Splinter: Graham Platner’s Political Legacy Is a More Misogynistic and Divided Left

The Graham Platner saga has reached its inevitable end-stages, as the Nazi tattoo guy is now better known as former Senate candidate credibly accused of rape. This entire ordeal has been a depressingly illuminating saga of the present state of American politics and a confirmation that some parts of the left are as bad as some of our critics say. The predatory and patriarchal nature of American politics does not end at our lefty shores, and Platner’s campaign was more proof of it. “Hey, you have a very sexist, misogynistic staff,” said Paige Loud to Platner, per the Wall Street Journal. She was referring to activist Daniel Moraff, who is most recently famous for bragging to WSJ about how he cheaped out on a less meticulous background check for his golden goose he either didn’t know or didn’t care was credibly accused of rape.

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— Solomon (@solomonrmissouri.com) July 7, 2026 at 5:36 AM

Loud’s quote to the WSJ is also far from the lone piece of evidence for this claim about Moraff.

Alarming story that confirms my own reporting along similar lines: Dan Moraff, the political strategist who plucked Graham Platner out of obscurity to run for senate and barely vetted him, was barred from Rep. Summer Lee’s 2022 campaign after three complaints of sexual misconduct.

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) July 10, 2026 at 6:32 AM

Despite how not ready for primetime this campaign always was, a certain slice of lefties who predominantly populate the ruins of lefty Twitter told us that this was the guy. A lefty Obama who could join the Senate in 2026 and then win us the presidency in 2028 as he leads a “political revolution” (seriously, this was the recruitment pitch to Platner). This gruff working-class oysterman—who also happens to be the grandson of a world famous architect—was how we were going to deliver our lefty ideas to the dudebros who allegedly won the 2024 election for Trump (always good to remember that an estimated 19 million 2020 Joe Biden voters didn’t vote in 2024 and that percentages can be warped by subtraction too). Keyboard warriors with a master’s degree like myself are out of touch elites, so the story in American politics goes, and this former Blackwater, er, Constellis mercenary was a Real American Man. Platner was our lefty lifeline to a working-class zeitgeist shifting to a more masculine posture, according to everyone still posting on the MechaHitler CSAM site run by the world’s most racist manchild.

The problem is that the people backing Platner’s campaign are also out of touch elites with college degrees like myself, and all available polling proves that their vision of what the gettable male swing vote wants is what out-of-touch elitism actually looks like in practice. Platner’s campaign will forever be remembered for a lot of things, but one I will never forget is how it was functionally a patronizing “how do you do fellow kids” kind of campaign from a Yale Law grad directed at working class and young men.

A June UMass Lowell poll found Platner leading Republican Susan Collins by five points, while winning 54% of women and just 42% of men, compared to 35% of women supporting Collins and 51% of men. A New York Times-Siena poll around the same time found that among voters without a college degree, Platner trailed Collins 37% to 58%. A June Fox News poll had this split at 41% for Platner and 56% for Collins. There is zero evidence that Platner’s whole shtick had any kind of serious purchase with its intended audience, yet a certain kind of Ivy League lefty took it as an article of faith that Platner appealed to high-school grads willing to vote for Racist McFuckstick, in large part due to how they view politics from hanging out on the new and updated version of 4chan all day.

If anything, Platner shrank the tent on the left before he was credibly accused of rape, as recent polling showed he was shedding voters that Kamala Harris had won in 2024, in addition to being tuned out by the demographics he supposedly spoke to. A new poll shows all the potential replacements about even with Collins now, demonstrating how the biggest asset to Platner’s campaign was quite clearly the enthusiasm among the Democratic base showing up to his rallies, desperate to vote the fascists and their collaborators out. There is zero polling demonstrating he was anything more than a replacement-level Democratic candidate good enough to narrowly lose yet again to Susan Collins, and in fact, the most recent polling that had him losing to Collins strongly suggests he is a below-replacement-level Democratic candidate.

