OPINION:
With apologies to baseball legend Yogi Berra, the Democratic Party finds itself experiencing “deja vu all over again.”
During his 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, sought to explain away his change of heart on an $87 billion supplemental funding bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Campaigning in West Virginia on March 16, 2004, Mr. Kerry said, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
Though his about-face was predicated on changed circumstances, the quote was ridiculed by critics as an embarrassing flip-flop.
Fast-forward to today, and numerous prominent Democrats — most notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, coincidentally Mr. Kerry’s fellow Massachusetts Democrat — find themselves similarly flip-flopping, having to explain why they were for scandal-plagued Maine Democrat Graham Platner before they were against him.
Mr. Platner won the party’s nomination for U.S. Senate and the right to take on five-term Republican Sen. Susan M. Collins a month ago, on June 9, despite a slew of scandals that had been exposed.
Though sufficient to sink any other candidate for office, none of the scandals to that point had cost Mr. Platner the support of the far-left base of the Democratic Party.
One Maine Democratic supporter went so far as to say that although the huge Nazi skull tattoo on Mr. Platner’s chest would not cost him her vote, a hypothetical Israeli flag tattoo would have been a bridge too far.
Mr. Platner’s Democratic primary voters continued to stand by him, despite follow-on revelations of — among other things — his online musings about masturbating in porta-potties and his admiration for penis graffiti on restroom stall walls.
Not even credible accusations of physical abuse committed against girlfriends in the past and of sexting with other women after getting married eroded that fanatical support.
That being the case, Mr. Platner’s fellow Democratic candidates and officeholders — with one notable exception — held their tongues and continued to back his candidacy, despite baggage enough to fill the overhead bins of an airliner.
Democrats’ “Believe the women” credo on sexual assault accusations was conveniently defenestrated.
That was until Monday, when yet another former girlfriend went public in Politico and on CNN with a credible accusation of a drunken sexual assault by Mr. Platner in 2021. The difference this time was that the accuser is a like-minded liberal who said she supports his far-left political agenda — but not him.
As such, it could not be dismissed as a partisan or ideological attack.
Even Ms. Warren — once second only to socialist Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, among Mr. Platner’s loudest cheerleaders — said in a statement that Mr. Platner should “step aside as the Democratic nominee and address these serious allegations outside this Senate race.”
In a brief written statement Tuesday, Mr. Sanders concurred: “In light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.”
With Mr. Platner’s polling in free fall, along with his chances of unseating Ms. Collins, Democrats are only now deserting the sinking ship, with several others withdrawing their endorsements.
“Graham Platner needs to immediately withdraw as the Democratic nominee for Senate and allow Maine Democrats the opportunity to choose a new candidate who can defeat Susan Collins,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, both New York Democrats, said in a joint statement Monday.
Despite the walls closing in on him, Mr. Platner continued to insist that the newest allegation is “categorically false,” but added that his campaign is reflecting on “the best path forward,” whatever that means.
“Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins,” he said in a video his campaign posted on X. “Those were the goals we launched this campaign with, and they remain my goals today.”
Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, until now the only prominent Democrat to repudiate Mr. Platner, said flatly that Mr. Platner was “a dead man walking, politically.”
Still, Maine Democrats cannot unilaterally remove Mr. Platner’s name from the November ballot. Under state law, to replace him as their nominee, he has to withdraw from the race by July 13.
If he does, they will huddle behind closed doors to select a replacement. It will be reminiscent of the way the national Democratic Party pooh-bahs in 2024 coronated Vice President Kamala Harris to replace President Biden as their presidential candidate — without any input from the party’s rank-and-file voters.
Deja vu all over again, indeed.
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