Maine's primary is Tuesday; fun times

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comrades in arms

David Strom, HotAir:

THE IRONY OF GRAHAM PLATNER’S CAMPAIGN:

Most people don’t know this, but the rise of Graham Platner wasn’t remotely organic, and there is almost nothing real about his origin story or his campaign.

Jim Geraghty did a superb job explaining the process by which a wealthy, mentally unstable guy who was kicked out of an exclusive private school and who bragged about how he went off to war because he wanted to kill people was transformed into a working-class everyman oyster farmer.

Platner was handpicked, groomed, artificially constructed, promoted through a sophisticated public relations campaign, and elevated to superstar status. 

The phrase “it’s an op” – meaning an influence operation – is often, though not always, a marker of paranoia, a tendency towards conspiracy theories, or a belief in forces that are unseen and cannot yet be proven to exist.

Still, from the very start of SS-tattooed Democrat Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate, something seemed odd. The New York Times is not in the habit of writing a largely glowing profile of every long-shot, little-known Democrat who announces a bid for Senate. Platner was the harbormaster of Sullivan, Maine, population 1,246.

Yet the Times wrote its profile of Platner before he officially announced his campaign, in August.

In September, The New Yorker wrote its own 3,400-word profile of Platner, emphasizing how he “devoured books on military history.” (But remember, he insists he never recognized the tattoo on his chest as a symbol of the Nazi SS.) Again, The New Yorker almost never writes long-detailed profiles of little-known Democratic Senate candidates one month after they announce their bid.

Then in October, GQ – not primarily a political magazine, and not one that often spotlights candidates – published its own large spread of Platner with lots of photos.

Then in November, the culinary magazine Bon Appetit – again, not in the habit of covering obscure Senate candidates – wrote another glowing profile, this one entitled, “How Graham Platner Went From Working-Class Oysterman to Maine’s Zohran Mamdani.”

This is Beto O’Rourke-level national coverage, right out of the gate

Strom: “There was nothing organic about this, obviously. It's not like The New York Times has a laser-focus on random oyster farmers in Maine and can predict that one might jump into the Senate race.”

Strom includes this post from The Maine Wire’s editor David Robinson, which I’ve posted on before:

Strom has much, much more — it’s a long article — detailing the Democrat Communist wing’s adoption, even adoration of their Nazi-loving, wife-beating creation, but his concluding sentence sums it up nicely:

Platner is a tool of the Bolsheviks, not an organic rising star. They picked him, groomed him, created an image, and intend to ride him to victory over their party enemies first, and hopefully over Susan Collins.