r/moderatepolitics • u/TheWyldMan • 3d ago

News Article Graham Platner’s Wife Flagged Sexually Explicit Texts to His Senate Campaign

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/graham-platners-wife-flagged-sexually-explicit-texts-to-his-senate-campaign-628ec832?mod=e2tw
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u/DrVader314159 3d ago edited 2d ago

I really can’t give a crap about what Republicans think constitutes ethics after they elected Trump twice.

You want to talk about consent? How about you start with the fact that the president you elected has been held civilly liable for rape, has been accused by at least 28 women of sexual misconduct, brags about walking in on naked contestants at beauty pageants, cheated on his wife with a porn star, has regularly associated with convicted child sex offenders, and has repeatedly opposed releasing files about said convicted child sex offenders?

I’ll consider holding senate candidates to stricter ethical standards after Republicans gain the ability to hold the goddamn president to any standards at all. Platner’s indiscretions don’t rise to the level of a footnote on the resume of Republican politicians.

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u/Pretend-Culture-4138 2d ago

Whataboutisms are incredibly weak defenses. Platner has shown many times he has terrible decision making skills and morals. Actually address that point instead of trying the same old "but what about Trump?!" line that Democrats have been running on for 10+ years.

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u/Ordinary_Team_4214 Humanist 2d ago

This isn’t a very compelling argument. Why would democrats hold themselves to a standard republicans refuse to? Seems pretty pointless.

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u/Pretend-Culture-4138 2d ago

Because we're supposed to be better than Republicans on morals and character. I expect my party to be better.

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u/Ordinary_Team_4214 Humanist 2d ago

Did you say the same thing about Joe Biden per chance?

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u/Pretend-Culture-4138 2d ago

I expected him to be better than Trump, and wish he retired instead of running again.

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u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth 1d ago

Okay well he blew his elderly competitor out of the water to the point they stopped spending and then conceded before the primary. The choice is now him or Collins. And I think it's quite easy to pick a guy who fucked up and wasn't a perfect husband over the woman who's helping us slip further into fascism. If you think some naughty texts are bad I'd bet those guys did far worse in the wars that Susan Collins voted to send our soldiers into.

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u/WavesAndSaves 3d ago

Why are you bringing up Trump? This is about the Maine Senate race, a state that Trump has not won in any of his three Presidential elections. He didn't even win it in the 2016 primaries.

What relevance does Donald Trump have to any of this?

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u/TheWyldMan 3d ago

What relevance does Donald Trump have to any of this?

Also if the Dems are trying to position themselves as anti-Trump, using trump to excuse a downward slip in their own morals and behavior feels a bit hypocritical.

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u/DrVader314159 2d ago edited 2d ago

Bringing up ethics when it comes to Democrats but not Republicans, given the vast difference in the orders of magnitude of ethical violations, is also hypocritical.

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u/pomme17 2d ago

It's not about excusing it. The point is that Democrats spent years trying to uphold a "when they go low, we go high" standard while Republicans repeatedly rallied around a politician who treated those standards as a joke. And Republicans arguably benefited from it electorally.

You can call Democrats hypocrites, sure. But so what? It just doesn't matter anymore. After watching the norm that presidents and public officials should meet some basic standard of conduct get shattered over and over again with few consequences, people just stopped caring. The social contract was broken too many times. Not only was Trump rarely punished politically for it, millions of voters actively rewarded him for it because they saw him as more authentic, more honest, and more "real". At a certain point people stop believing there's any reason to hold one side to standards the other side openly rejects.

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u/PreviousCurrentThing 2d ago

The point is that Democrats spent years trying to uphold a "when they go low, we go high" standard while Republicans repeatedly rallied around a politician who treated those standards as a joke.

Did they, though? I know Michele Obama said that in a speech once, yet Democrats have been been way more vitriolic in the Trump era than I ever remember them being before. I think Republicans are still generally more hostile and vitriolic than Dems, but I wouldn't call the last 10 years the "high road."

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u/Sierren 2d ago

I think this is something Dems often miss. Democrat politicians live in this weird space where they have been far more vitriolic than their civility minded members think they've been, while also not being as vitriolic as their militant members want them to be. They are genuinely caught in the lukewarm position of saying things far too outrageous to be put in the high ground camp, while also shying away from going as far as the militants would want.

You can't call Trump a fascist then not treat him like a fascist. Calling him a fascist means they aren't the party of civility, because valuing civility precludes you from doing that. Not following through means that, if they think he's a fascist like they say, they're weak and ineffectual in the face of him. Dems are caught in this middle zone between these two positions that leaves them with the worst of both worlds.

