A new Graham Platner story dropped today, and it answers one question while opening about a dozen others. The reporting centers on an ex-girlfriend from his time in Washington who describes behavior that she says included being yanked out of cabs, shaken by the shoulders, blocked from leaving rooms, and subjected to bizarre conversations about violence and power. The Platner campaign does not appear to dispute many of the specifics. Instead, it continues to insist that none of this amounts to sexual assault. Their strategy is obvious: keep this campaign alive until July 10, the last day under Maine law that Democrats could replace him on the ballot.
The problem is that the list of people the campaign says are actually the problem keeps getting longer. First it was the former campaign manager. Now it’s an ex-girlfriend. The campaign has gone out of its way to point out that the woman worked in Republican politics years ago. Maybe that’s relevant, maybe it isn’t. What matters politically is that this is now the second woman in a week whose allegations are being dismissed while the campaign asks everyone to focus on Graham Platner instead. Meanwhile, the campaign’s own internal polling reportedly has him four points ahead of Susan Collins. That’s not exactly reassuring when a public poll from late May had him up nine. If you’re releasing a poll to save a candidacy and it shows you’ve lost five points, that’s not great.
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The bigger issue remains the stuff we still don’t know. The dating stories are damaging, but the Kik story is the Pandora’s box. That’s the ugly stuff. What’s behind that door? The potential answer is why this scandal continues to dominate the conversation. Platner’s goal now is simple: survive the primary, survive the next month, and make it to July 10. If he’s still standing then, Democrats may have no choice but to circle the wagons.
Elsewhere, there was a polling shocker in Ohio. A Fox News poll found Sherrod Brown leading Senator John Husted by eight points, 53 to 45. If we start seeing more polls like that, Democrats may have found one of their best pickup opportunities. Brown is a known quantity in Ohio. If the environment continues to improve for Democrats, it may not matter how exciting or energetic his campaign is. He could simply coast on familiarity and favorable conditions.
California, meanwhile, continues to count ballots at a pace that seems designed to test the limits of human patience. The governor’s race is still unresolved, and Los Angeles mayoral results remain in flux. What frustrates me is that this is a choice. California mails ballots to everyone and allows ballots to arrive days after the election. Fine. But there’s no reason the ballots already in hand couldn’t be processed faster. Instead, the state releases vote drops so slowly that candidates can spend weeks appearing to lead or trail before the public gets anything close to a final picture. I genuinely think that’s bad for democracy because people are not wired to watch somebody lead by eight points and then potentially lose weeks later.
That brings us to Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman. Prediction markets currently have Raman favored to make the general election despite Pratt holding second place. I don’t understand the math. Raman gained ground in the latest vote drop, but not nearly at the pace she would need to overtake him. Maybe future batches change that. Maybe they don’t. But when prediction markets start pricing in outcomes that don’t seem to match the publicly available numbers, people begin assuming something else is going on. That’s another reason the endless California count is so damaging. Even if everything is perfectly legitimate, the process encourages suspicion in ways that simply don’t seem necessary.
Chapters
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:20 - Graham Platner
00:09:22 - Ohio and California
00:14:58 - Interview with Reese Gorman
00:30:18 - John Bolton
00:32:01 - Todd Blanche
00:34:26 - College Sports Bill
00:41:28 - Interview with Reese Gorman, con’t
01:01:43 - Wrap-up
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