cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/62988948
A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.
The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.
Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”
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Right now the centrist machine claims leftist politics (part of which is cutting funding for Israel) only works in deep blue states so centrism and all the money flowing into it is still the strategy to win elections. Platner win in Maine puts a grenade in the mouth of the machine. Once that nade explodes, we’re gonna see a whole lot more leftist challengers all over the place. And that would be a big material problem for the ruling class as taxes will be next.
The one-two punch of Mamdani showing that progressive policies can actually be implemented to improve people’s lives and Platner showing that unabashed progressive policy can win battleground states would be devastating to them.
Who knows what’s going to happen with Platner now, but he is definitely a huge threat to shitty centrist politics.
My bet - heartfelt apology, like he did before, then pedal to the metal on that red hot communism! He’s gonna put this at the feet of the corporate political machine which wants to keep Mainers from having free healthcare, etc. And I think it’s going to work.
Nah, he’s cooked this time. Many of his high profile supporters who stuck with him through the previous allegations are currently retracting their endorsements on Twitter. He’s done.
High profile supporters aren’t what win races.
No but they are a strong indicator of the way the wind is blowing. The Maine Democrats organization has just also called for him to stand down and the pressure is quickly mounting.
Soon the pressure to drop out will be so strong, his base will splinter and he won’t have a choice but to concede. It’s looking pretty much inevitable at this point.
The establishment weren’t ever supportive of him on the first place. They’ve been blowing their wind against him the whole time. They lost.
I’m not talking about the establishment: Hasan Piker. Emma Vigeland. Krystal Ball. Wajahat Ali. Ro Khanna. Abdul El-Sayed.
They’ve all publicly come out and said these allegations seem credible and that Platner must concede.
You were literally using the Maine Democratic party as your example, so I responded about how it’s not surprising that the establishment would call for a do over without all those pesky voters in the way.
As far as lefty endorsements, barely anyone in Maine even knows who any of those people are. They’re names that matter to a tiny sliver of political junkies who already have their own political beliefs and awareness of the larger state of politics.
I think if Hasan keeps on it he might be able to move the needle, but everyone else is basically electorally irrelevant. And it’s so much easier for him to just avoid talking about it so he doesn’t need to take a position on whether it’s better to have fascism than elevating a drunken rapist.
Honestly, I do think he can just power through this. Charisma and the election being about bigger things will get people to just forget about stuff they don’t really want to think about. The visceral emotional anger against him would need to last for months and that just hasn’t been how people tend to respond to misdeeds by politicians.
I get you’re new to rhetorics, but the metaphor is:
’Cause last time I read, this populist Senator wasn’t campaigning on rearming his constituency. There’s no grenades, only straws to the grinder.