted.

I'm under the impression that calling a special elections probably won't work in Beshear or Democrat's favor, that it's better to hold off and leave Senate Republicans with one less vote. I could be wrong though.

Special elections haven't been kind to republicans lately and if they successfully duck this one by delaying until August, then Beshear will be legally obliged to appoint a republican to replace Mitch.

as long as dems response to the latest procedural atrocity is “how could you do this,” i fear we’re damned. times change. there is apparently a time in which you must scorch the earth. let it be brief, let us be ruthless. tho ‘us’ is a stretch, i left the party. in case you felt a disturbance in the force and shit—that was me. i was only there by accident anyway.

Wouldn't Beshear be removed from office if he calls a special election?

xp

Not if McConnell is dead or permanently incapacitated and unable to serve out his term. He's required to call an election in that case.

hhahahhaahha enjoy hell mother fucker

not talking about Mitch

Yeah, I don't want Mitch to enjoy it.

To lose one senator etc etc

That I didn’t see coming, but I certainly welcome it.

Waking up randomly in the middle of the night sucks, but it’s a little less frustrating when it turns out a horrible person just left the world.

Am I the default representative of South Carolina here? Allow me to express the one sentiment we all share: Good fucking riddance Lindsey.

lol VegemiteGrrl otm

Good morning!

can’t believe mitch did a self/less to lindsey graham

what glorious news to wake up to

good morning to everyone except lindsey graham who is not awake yet

I just spoke with him for 20 minutes, he's doing OK, bit of an upset stomach.

I'm meeting him and Mitch for crab cakes at this new place called ... I think it's called Afterlife? The Morgue? Some sort of ironic, whimsical hipster place, probably woke. Heard they have good coffee, but only serve decaf, for some reason. I dunno, I guess it's a thing with the kids? They don't want anything keeping them up too late, plus RFK, he has this thing about caffeine, and I know the woke media media doesn't know what I'm drinking, but the last thing I need is some antifa type doxxing my coffee order.

Maybe it's called "The Light"? I can't remember. You know that movie, "Poltergeist"? "Don't go into the light," and all that? I can't recall, is it good to go into the light or not? I thought it was bad, but I could have sworn they go into it and ... it's good? I dunno, I should check it out. If Mitch and Linds say The Light is good, it's already got my vote, so I guess I'm going in! Save me a seat.

The family of Lindsey Graham has requested thoughts and prayers.

I pray they don't find out what I'm thinking right now.

This is the rare political death that will have a lot of people enthusiastically flying their flag at full mast, if you get my drift.

Rep. Nancy Mace is eyeing a bid for Senate to fill the vacancy left by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sudden death, according to two people familiar with her thinking, granted anonymity to detail private discussions.

I didn't think it was possible to be familiar with Nancy Mace's thinking since she seems to have encephalitis

Good morning!!!

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Boinggggggg!!!!

so to be clear, the governor appoints a replacement right? no special election in this case?

Meanwhile, Chuck Grassley better get on that "Breaking Bad" binge if he wants to see how it ends.

Assume Gus dead

ah I see a "special primary" is scheduled for 8/11

Timeline for replacing Graham:

July 21: filing period opens
July 28: filing period closes
August 11: special primary
August 25: runoff, if they need one

Would be kind of risky having a runoff, it's peak diarrhea season, at least as I understand it.

Both Gaham's and Mitch's seats will doubtless be filled by horrible people but they will be horrible people without Pleistocene levels of seniority / access / skill at using the machinery of power.

so sad to hear Sen. Graham god the diarrhea disease and shit himself so badly that he drowned in a sea of his own shit. RIS (Rest in Shit)

wow what a morning

Birds out singing in huge numbers, sun is shining, coffee in hand.

Trump went on morning shows to supposedly talk just about Lindsey Graham -

Trump on Meet the Press says Lindsey Graham called him last evening after he got back from Ukraine and said "we're all set for the SAVE America Act."

On CNN after Graham talk-

TAPPER: Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. Is that true?

TRUMP: It's open as far as we're concerned. Don't talk about it. Talk about the reason you asked me to speak.

Have been chastised by a friend for taking pleasure in the death of another.

"I'm reminding your better half that love is the answer."

I resisted saying "yes, I love that he's dead."

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zetunk75tdvsmkjqkel65dcl/post/3mqhi72jc6c2m

damn

There's a great quote attributed to Anne Lamott making the rounds:

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Emergency personnel responded to a call for “cardiac arrest” at Graham’s Capitol Hill home on Saturday night, according to police scanner audio obtained by NBC News.

The senator’s office confirmed the 71-year-old senator died at home “after a brief and sudden illness.”
Photographs reviewed by NBC News show that paramedics carried a person on a stretcher from Graham’s home to an awaiting ambulance. Police cars and fire trucks were also on site.

