cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/48408372
June 7, 2026
In the wake of the Times reporting, Platner “raised more money than on any day since Gov. Mills’ withdrawal from the race,” according to his campaign. Specifically, as of 7:00 pm ET Friday, the 41-year-old oyster farmer and combat veteran had collected “over $200,000, from over 5,000 donors, with an average contribution of $40.”
Phil Proschko, who served with Platner in the Marines and also got the symbol tattooed on him, said in a brief interview with Zeteo on Friday: “No, we did not purposely get hateful fucking shit because we’re racist people… We got matching tattoos because we were in our 20s, drunk in Croatia, and that’s it. That’s all that fucking happened.”
Good. I’m so sick of Dems killing “good” in pursuit of “perfect”.
We’re all flawed humans trying to do our best.
If you want a smooth-groined candidate with no observable past, you’ll only ever get people have been manicuring themselves for subterfuge their entire lives.
I think it’s reductive to suggest the alternative to someone with the number of issues Platner has would be smooth groined. Plenty of Dems with better policy positions (imo) haven’t victim blamed SA survivors, kept supporting our military activities despite admitting to being personally aware of people targeting civilians for fun and leveling cities, or had a Nazi tattoo.
My biggest issue sticking point is his stance on the military, but maybe that is less bothersome to others. I’m not saying people shouldn’t vote for him, but there’s plenty of people in the US that are on the left and don’t have that kind of history.
Yeah well. That person equals Buittegeig and no one will fucking vote for their arses because they’re an utter fraud and it’s fucking obvious.
There’s a point being made about how real people with real fucking lives get excluded from being able to engage in politics because their lives didn’t go the right way to fit into a consultants wet dream of what a candidate should look like.
It’s a weird and interesting form of what-about-ism I’m happy to engage with because I do find it uniquely interesting.
As an aside. I think Maine has a firm of state wide mental disorder that make our and largely all of ours conversation utterly irrelevant, but fine to have at it regardless. I do think Maine has state wide oppositional defiance disorder and they just mostly do the thing that the majority of people are telling them not to do.
Like if you want some one with no sexual past your basically saying only the worst neoliberals are allowed to run for office. So anyone doing the thing right now, this will be the statute I evaluate against
Yea, not a fan of Buittegeig either for the reason you stated and also some of his policy positions. For what it’s worth, though AOC, Bernie, and Zohran aren’t perfect, I think they serve as a pretty good counterpoint.
I truly cannot stress enough that I don’t care about his philandering or personal life, just his policy positions or his personal beliefs that would affect those positions. I don’t really think it’s whataboutism. I don’t think we should be increasing military benefits until we address the actual problem with the military. He admits he watched people murder civilians aboard for fun and he did nothing about it. I don’t think a morally upstanding person can do that and still sign up to support the US military. I don’t think that’s a particularly high bar to clear, and morality is a pretty good predictor of politics in my experience. I’m not saying Mainers need to abstain or that they have a better option, just that I think we can do better. I’d like to see us commit to doing better, but obviously my idea of better differs from others because the left is not of one mind.
