The Platner Playbook

We think Graham Platner is unsuitable for the Senate because he is a damaged, commie-loving, Israeli-hating nepo baby—precisely the opposite of the working-class man of the people he claims to be.

But the Maine Democrat is also accused of mistreating women, something Democrats claim to oppose. He's a cheater who posted hideous towel-clad selfies to a social media app and exchanged sexually explicit messages with as many as a dozen women within months of taking his wedding vows, and he is accused by an ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, of twisting her arm behind her back, shoving her in a bedroom, and holding the door closed so that she couldn't escape.

The doyenne of the New York Times's #MeToo coverage, Jodi Kantor, who won a Pulitzer Prize for taking down Harvey Weinstein, emerged on Wednesday to shift some goal posts, announcing that Platner is not a #MeToo case. "The accusations against Graham Platner are not classic #MeToo accusations" because "they're not about a boss and a young female employee being subjected to sexual advances" and are "not like classic abuse allegations." She went on: "These are pretty different accusations than, say, the one that, the ones that President Trump faced … and so I think it speaks to the kind of confusion … in which, like, gender-related accusations get bundled together. But they're actually very different."

Kantor was interviewed on a Times podcast that cast Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings as a "national trial" of the #MeToo movement. Her colleague Megan Twohey explained that Christine Blasey Ford, who was not a young female employee being subjected to sexual advances and was never subject to any sexual advances from Kavanaugh, was "seen as an icon by many women," while Kavanaugh was "a representation of male grievance." Nor were Stormy Daniels or E. Jean Carroll young employees of Donald Trump.

But Kantor is right that the accusations against Platner are different—because he is a Democrat. They are different in the same way that the Chappaquiddick incident was different and Lewinskygate was different. Leaving the 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne for dead at the bottom of a pond didn't stop the late Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) from serving another four decades in the Senate. Nor did sexually harassing Paula Jones, raping Juanita Broaddrick, or defiling the Oval Office with a 20-something intern get in the way of Bill Clinton's reelection.

Neither Kennedy nor Clinton had to run against Susan Collins, though, and Maine isn't Massachusetts. If he is going to win, Platner will need all the help he can get from the New York Times—and it is prepared to deliver.

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