Republican leadership getting stretchered out all over the place.

rather stretched at the end of a rope

also would love to hear Huckleberry’s toxicology report

[ end coda of layla begins ]

xpost
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is this true that he just came back from Ukraine and was scheduled for a TV appearance this morning?

man the stuff coming out of Iranian state TV about this is pretty fun

Republican leadership getting stretchered out all over the place.

― omar little, Sunday, July 12, 2026 12:25 PM (twenty-four minutes ago)

conspiracist in me thinks it's putin

Of course he didn't review after his cardiac incident, he couldn't be seen to be resisting arrest

*revive

lol

xxp he was doing bumps and spinning doughnuts in a Bentley all night with Zelensky

Says a lot about the current state of US politics that Graham couldn't break into the top five worst Republican supervillains of 2026 no matter how hard he tried - and he tried as hard as he could. He could barely claw his way into the top ten.

disgusting statements from Warren and Schiff, completing their journey from "useless" to "actual enemy"

my fave take

‪rich traditions‬
✧@helld✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 31m
woke up and played some bannerlord with my morning covfefe. just opened the app, have not read any takes yet.

so: before checking anything, iran whacked lindsey graham right
‪
they wanted to get trump but he's hiding and freaking out. 71 is very young for, essentially, a lifelong senator. sudden illness eh? they borrowed the russian umbrella right

‪Jacquie‬
✧@laj✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 30m
That would be very funny but probably a good old high cholesterol heart attack

‪rich traditions‬
✧@helld✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 28m
these guys are getting full body scans at walter reed weekly and have several industrial freezers full of boy hearts to put in these guys as needed. they do not die of lifestyle disease

also enjoying the take that he was still in the Ukrainian drone factory when it was destroyed

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damn Nancy, Lindsey's body is still warm and his soul hasn't even reached hell yet

Is "They" in the room with us

holy shit i just heard the news!!!

i woke up late, met with a friend, and then saw the little tease about a truly horrible person dying and thought it had to be mcconnell! incredible news

this is like getting a free appetizer because you've waited too long for the main course

disgusting statements from Warren and Schiff, completing their journey from "useless" to "actual enemy"

is this the statement from Warren you're referring to?

I got to know Senator Lindsey Graham traveling with him abroad in Afghanistan and Ukraine. We had just met to renew the fight for our Big Tech bill.

Even though we disagreed on much, he was always willing to negotiate, with humor and wit.

My heart goes out to his loved ones.

Warren was a Republican before she was a (fake) progressive

The only send-off any D politician should give is something like

Roses are red
Lindsey is dead
I came when I heard
Mind the stain on the bed

lol stunned that some Senators didn’t just post Rest in Pidd

Piss that is

https://i.postimg.cc/ZKGPktkY/IMG-5969.png

a tumblr take via my daughter

oh he's definitely in that thing

https://www.instagram.com/p/DasR6g-lZBt/

Bouie's take on Graham (and by extension Trump) is brutal but impossible to argue with. There's no way the Times would let him publish a printed version of this, but they should.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4HMequIiiY

re Warren "he was always willing to negotiate" - give me a fucking break

"humor and wit" wtf

bonefarmer.jpg

Bouie absolutely smoked him

Michael Fanone
7h
The Michael Fanone Show

Lindsey Graham is dead. I will always remember my first and only encounter with him when he looked the grieving mother of a dead police officer in the face and barked that he wasn’t going to listen to her blame Trump for January 6th. When I showed him my body cam footage from that day he turned away and looked at his phone. Rest in Piss you fucking worthless scumbag. If there is a hell I hope you're in it.

Wow

Rudy hasn’t been doing so well lately, either.

Ha, forgot about him. Can't wait for the cavalcade of all these assholes croaking, and that's not counting pleasant surprises like this one. Just the other day I heard that Alex Jones popped like a balloon.

RIP Holden Bloodfeast

oh goddamn it, lol at the proof of life newspaper tho

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:jmte4w4x7ukciit6lci6ziau/bafkreifrntydnfrl62x2o7phsvrq7pkuwb2w5hzstttfo4vauebor7zybu

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https://www.cardcow.com/images/set856/card00080_fr.jpg

Looking good, Mitch. Just a normal trip to the hospital for weeks for, according to you, nothing except a lil case of pneumonia.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward death.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:zzlwi2qwowlefcf24w5z7clm/bafkreidsnlz77ovavjcfgevp76bwcu4tuhaxjyyrsnay5n365prcv6uw3q

趙小蘭 says it’s 100% fake “no way i’m visiting bedside for that.”

dunno how truthful mitch is being but the broad outlines of that are def a bread and butter hospital admission for someone his age