Headline source below, but right here we got Mr. Ramirez:
President Trump got some predictable pushback on his July 4 National Mall speech from an array of [Dd]emocratic [Ss]ocialists. (Choose capitalization as you prefer.) At the WSJ Free Expression newsletter, Matthew Hennessey pushes back on the pushback: When the Red Shoes Fit. (WSJ gifted link)
“As socialism rises in popularity, GOP turns to a new attack: ‘Communists,’ ” was the headline of a triple-bylined Washington Post story published online Sunday. Two of the three writers seem old enough to be off their parents’ health insurance plans, but not by much. The piece credulously repeats the claims of Megan Romer, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, that the average person isn’t moved by all this Donald Trump-led red-baiting.
You can almost see the look of smug satisfaction on Ms. Romer’s face as she tells the hard-boiled trio of WaPo journalists that Republicans should chill with all the “communist” talk because—and this is a real quote—“No one has been gulagged.”
Not yet, I think she means.
In her bio on X.com, Ms. Romer calls herself a “proud member” of the Red Star Caucus, which in turn calls itself the “Marxist-Leninist caucus building revolutionary politics” in the DSA. Earlier this year Ms. Romer gave a speech at the Party of the European Left conference in Brussels, in which she referred to the U.S. military as a “supervillain holding civilization at gunpoint.” She quoted the Chilean Communist Victor Jara and said the DSA is fighting “to end economic sanctions that impact the sovereignty of countries whose governments act independently of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Iran.”
Over across the Salmon Falls River, US Senate candidate (at least as I type this) Graham Platner is not a DSA member, although Google's AI claims his "political rise was strategically engineered and advised by former DSA organizers." Good job, former DSA organizers! As Robby Soave reports at Reason: Graham Platner accused of sexual assault, campaign likely doomed.
Another woman has come forward to accuse Graham Platner, the Democratic Party's Maine Senate hopeful, of serious wrongdoing. Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old Maine woman who used to date Platner, says that he sexually assaulted her in 2021.
Platner has denied the accusation; nevertheless, he is pausing his campaign. He has already lost the backing of two of his most ardent supporters, Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) and leftist commentator Hasan Piker. It seems likely he will drop out by July 13, giving Maine Democrats an opportunity find a new opponent for incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Racicot previously spoke with The New York Times and was mentioned in the June story about Platner's history of toxic relationships. According to The Times, Racicot "declined to elaborate" on the exact nature of his misconduct, and so the story instead focused on a different accuser, Lyndsey Fifield, who was also an ex-girlfriend of Platner. Fifield claimed that he once grabbed her forcefully and then violently trapped her in a bedroom, but did not accuse him of sexual assault.
Is it too late for Kamala Harris to establish Maine residency? She has experience in getting into a race where most Democrats pressured the previous candidate to drop out, after the flaws that were completely obvious to everyone else became impossible to ignore.
An excerpt from Jeffrey Blehar's take in his Carnival of Fools newsletter:
Psychological profiles sometimes require care to properly assemble. The mental path of a guy who proudly sported a Nazi Totenkopf on his chest until last November, when he decided to retcon his downwardly mobile antisocial life to that of a progressive “working class Joe,” is distinctly easier to navigate. Platner is not so much a recognizable human as he is a recognizable hoax, one familiar to all D.C. natives, born from the dreams of frustrated Washington Democratic aspirant activists, a Clayfaced mold upon which the likes of Jon Favreau and the Pod Save America latte class can cast their dreams: “This is what real America is like — a foulmouthed fascist bartender who apes our lingo and attaboys us over free beers!”
Let us not kid ourselves. As horrifying as Graham Platner’s entire failson life story has proven out to be, you are finally hearing about this final damning take — with names and ironclad sourcing, free and clear of “it’s GOP tricksiness!” as an excuse — for one reason only: because that 5:30 p.m. July 13 deadline for ballot replacement is still a week away. The Democratic establishment, knowing no other way to stop Platner and the progressives from squandering this seat, are unloading it all now, in one last mighty attempt to push him out and replace him with a blue-coded functionary.
They might succeed in pushing Platner out. But I doubt they’ll win the Senate race in Maine now, no matter what happens. Mainers weren’t enthusiastic about Governor Janet Mills. Jared Golden has retired from his ME-2 congressional seat and disclaimed all intent of getting into the race. Can Angus King be somehow cloned in time for July 13?
Jim Geraghty is the one who came up with the headline quote above. (It was uttered by Will Smith in I, Robot.) And if anyone could say I Told You So, it's Jim: The Nazi Tattoo Guy Is Exactly Who You Thought He Was.
