Yesterday, Politico published a story that surfaced an extremely credible allegation of sexual assault against Graham Platner. The woman featured in the story was willing to go on the record with her name and provided a wealth of corroborating detail, including DMs and testimony from friends who learned about the assault years before Platner ever announced his political ambitions. As of this writing, Platner hasn’t dropped out of the Senate race — but he should. And at this point, anyone still defending him and holding him up as a progressive star should no longer be welcome in any leftwing coalition. Full stop.

There are a few threads from this debacle I want to pull on. The first is the fact that Platner was unconnected with any political movement or organization when he was plucked from obscurity by a political consultant. That’s not to say that being affiliated with the DSA (or even just a union!) would’ve prevented this. But if he’d actually been involved in community or political organizing — which, frankly, needs to be the bare minimum for aspiring candidates going forward — maybe some actual vetting would’ve already taken place! This should be a reminder that having a bunch of small-dollar donors is simply not the same as being deeply involved in a grassroots movement.

A second thread: I view Platner — or at least the rabid support for him among some sectors of the left — as an outcome of the obsessive focus, in the post 2024-election period, on how to reach politically disaffected men. His gruff, angry persona, so apparent in his campaign launch video, feels designed in a lab to appeal to the kind of vaguely discontented (white) man Democrats want to win back from Trump. And I’m all for offering an appealing and politically progressive vision of masculinity; I actually do think it’s an important project. But doing so is meaningless without also addressing the kind of misogyny and patriarchal assumptions that lead men like Platner to engage in sexual violence!