Graham Platner to @daveweigel.bsky.social:
"How do you expect to win back men when you go back through somebody’s Reddit history and just pull it all out and say: ‘Oh, my God, this person has no right to ever be in politics?’"
DSCC Chair Gillibrand: “It’s up to the voters of Maine to decide.”
This saga is maddening. This guy HAS to be an op, there’s no other explanation for why the Dems are all circling the wagons to defend him like this. I mean compare it to how much pearl clutching we got from the very same Dems over Mamdani’s statements on Palestine.
I mean even if nobody in a dark room said “let’s run this guy to discredit progressives”, the actions of the Dems in this case compared to others reveal just how truly evil the Democratic party is.
There’s definitely some weird astroturfing of this going on too. I don’t post about American politics on Twitter, but this stuff crept into my timeline despite never posting or searching for info about it. And almost every post was some variation of…
‘I’m a totally legit communist person of colour & if you care about this guy’s nazi tattoo then you’re doing Peter Thiel’s work for him’
…or…
‘This is definitely a hit job by Palantir & the NSA as how could they have possibly found social media posts by him. If you don’t embrace the Nazi Merc the real fascists win!’
I don’t doubt that somewhere in this shitflinging that creepy data analysis tools were used and that posting online is basically opting into a panopticon that will be used against you in the future if it needs to be, but acting like this is the unearthing of some teenager’s porn views decades later, instead of a guy who still has Nazi tattoos and is running partly on the fact he was a volunteer for WarCrimes Inc until recently, is unhinged.
This saga is maddening. This guy HAS to be an op, there’s no other explanation for why the Dems are all circling the wagons to defend him like this. I mean compare it to how much pearl clutching we got from the very same Dems over Mamdani’s statements on Palestine.
I mean even if nobody in a dark room said “let’s run this guy to discredit progressives”, the actions of the Dems in this case compared to others reveal just how truly evil the Democratic party is.
There’s definitely some weird astroturfing of this going on too. I don’t post about American politics on Twitter, but this stuff crept into my timeline despite never posting or searching for info about it. And almost every post was some variation of…
‘I’m a totally legit communist person of colour & if you care about this guy’s nazi tattoo then you’re doing Peter Thiel’s work for him’
…or…
‘This is definitely a hit job by Palantir & the NSA as how could they have possibly found social media posts by him. If you don’t embrace the Nazi Merc the real fascists win!’
I don’t doubt that somewhere in this shitflinging that creepy data analysis tools were used and that posting online is basically opting into a panopticon that will be used against you in the future if it needs to be, but acting like this is the unearthing of some teenager’s porn views decades later, instead of a guy who still has Nazi tattoos and is running partly on the fact he was a volunteer for WarCrimes Inc until recently, is unhinged.