Round-up: Democrats' Nazi problem. Demolition at the White House. Trump's plan to stay president after 2028.

Analysis of the week's events

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The Democrats’ Nazi problem

Graham Platner, a prominent Democratic Senate candidate, is in trouble. And the fight over why tell us a lot about the crisis facing the party right now.

Platner is currently running in the Democratic primary in Maine. The winner of the primary will go on to try to unseat Republican Susan Collins, who has held one of Maine’s Senate seats since 1997.

Collins is extremely hard to beat. She’s the rare Republican who has managed to hang onto a Senate seat in a blue state over a period of time in which partisan polarization has gone haywire. She does it by sticking to her “moderate” brand, strategically opposing the rest of her party just enough to make it work. But in Trump’s second term, with the regime pursuing an ever-more radical agenda, that stance is increasingly hard to maintain.

Democrats are hence eyeing her seat as a potential pick-up opportunity in the midterm elections of next year. And they need it - the Senate map is not looking great for Democrats, mostly because they’ve become uncompetitive in rural, conservative states.

Maine isn’t one of those states, exactly. But a large part of it is. The state’s population is split fairly evenly between a coastal area which is more densely populated and liberal and a vast rural hinterland which leans Trump-y. To beat Collins, a Democrat needs to do as well as usual among the coastal libs and also reduce their losses with the rural white voters of the interior.

Enter Graham Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer who presents as an authentic populist. At a time when the Democratic Party’s brand is in the toilet, he’s very obviously not a part of the party establishment whose mistakes put it there. Democrats were excited about his potential to make inroads among Maine’s conservative voters, potentially providing them with a model that they could replicate in even redder states.

Then the stories started breaking.

The first story was a set of leaked Reddit posts, now deleted, in which Platner expressed a range of opinions that were, let us say, “problematic”. For instance, there was the one in which he called himself a “communist”. Or the one in which he said “all” police are bastards. Or the one in which he downplayed sexual assault in the military. And let’s not forget the one in which he said that white rural Americans - the demographic he is trying to appeal to - “actually are” racist and stupid.

Then came another set of leaked Reddit posts, this time filled with homophobic slurs which I won’t repeat here.

Then came, in a coup de grâce of oppo, the revelation that Platner has - or had until this week; he’s now covered it up - a tattoo resembling a Totenkopf, a Nazi symbol. Platner says he got it while drunk with his platoon in Croatia in 2007 and somehow spent the next nearly 20 years being blissfully unaware of what it means until some “reporters and DC insiders” informed him recently. Only there’s plenty of evidence that he actually knew what it was for a long time, including some coming from his former campaign manager, who says “he knows damn well what it means”.

And this is the problem with running authentic populists. What makes Platner appealing to many is the fact that he has emerged not from the political establishment but from the unpolished wilds. He’s certainly not woke, or inauthentic, or a liberal elite - the things that many voters think Democrats are. But that means he’s also unpredictable and risky.

At the same time, the reaction to all of these revelations has told us something about how different factions of the Democratic Party see its future. Progressives went hard for Platner during his initial emergence onto the political scene, and many - including Bernie Sanders - are sticking by him even after the tattoo revelation.

The progressive argument is basically that authentically left-wing populist candidate are few and far between, that they’re bound to be rough around the edges, and that Democrats need to lean into the risks they bring. After all, Republicans often run candidates with records of horrendous bigotry - and still win.

But Sanders sticking by Platner also shows, in my view, a dangerous myopia. The progressive wing of the party has always cared much less about “identity politics” and “wokeness” than liberals do. They’re certainly onto something when they say that a more populist economic message and a downplaying of identity concerns would help the party with rural white voters.

But a Nazi symbol or homophobic Reddit posts? No thanks. There are clear lines that Democrats ought not to cross amid a rising tide of hatred and bigotry across the political spectrum. It matters that the party does not indulge such casual bigotry, and it is patronizing to rural voters to say that only candidates who do so can win them over. It’s also strategically unwise to run such a compromised candidate in a key Senate race.

The best thing Graham Platner can do now for the future of American democracy is go back to his oyster farm and leave the fight to somebody else. Every Democratic politician with a national platform ought to be encouraging him to do just that.

Demolition at the White House

You’ve probably heard by now that Donald Trump has ordered the East Wing of the White House demolished, to be replaced with an enormous ballroom.

Historically, the East Wing of the White House has been where the Office of the First Lady is housed. It’s where Eleanor Roosevelt worked on civil rights, Michelle Obama tried to improve the health of the nation’s children, and Laura Bush headed a literacy campaign. It’s now going to be a place where fancy balls get thrown.

Trump didn’t ask anyone before he brought in the wrecking ball. He didn’t consult with officials from past administrations on preserving historic artefacts, or citizens’ groups concerned with what is happening to “the People’s House”. He just went ahead and did it. He apparently plans to name the ballroom after himself. It’s hard to think of a better metaphor for the way in which he treats the American state as his own private plaything, existing primarily to provide for his own wealth and whims. It is, to anyone with a sense of decency or the public good, revolting.

It’s also enormously unpopular, with only 24% of Americans agreeing with the plan and 53% disagreeing.

Unfortunately, there are few legal mechanisms through which to stop Trump doing what he is doing. Preservation groups have already hit him with a lawsuit, claiming that he has broken preservation law. That may or may not be true - unfortunately the law wasn’t really designed with a president like Trump in mind - but it’s also too late. The wrecking balls came, and East Wing is already gone.

It’s another scar on the country, one of many which will remain even after Trump is gone.

The plan for Trump 2028

In the most concrete sign yet that Trump will attempt to stay in office after 2028, his former strategist Steve Bannon says he has plans to do just that.