Progressives have been championing a concept of candidate recruitment that, at its core, believes that the important thing to profitable again white working class voters, particularly in crimson areas, is to run candidates from the working class.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the trendy champion of this concept, and despite the fact that it hasn’t but confirmed to be efficient, there’s a phase of progressivism in america that tends to fall in love with candidate biographies and overlook crimson flags.
The Democratic Occasion put itself in a tough place within the Senate main in Maine when Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer backed Gov. Janet Mills within the Democratic main. Mills is an older Democrat who, based on these in Maine, by no means expressed a lot curiosity in working within the main, leaving an enormous opening for progressives within the state to win the Senate nomination.
I’m not a Democrat or a Republican, so I’ve no canine within the struggle over who ought to have been the get together’s Senate nominee, however as a political scientist, I noticed crimson flags round Graham Platner’s candidacy, and it was additionally comprehensible why he received the first.
The issue is that these crimson flags have become a raging five-alarm hearth.
Politico first reported the allegation of rape in opposition to Platner:
A girl who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he pressured her to have intercourse with him practically 5 years in the past regardless of her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.
The girl, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the previous two weeks. POLITICO additionally spoke with a person Racicot dated and confided within the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed paperwork, together with emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned in opposition to getting concerned with Platner years earlier than he ran for workplace.
The accuser is a Democrat who shares Platner’s views, and the extra particulars there are, the extra troubling the story turns into.