What exactly does Graham Platner bring to the table

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— Jacob Weindling (@jakeweindling.bsky.social) June 30, 2026 at 6:43 PM

All American politics across the entire spectrum has become rabidly obsessed with made-up bullshit and performative gender definition to a truly unhinged degree since the 2024 election, and Platner is the lefty version of it. Platner was an attempt to ride this anti-establishment wave benefiting both left-of-center and DSA types, lean into the learned cynicism of 2024, and lead a democratic socialist takeover of the Democratic Party on the back of people who have been trained to think socialism is the ultimate enemy. But there are a lot of different ways to play the cynical everything-is-gender game in politics and not everyone has to be tailor-made for Joe Rogan’s audience to qualify as a man in America. I find it depressingly telling how a significant portion of the left fell in love with this white Reddit poster who bragged about killing people with a gruff voice, while other lefty candidates in crucial Senate races like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan or the soft-spoken James Talarico in Texas did not receive the same online cult following, despite, in my opinion, being far better communicators than Platner. I will never understand the folks who heard Ryan Grim’s former bartender speak and heard anything unique or special that other lefty candidates across the country haven’t already said a million times over since 2020, other than it being done in a great radio voice. The lefty message is what’s special, not our candidates.

Speaking of political operatives pretending to do journalism, Grim helped further emboss a line on the left that has already been divided along Bluesky and MechaHitler lines, dropping a “report” where the most charitable reading of it is that he doesn’t understand the nature of linear time and how reporting gets vetted. Drop Site later deleted this post for its falsely suggestive nature. It was blatantly obvious what he was trying to do here, and I have zero patience for folks giving into this cynical bullshit thinking there is anything nefarious about this one text from Platner’s accuser being held back from the final report.

 

Speaking as a lefty editor who has spent a decade highlighting the mainstream media’s very clear and anti-journalistic bias against us, this is hack bullshit from Grim. I also would not have included that text had I been the editor on this report, because any ambiguity in one flirty text is 100% cleared up by the very next one that per Grim’s own “report” was a firm no when Platner asked to come over. Putting that incendiary detail in there risks overshadowing a report that—let’s be real—most people won’t read, and it is simply not relevant to the conclusion that the avalanche of corroborating evidence reaches. The text after the one Grim is portraying as a scandal invalidates any scandalous implication in its omission, because it confirms all the other evidence brought to this report.

Does Grim think all her therapist’s contemporaneous notes should be in the report too? What about every Facebook message Racicot sent while she was involved with Platner? I guarantee you that this text was not the only evidence considered that did not make the final copy. This is reporting 101. Your job is not to just blindly regurgitate every single thing you dig up and let the reader come to their own conclusions with a mishmash of out-of-context information—that’s trending towards the kind of mainstream media stenography that Grim and I have spent our careers raging against. Your job as a journalist is to find and vet information, then summarize what that information adds up to and frame the story in its proper context, and this Politico report does a good job of bringing all its receipts to the table and explaining its investigatory process.

But having that discussion about journalism is giving into a bad faith argument in the first place, and anyone not brain poisoned by Twitter can very clearly see what Grim was trying to do here. He and other notable Twitter posters nominally on the left like Matt Stoller, Glenn Greenwald, and their reply guys like Michael Tracey and Zaid Jilani, are going down with this sinking Platner ship in service of a conspiracy theory that makes no logical sense. It really sucks watching a generation of Intercept journalists I read and respect(ed) succumb to Matt Taibbi brain to varying degrees, and I am issuing a formal request to my readership to stage an intervention with me should I ever write a word like “smoothgroin” in the future.

If this report is a complete and total ratfucking of the left by the Democratic establishment, why didn’t they do this before the Democratic primary when their chosen candidate had a chance to win? Why are they doing this now to nuke the Democratic message and help Susan Collins? They hate lefties that much they’re willing to potentially give away their chance to flip the Senate on it? That’s the argument? Really? All to fuck over the guy endorsed by Obama’s speechwriters? Are you guys hearing yourselves say this shit? We lefties deserve a better class of unhinged conspiracy theorists.  