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u/PreviousCurrentThing 2d ago

That's a really good point, one I don't think I'd ever thought about quite like that.

If you're a militant Dem or to the left of them, mainstream Dem rhetoric is going to be insufficient relative to your perceived danger of Trump and look like the "high road", even if on an objective measure the rhetoric is way more heated than it was in previous decades.

Thanks for the insight. I think that does somewhat reframe how I view this particular "high road" discourse.

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u/dragonmp93 2d ago

Sure, unlike anything else, cheating on your wife is truly the most morally abhorrent thing a human being can do.

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u/whatisthisshit7 2d ago

Spending energy purity testing Dems morality on something like cheating and not any of the other debatable unethical behaviors and beliefs is hilarious.

Like why don’t we spend this energy criticizing Dems in Congress who game the stock market or are donor shills?

(For the record, I don’t think we should be purity testing anyone, but it’s ridiculous that this is where people want to suddenly draw the line)

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u/dragonmp93 2d ago

Because Republicans are the one making a big fuzz about someone cheating on his wife.

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u/WavesAndSaves 2d ago

Who cares what Republicans think? What matters is what Maine voters think.

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u/Interesting_Total_98 2d ago

The criticism is mainly coming from Republicans. A cheating scandal is a lot less interesting to people in this day and age.

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u/dragonmp93 2d ago

You mean the same people that elected Susan "Deeply Concerned" Collins ?

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u/DrVader314159 3d ago

I don’t think one side needs to police themselves at their own expense when the other side won’t even pretend to, especially when one of their top offenders is the president.

All I care about at this point is how Platner will vote on issues that are important to me, should he be elected. Caring about personal ethics at the expense of electoral victory is thus a self-inflicted handicap and a luxury for Democrats that they should do away with till Republicans learn what “both sides” really means.

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u/MrStoneyBaloney 2d ago

He lowers the bar.

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u/thebennubird 2d ago

Come on bro

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u/soboshka 2d ago

If you only hold your candidates responsible if the other side holds their candidates responsible, then you never really cared about ethics. Vote however you please, but lets call a spade a spade. Not to mention Trump isn’t the OG of his behavior, he’s just a follower of Bill.

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u/dragonmp93 2d ago

That goes both ways, you know.

And at least Lewinsky was 22 when it happened.

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u/soboshka 2d ago

And at least Lewinsky was 22 when it happened.

How old were the girls on Little Saint James?

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u/dragonmp93 2d ago

Ask Trump, he was holding the camera.

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u/soboshka 2d ago

He was holding the camera while Bill was doing what exactly?

Im guessing you disapprove of what both have done to children, not just what one has done to children, right?

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u/dragonmp93 2d ago

Yes, both should be thrown on a hole.

But Bill Clinton is not the one currently sitting on a the white house, claiming to have been exonerated and saying this:

“Yeah, I wish her well,” he said. “I’d wish you well. I’d wish a lot of people well. Good luck. Let them prove somebody was guilty.”

“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is,” Trump told reporters at a White House coronavirus briefing.

About Ghislaine Maxwell.

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u/soboshka 2d ago

Im glad we’re on the same page, both have predictably failed to prosecute the other. Maybe the next president will.

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u/DrVader314159 2d ago edited 2d ago

Caring about ethics is a luxury that Id like to have, but at this point Id prefer anyone who’d vote to stop Trump’s nonsense, his dumb wars, his idiotic tariffs, the pointless inflation, the brazen corruption, and his overall degradation of America. You’re right, there are things I place above the personal ethics of the candidate in question.

In any case, Trump is orders of magnitude worse in terms of ethics compared to Bill or any other modern politician I can think of. I don’t remember Bill trying to overthrow an election, calling for riots when he failed, or engaging in anything resembling the open corruption we see every day. If Republicans want to suddenly start caring about ethics, they need to start at the top.

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u/Rugby562 2d ago

So stop acting like y'all are the party of moral superiority lmao.

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u/Ruffles98 2d ago

Americans are suffering from moral fatigue. Trump crossed the line over and over. In 2016 people were outraged. Now it's 2026 and we are desensitized. I don't feel upset over Trump's scandals anymore and I don't feel upset over Platners scandals either.

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u/cttouch 2d ago

Honestly all of this aside should the Democratic Party and all associated with it not want to associate with someone who has shown themselves to be very much of what they so ardently stand against?

Fuck the right, but fuck this piece of shit also.