The Platner Problem

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Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic candidate for Maine’s Senate seat, has a problem — which means Maine has a problem, which means the Democrats have a problem. Which may just mean democracy will have a problem.

After a series of missteps involving unfortunate texts from years ago and a tattoo closely resembling the Nazi Totenkopf, it turns out he had also “sexted” several women early in his marriage — the last a transgression that his wife had confided to Platner’s now-departed and apparently revenge-minded campaign director when Platner was deciding to run, and that his wife now says they have worked through with the aid of marriage counseling.

As a Mainer, I have been a Platner supporter. I can’t say that I wasn’t disappointed by this most recent revelation. I am. 

Nor can I say that we should excuse his behavior. I can’t. 

For some Democrats, this has disqualified Platner. One error too many. But not for me. I will continue to support him, and here’s why.

There is a difference between personal morality — the morality that is circumscribed by one’s family and friends and acquaintances and that entails the infliction of personal hurts — and public morality, the morality that affects a larger cohort on a larger scale. Even the Church recognizes that not all sins are created equal.

On a personal level, Platner hurt his wife, and she has apparently forgiven him, claiming that their marriage is stronger than ever. On a public level, the sexting, frankly, is irrelevant, unless it translates into a public offense. 

Platner isn’t running to be husband of the year. He is running to represent the interests of Maine and of the country. 

One can make a case that personal immorality signals some deficiency of public morality — which, I suppose, is the argument of those who think Platner is sullied, though I think that is a very difficult case to prove. The only argument I could make for it is that Platner, by neglecting to divulge this himself before announcing his candidacy, may have jeopardized his chances of beating Sen. Susan Collins, which does elide into a public transgression, depending on how you feel about Collins.

But personal morality and public morality, despite what purists might think, seldom interface. Donald Trump may be a detestable human being because of his personal immorality; but even if he were a saint in private, he is a detestable president because of his lack of public morality. 

And Americans know the difference. 

When Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff “outed” Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky, he did so on the basis, he later said, that if Clinton could lie about Lewinsky, he could lie about anything — which is the flimsiest of justifications, and one that would never stand the evidence test. If Isikoff had been honest, he would have said that he outed Clinton because he had a good, salacious story, not because there was any real reason — any imperative to protect public morality — for doing so. 

And, despite his impeachment, the American people actually rallied around Clinton, boosting his favorability rating, and telling pollsters that they recognized the line that separated his private failings from any public ones.

In fact, it is even possible that personal immorality can encourage public morality. I have written a two-volume biography of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who certainly had his share of episodes of personal immorality — from cheating on a Spanish exam while a Harvard freshman; to cheating on his wife; to failing to report in a timely fashion the automobile accident at Chappaquiddick, in which a young woman drowned; to rousting his son and a nephew for a night of carousing in Palm Beach, after which the nephew was accused of raping a young woman. 

These were certainly failings of character. But I speculate that Kennedy, battling low self-esteem in his struggles to live up to the family name, sinned to be redeemed, and the redemption came in the form of an exemplary Senate career during which he introduced and then shepherded passage of more legislation than any other senator in history. 

Among those laws: Meals on Wheels; the National Cancer Act; the Children’s Health Insurance Act, which provided health insurance for children whose parents made too much money to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford health insurance; the Voting Rights Act amendments, which strengthened the act’s protections, now gutted by a publicly immoral Supreme Court majority; the Civil Rights Act of 1991; the Americans with Disabilities Act; and the Ryan White AIDS Act. He led nearly every liberal initiative in his nearly 50 years in the Senate, and was instrumental in paving the way for the Affordable Care Act by pushing, over 30 years, for national health insurance.

When Kennedy died, columnist Richard Reeves eulogized him as a “publicly moral man.” That is the title Graham Platner is running for right now.

We can get all sanctimonious about Platner’s behavior. Some Democrats are. Even before the latest revelations, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) said he could not support Platner. 

Disavowing Platner may serve one’s own piety, which, to me, demonstrates more of an absence of public morality than anything Platner has said or done. Why? Because the alternative to Platner is Collins, who has voted against nearly everything that benefits the most vulnerable Americans and our vulnerable democracy. Not to mention a greatly increased prospect of a Republican Senate majority and a more indelibly Trump-stamped judiciary.

To Platner’s denouncers — good for you. You are pristine.

But we don’t have the luxury of sanctimoniousness. This is truly an existential election to save democracy and to save science, and the environment, and free speech, and higher education, and law and. . .and. . .and morality — public morality. 

For better or for worse, Graham Platner caught fire with Mainers — certainly with Democratic Mainers — in a way few if any candidates have in memory; and, in so doing, he cleared the field such that there is no viable, let alone obvious, sub for him sitting on the Democratic bench. As of now, he remains the Great Flawed Hope for ridding the Senate of Collins and potentially its Republican majority.

If it really comes down to punishing Platner for stupid remarks made at a low ebb of his life or for a tattoo or for texts, versus rewarding a senatorial hack who has voted with Trump 96 percent of the time, then I have no hesitation and certainly suffer no agony in heartily supporting Platner. 

And if you don’t, if you think Collins should continue her charade of opposing Trump while actually supporting him, then tell that to the millions who lost health insurance because Collins let the Big Beautiful Bill get to the Senate floor without subsidies; or to the mother whose child died of measles because Collins voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; or to the voters facing disenfranchisement because Collins supports the SAVE America Act; or to the pregnant women denied choice and the Black voters who lost congressional representation because Collins voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh; or to the immigrants manhandled by ICE because Collins voted to finance the agency; or to the soldiers sent to fight the war that Collins supported.

Platner’s personal morality is suspect. He is not likely to be the future of the Democratic Party, not because his personal morality impairs his ability to be a good and effective legislator, but because the baggage he now carries is an electoral liability to those people who insist that the personal and public moralities are somehow intertwined. (The Republican Party has long since sacrificed both kinds of morality at the altar of Trump.) But his message still may be the future, and nothing he has said or done has compromised his pledge to pry this country from Trump, the Republicans, and the oligarchs.

So, recalcitrant Democrats, keep your piety. Clutch it tightly. The only thing that should matter to those of us who are voting Mainers is whether Platner will be a publicly moral senator.

Neal Gabler is the recipient of two LA Times Book Prizes, USA Today’s biography of the year, Time Magazine’s book of the year, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Shorenstein Fellowship from Harvard. His substack is Farewell, America.