Platner’s candidacy has made it clear that there is a segment of the left who have functionally lobotomized themselves with negative polarization. Every sleight against a so-called lefty, even if they’re a former fucking Blackwater mercenary endorsed by Pod Save America, is supposedly an attack on the left from the establishment, because apparently we can do no wrong. The mere fact that this report appeared in Politico makes it suspicious, despite the fact that media is dying and there’s only like four outlets this kind of report appears in anymore. The entire mountain of evidence presented by a reporter is being ignored by people who have done reporting and still fancy themselves as reporters in favor of indulging in self-flagellating conspiracy theories of which they are the brave protagonists acting as the bulwark against all of corporate media, while lefties like me are betraying them to side with the dreaded establishment smearing one of Pod Save America’s favorite guests.

Can you imagine if everything about Platner was the same—joining what used to be known as Blackwater in fucking 2018, the Nazi tattoo, the Reddit posts blaming sexual assault victims and asking why Black people don’t tip, the grandfather who built world famous buildings populated by global elites, the fervent backing and apologia of the Obama bros, the Yale Law grad and City University PhD student who recruited him—but he espoused a softer, more Elizabeth Warren-style politics? There is no way in fucking hell any of these negatively polarized Twitter posters would buy his shtick, and they would surely look at him as an establishment sheep in wolf’s clothing and maybe even call him a “smoothgroin.” But apparently because a guy we all just met yesterday says our magic buzzwords, all of a sudden we just believe everything he says even while literal establishment political operatives help his campaign? I will never forget what willing marks so many of our lefty allies proved themselves to be during this campaign.  

But it’s okay to be a mark because it means you are willing to take a risk to believe in something. I used to be the kind of lefty mark I am criticizing and who knows, I still may be, but being a cynical misogynist prick is not okay, and this is the segment of the left who has proven they are genuinely unhelpful to a cause that is winning in large part due to female voters they are actively trying alienate. Antitrust and Josh Hawley enthusiast Matt Stoller recently went viral for denigrating the Democrats as a bunch of “HR ladies” that Platner’s candidacy was supposedly repudiating, and as I write this, he is still celebrating that phrase rooted in braindead sexist tropes.

posting your own previous sexist comment in order to claim you are being smeared as a sexist would be enough of an own-goal but adding a reminder that people have long suspected you of being sexist is some absolutely elite self-sabotage

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— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser.bsky.social) June 7, 2026 at 2:58 PM

After Platner was credibly accused of rape, Ken Klippenstein, who previously wrote that Platner’s ascension meant “the era of smoothgroin politicians is coming to an end,” posted a trollish blog that at least accepted Politico’s reporting before reveling in avoiding taking any kind of responsibility for his words and actions, claiming that no one could have possibly seen a credible rape allegation coming to a candidate who had to apologize for previously dismissing sexual assault claims in the military.

looks like ken’s being a little bitch on twitter

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) July 7, 2026 at 3:11 PM

What manly men and non-HR ladies these guys are! Thank goodness they don’t have smoothgoins, they have big groins and want everyone on the Nazi site to know that. Also apologizing for telling your friends and readers to vote for and dedicate their time to helping elect the credibly accused rapist is weak Bluesky shit. That’s the lefty vision of masculinity preached by these working-class bloggers who pretend to know the secrets of what the American Herrenvolk really want.

The “everyone is 12” theory of politics remains undefeated post-2024.

This meltdown is pure performative masculinity from an educated class of lefties who, to my poker brain, look like they are tipping their hand as to the self-loathing they have about being well-educated elites and not the gruff manly caricatures of their dreams who poll 20 points underwater with non-college voters. Hailing this false working-class idol as the lefty vision of 21st century masculinity didn’t do jack shit to expand the lefty tent among men, alienated women in myriad ways, and it has created a black mark that lefty candidates across the country are already being attacked with by cynical deadeyed establishment figures eager to weaponize the left’s failure for the establishment’s gain. Great job everyone.