To Beat Susan Collins, Graham Platner Must Confront Misogyny

I was “a bad boyfriend” is a bad talking point that downplays abuse. There's another path.

Portland Press Herald: Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks at a campaign event in Bar Harbor on Friday. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photographer)

Since Platner is exceedingly likely to be the Democratic nominee, winning in November depends on him doing better. Everyone who wants to defeat Collins should ask him to make changes that will help him do that.

Platner’s already gotten that feedback from one of his first endorsers, Ro Khanna.

Susan Collins has done great harm to women through the nominations and policies she supported. I’ve written about that for many years.

But it’s harder to get that message through after Platner and his allies responded poorly to the NYT story about the multiple women Graham Platner dated who had scary, unsettling experiences with him.¹

Platner said that the accounts show him to have been “a bad boyfriend” but all of the negative accounts go beyond that.

Downplaying what he did doesn’t demonstrate that he gets it or would champion societal and policy change helping women. Defensive responses make the situation worse. And telling people not to talk about negative news isn’t going to work.

Platner and his strongest supporters can’t simply erase this issue and he needs the sort of swing voters Susan Collins has relied on to prevail.

I think Platner can chart a different approach which would help him beat Collins and contribute to Democrats’ quest to flip the Senate.

What might that look like?

Platner should show he understands how gendered emotional and physical abuse is harmful and misogynistic.

I came of age during second wave feminism, when a common phrase was “The personal is political.” Feminists were then looking at how everything from rape, household labor, childrearing, and abuse were based in and reinforced gendered power relations.

Abuse doesn’t just mean being physically assaulted.

It also includes things what happened to several others, including the Maine woman who says she told him not to come over but then he ignored her and arrived drunk. This was just five years ago. According to the NY Times, she “declined to elaborate, but said she cut off contact soon after that episode, and found his behavior ‘reckless’ and ‘unsettling.’” This Maine woman also told the reporter that Platner’s Reddit posts on women weren’t surprising because she thinks he doesn’t respect women.

I’ve seen Platner backers say his interactions with that woman wasn’t really abuse because he didn’t put his hands on her, but it is certainly emotional abuse.

If that happened to me or to my daughter or to a friend, it would be very troubling and I would worry for myself or them, and probably for a while afterwards. There is far too much of this sort of thing and far too many women with their own scary stories of big drunk men who don’t respect their personal space and stated wishes.

I would also understand that incident as a manifestation of a system where men exert or try to impose control over women.

Graham Platner should come to understand it that way, too. It’s not just being “a bad boyfriend.”

And he can learn that if he’s not defensive and if he tries to learn. Maybe leaders of women’s groups in Maine can sit with him and help him get it.

Platner should champion societal and policy change for women.

Thus far, Platner’s campaign has been kind of one-note. It’s been focused on countering, or “shucking” the oligarchy.

While the class divide and economic issues are obviously important, progressives have always been interested in more than that. We’ve fought against white supremacy and racism. We’ve also fought for women’s rights.²

Those are both intertwined with class.

Take the great policies of the New Deal, which Platner rightfully praises. But, because the Democratic party’s big legislative majorities relied on the white South, Social Security was designed to keep out a lot of Black workers, specifically agricultural and domestic workers. Then the post-WW II G.I. Bill helped whites build generational wealth but often not Black veterans.³ Race and economics were intertwined.

And, for women, multiple studies show that access to reproductive services, both birth control and abortion, affects women’s ability to thrive economically. If you get pregnant rather young and can’t end an unwanted pregnancy, the woman often can’t get the education or vocational training that would help them build economic futures for themselves. Gender and economics are intertwined.

Abuse and violence terrorizes women and can seriously harm women emotionally and physically and keep them from going to school, working and even living. Statistically, the vast majority of female homicide victims are killed by men they know, most often by current or former husbands or partners.

These kind of women’s issues go beyond women being workers.

One path forward is to talk about policies affecting women who were abused. For instance, Platner could consult with senators who’ve focused on women in the military, find out what the next policy steps should be and endorse them.

If he’s had experiences stopping violence by a guy he knows or supporting a woman friend who was dealing with abuse, talking about that would also be helpful.

Accountability Helps Platner’s Candidacy

No doubt, the Collins campaign will keep harping on whatever bad news there is for Platner.

But, while it’s fine for him to try to refocus the campaign on his core concerns which many, many voters share, he should try a new tack related to the negative stories about him.

Don’t downplay abuse.

Instead, lean into showing you’ve listened and what you’ve learned about these matters.

A lot of voters are moved by Platner’s redemption arc, and his shifts in how he deals with women might be read as another dimension to that growth, but it’s less credible until he demonstrates a greater depth of understanding, combined with a larger policy agenda focused on women’s lives.

Then the contrasts to what Collins has done to harm women would hit home even more as voters hear his commitment to helping all women live in safety, with emotional well-being, economic security and the ability to thrive.

Rep. Ro Khanna, who endorsed Platner, gets it.

“I think he should apologize. I believe what he did was wrong, was misogynistic, was toxic or volatile,” [Khanna] said in a brief interview with NBC News. “I know he’s ashamed of it and I certainly think it would be appropriate to apologize and say how he now understands why it’s important to stand up to a misogynistic culture.”

Doing this also demonstrates a capacity to be accountable, something we haven’t seen from Collins.

Yeah, many Democratic voters are going to stick with Platner no matter what. But he has lost some support from natural allies and could lose more.⁴

Waving this issue away is the wrong move ethically and politically.

Be better, Graham Platner. Show you’ve become a better person with a stronger understanding of abuse and misogyny and that you’re committed to address it.

That will help you win and be a better senator.

1. It’s also not helpful to overlook the accounts of the women who aren’t conservative activists including at least one who says she supports his policies, attacking the Republican he dated who wrote about his abuse in a diary entry ten years ago, or ignoring the other women, or telling people to just shut up and focus on Collins, or amplifying the terrible “bad boyfriend” talking point. Some of these responses have ranged from tacky to Trumpy. Platner’s also hurt himself by saying the day after the sexting story broke that it was not true and “journalistic malpractice” even after his campaign confirmed it and his wife didn’t deny it. (He later admitted it).

2. When Platner’s talked about non-class issues, he’s typically framed them as ways the oligarchy distracts us from their power. That overlooks how racism, xenophobia and misogyny are horrors in their own right as well as how they harm victims and others economically.

3. An excellent and very accessible book on how systemic racism was built into otherwise praiseworthy programs is Ira Katznelson’s “When Affirmative Action Was White.”

4. Here’s two of multiple cases of Platner losing support. Per Politico, “Cheyenne Hunt, founder of Reckoning Action and former Executive Director of Gen Z For Change, who had organized against former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) over allegations of sexual assault, rescinded her endorsement of Platner on Thursday. ‘We have the responsibility to do what is right even when it’s politically inconvenient,’ she said in a video posted on social media. ‘Women cannot be an acceptable sacrifice for the next election.’” As the NY Times noted, “Representative Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania said on CNN on Friday that Mr. Platner had ‘disqualified himself in my eyes” from the Maine Senate race.’”