I’ve written about Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner quite a bit this year. Some might argue I’ve written about him too much, but there was something bizarre about his candidacy, right from the start — a little-known harbormaster in Sullivan, Maine, population 1,246, instantaneously touted by national media like the New York Times as a serious challenger to the sitting chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Even before all the scandals, Platner was greeted by the rest of the media with an astonishing degree of credulity and acclaim. Why did The New Yorker publish a 3,400-word profile of Platner — emphasizing how he “devoured books on military history” — one month after his campaign announcement? Why did the culinary magazine Bon Appetit do a glowing profile of him last October, talking about his oysters? (At least he didn’t tell the magazine how much he loved ovens.)
And then on October 20, we learned about the Nazi tattoo, when Platner discussed it on the Pod Save America podcast and said, in what I am sure he thought was a reassuring tone, “I am not a secret Nazi.”
If you have the time, go back and watch how Platner discusses the tattoo on that podcast, about 20 minutes in. He seems incredulous that he’s getting grief about his tattoo, or that anyone could have suspicions about him because of it. “I went to I went to college, I went to the gym, I did all the things. And at no point in this entire experience of my life did anybody ever once say, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’” Platner exhibits no sense of embarrassment, shame, or mortification over getting the tattoo. It’s just a bad thing that happened, but nothing out of the ordinary — like stubbing your toe.
Bonus excerpt, citing a guy whose bio I'm currently reading:
F. A. Hayek figured this out decades ago, and Lord Acton long before him. Power does not just attract “good” people. Lots of bad people want to be elected to high office, because they want all the things that come with power.
Jim also points out that we shouldn't let Maine Democrat voters off the hook, almost 120,000 of whom voted for Platner in the primary.
Also of note:
-
One more July 4 leftover. Erick Erickson says it so well: The Shining City on the Hill. That's an image passed along from Jesus → John Winthrop → Ronald Reagan → Erick. (And now from Pun Salad → you, I guess.)
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Winthrop said it to a boatload of Puritans before they’d even landed, and here is the part people forget: it wasn’t a boast. It was a warning. The eyes of all people are upon us. If we deal badly, we become a story and a byword through the world. He was telling them that being watched is a burden before it is an honor. Reagan understood that. When he called us the shining city, he wasn’t puffing out his chest. He was telling us that the light we throw off lands on other people, whether we mean it to or not, and we had better mind what kind of light it is.
Now, here is what makes ours the shining city and not just another lamp. Go back and look at the revolutions. Ours in 1776, France in 1789, Russia in 1917, China in 1949. Four revolutions, four attempts to tear down the old order and build something new. And here is the thing I need you to sit with: only one of them ended in liberty. Only one.
The French stormed the Bastille shouting about the rights of man, and within five years, they had the Terror, the guillotine running like a factory, Robespierre feeding his own friends to the blade until the blade came for him too. They wanted to remake mankind, and when mankind wouldn’t cooperate, they started shortening people by a head. The Russians promised bread, peace, and land, and they delivered famine, the Cheka, the Gulag, and a man named Stalin who murdered more of his own people than Hitler managed to murder of anyone. The Chinese promised the workers a paradise and gave them Mao, the Great Leap Forward that starved forty million human beings, and the Cultural Revolution that turned children into informants against their own parents. Terror. Mass murder. Dictatorship. Every single time.
I note that a self-described "leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture" is named Jacobin. Nothing to worry about there!
(As near as I can tell, there are no right-wing mags named Sturmabeilung, but maybe give them time.)
-
I'm so old, I remember when Slate was worth reading. In his Wanderland newsletter, (Dispatch gifted link) Kevin D. Williamson deftly demolishes their attempt to deflect accountability from a lefty favorite:
As some of you will know, on Tuesday NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg wrongly reported that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito had announced his retirement. It was an epic blunder. And, bearing in mind that Steve Hayes has asked me to stop using so much profanity, take a gander at the [impeccably punctuated and baroquely complex chain of expletives deleted] that Slate published in response:
[W]as it an egregious, personal error, akin to Totenberg stealing into Alito’s hotel room and absconding with an internal organ, as it has been widely treated? We don’t think so. Indeed, what has been grievously missed in the melee is that this is not really a press story at all—it is a story about court transparency and hubris. This mistake reveals an institution that has repeatedly and systemically sidestepped public accountability by making itself impossible to cover by human reporters and, in so doing, has made itself vastly harder to understand by the very public it is meant to serve.
That is baloney. There are lots of human reporters who cover the Supreme Court without making up stories about things that did not happen. We employ a few here! But if you have ever read Slate’s Supreme Court coverage, then you will understand why Slate’s writers and editors do not believe that the Supreme Court can be competently covered—they have never seen it done.
But maybe even that is too generous: I believe that somebody can do 20 pull-ups.
There is also a discussion of J.D. Vance's efforts to promote the "Railway Safety Act of 2026", now folded into the "BUILD America 250 Act". It's a spendathon that will probably make rail less safe, but will make some unions happy.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
