The party created this mess, and the party should clean it up

Just doing what primary voters want is how they got here in the first place

I don’t really enjoy being right on this one, but as I said last month, “A big problem with people with Nazi tattoos is that they tend to have other issues besides just Nazi tattoos.” A credible rape accusation against Graham Platner, along with further horrible revelations, seems just this sort of thing, and it has sent the Maine Democratic Party into a crisis as it seeks to push Platner out of the nomination and find a last-minute replacement to take on a vulnerable Republican incumbent.

I’ll further add that I was bothered enough by Platner to write this piece back in October of 2025. I am not an expert in Maine Democratic politics! I’m just leery of guys with totenkopfs on their chests. And it’s hard not to be disappointed with the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, and others who defended Platner and dismissed concerns about him because he “tapped into some vein of economic populism” or “spoke the authentic language of regular people” or something. (NB: These three and others have withdrawn their support of Platner in the past few days and are calling on him to withdraw.) They saw the same evidence the rest of us saw and decided that the prospect of winning this Senate race was worth the risk. Welp, here’s what happens.

I’m blaming the Democratic Party (both nationally and in Maine) for a pretty monumental foul-up. And just to be clear, that foul-up includes both suddenly having to pick a new nominee at the last minute and also very nearly putting an accused rapist facing trial on the November ballot and possibly in the U.S. Senate. And the party did this, as American parties often do, by abdicating their role of picking nominees.

This ties into a fascinating little exchange that former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) had on Blue Sky last month. This wasn’t about Platner — Harrison was upset with those progressive candidates in New York and elsewhere who are running for office by trashing the Democratic Party. Murphy responded with the argument that Democratic voters are the party, and if those voters are picking DSA candidates, the party’s leadership should be paying attention.

You might have missed the sound of millions hundreds of party scholars crying out in terror and then being suddenly silenced. But Murphy’s words cut against a belief by many party scholars (including me) that voters aren’t really part of the party. They’re obviously important, and the different actors within the party network (chairpeople, elected officials, candidates, donors, interest group leaders, activists, media figures, etc.) can’t really ignore them when it comes to picking candidates and taking stances. But ultimately, primary voters pick among a few choices handed to them by others, and they are far more influenced by endorsements, media coverage, and lawn signs than they tend to realize. Or, as Miranda Priestly concisely summed it up, “You’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room… from a pile of ‘stuff.’”

That’s the idea of parties, anyway. But over recent decades, and especially in the past ten years, parties have become wary of making decisions, and of looking like they’re making decisions, in the absence of voter input. (Please see Jonathan Bernstein’s recent piece on this point.) Republican leaders briefly tried preventing Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016, but then essentially surrendered to the idea that they would nominate him and whomever he liked from that point on. Hillary Clinton’s nomination that same year was very much the choice of party insiders, but ongoing claims by supporters of her main rival, Bernie Sanders, that her nomination was somehow “rigged” or illegitimate have continued to sting the party’s leaders.

There are a few recent last-minute nomination decisions that seem like relevant precedents here. One is, obviously, Democrats broadly forcing President Joe Biden off the ticket in 2024 and replacing him by very quickly coordinating behind Vice President Kamala Harris.