Dem
47
GOP
53
We've already talked a lot about Senate races; let's talk about one more before we wrap it up for the day. Graham Platner, the would-be U.S. Senator from Maine, has another social-media-related scandal on his hands. Fox, that bastion of quality journalism, managed to lay hands on some Reddit posts that Platner wrote in the r/USMC forum several years back, Reddit posts that the Fox headline describes as "crude."
We certainly do not dispute that characterization. For example, while deployed to Afghanistan, Platner saw a phallic drawing on the inside of a porta-potty. And in 2021, he gave his ribald "review" of the "art" in an r/USMC subreddit specifically set up for this particular subject, namely GWOT Di** Art. In case you are wondering what the "GWOT" means, it stands for "Global War on Terror."
It would be very hard to convey how very little we care about this revelation. First of all, the whole point of Reddit, pretty much, is that it's edgy. Everyone on there is trying to impress everyone else on there with how edgy they are. Plus, Platner is a U.S. Marine. And he was deployed in a combat zone. If anyone is surprised that the conversation wasn't exactly G-rated, then that person clearly hasn't known many Marines. Or combat veterans. Indeed, what Platner wrote was actually on the tame end of the scale by jarhead standards.
So, if we are utterly unimpressed, why are we passing this news along? Because we assume that there are many folks out there—right-wing media, the oppo research staff of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the DSCC (until recently), the general media—looking under every rock for dirt on Platner. If this is the best that any of them can come up with, then it suggests to us that there aren't many skeletons left out there. Platner has already overcome the Nazi tattoo, by all indications, and the edgy Twitter posts, and we are confident he will quickly overcome the edgy Reddit posts, too. That means that the Maine U.S. Senate election will be decided primarily on the merits of the two candidates. Which, we would say, is not good news for Collins. (Z)