Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Washington Secrets. We take a detour to Maine today, in case you want to read even more about Graham Platner. We reckon there is probably good news for the crew that guided his campaign. Democrats are in such a heaving mess that Team Platner will still find takers for their brand of blue-collar-outsider-as-savior and don’t-worry-about-the-vetting model of politics. Plus, why the new Air Force One is not as safe as the old versions …
If you believe Graham Platner’s origin story, he was a regular Joe plucked from obscurity to keep the socialist flame burning in Maine.
Democratic operative Leanne Fan found a video of the oyster farmer online and took it to her fiance, Dan Moraff, along with filings showing that he had donated to Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s (I-VT) presidential campaigns in the past.
They tracked him down by finding his mother at Ironbound, her restaurant, according to the well-told story.
After their first meeting with Platner, the couple, who met campaigning for Sanders in 2020, called Morris Katz, who was building his own reputation as the finder of talent from outside the party establishment — think John Fetterman, the hoodie-wearing senator in Pennsylvania, or Zohran Mamdani, the socialist mayor of New York.
For a while, they were hailed as geniuses. The upstart strategists really did know better than the stale party establishment. Their candidate managed to knock Janet Mills, a two-term governor, out of the Democratic primary.
Moraff was the subject of a New York Times opinion piece initially headlined: “The Democrats need better candidates. This guy knows how to find them.”
Moraff’s template was clear. The piece described how he sought out military veterans with blue-collar jobs and no electoral experience but who had an interest in politics and maybe labor unions.
At last, Democrats had an idea how to find their own versions of Donald Trump, a model for finding populist outsiders who appealed to a whole new type of voter.
Now their project lies in tatters. Their candidate has been forced out of the race by one scandal too many. After the Nazi tattoo, the text messages to other women, the claims of inappropriate behavior, anti-gay slurs posted on Reddit, Platner’s campaign could ultimately not survive an allegation of rape, which he denies.
Or does it? Secrets suspects that the existential angst in the Democratic Party means the brains behind Platner’s rise will find fresh landing spots, simply moving on to another oyster farmer with campaign cash to spend.
Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said it all depended on whether Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was defeated in November.
“If Collins wins, and especially if the failure to beat Collins means it’s a difference between Democrats taking control of the Senate or not, that’s going to be a lot for them to handle in the future,” he said.
But their model was likely to remain in demand, helping them land more work in the future.
“The reality is you’re still going to get these candidates, because those are the kind of candidates that voters want,” he said.
“I mean, these guys didn’t manufacture the need for an anti-establishment candidate in Maine. It exists.”
MEET THE TEAM BEHIND GRAHAM PLATNER
As the allegations against Platner surfaced this week, dozens of prominent Democrats went public with their horror at the failure of Moraff, Fan, and Katz to do a proper job of vetting their candidate.
“These guys were so proud of themselves they did an interview with the WSJ,” posted Neera Tanden, the director of former President Joe Biden’s Domestic Policy Council. She linked to a video of the interview in which Fan giggles when asked how she and Moraff had vetted Platner.
She giggles again when Moraff explains that they had paid a company to check out Platner, and it had returned with details of unsavory Reddit posts.
“Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in vats,” he said. “They want people who are real human beings.”
Up to a point, said Joel Rubin, a State Department official under former President Barack Obama who worked for the 2020 Sanders campaign.
“Maybe next time (if there is one) they’ll recruit someone who actually has a proven track record of public service. Having that experience is a strength, not the weakness they portrayed it to be.”
Trump tag teams Air Force Ones on flight home
Secrets took a look at the new Air Force One last night, after it emerged that Trump had ditched the Qatari jet for his departure from Ankara, Turkey, for one of the older models.
He claimed it was to allow service personnel in the United Kingdom to tour the aircraft, which is serving as a “bridge” to two new, much delayed converted 747s, now expected in 2028 at the earliest.
And yet, no one really believed him. He had, after all, just promised to bomb Iran again, perhaps forgetting that he was making the threat from the soil of a country that has a 300-mile border with the land of the mullahs, no doubt giving Secret Service agents the shivers.
So he took off in the old jet, and then, after landing at an air base in Britain, he simply descended one flight of steps before walking across to the new one and continuing his journey home.
The White House insisted that the Qatari jet was “a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the president and his staff.”
But we spoke to experts who pointed out that its hurried introduction meant it lacked key systems, such as infrared missile countermeasures and communications gear, and had certainly not had time to be hardened against electromagnetic pulses of the sort triggered by nuclear detonations.
You can read the full story here.
Quote of the day
Trump was asked about the allegations against Platner as he flew home from the NATO summit.
“It’s really a question of whether or not you believe the woman,” he told reporters on Air Force One. “A lot of people say big falsehoods.”
Secrets leaves you to insert your own punchline.
Lunchtime reading
Why the House’s Epstein investigation isn’t going away: In a nutshell, because the political incentives are too good to ignore for both parties.
Elon Musk calls historian Tom Holland a ‘cuck’ for wading into ‘woke row’ over casting of black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in The Odyssey: This Daily Mail headline probably needs no further explanation.
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