This sucks.
There is no way around it.
Politically speaking, for those of us on the left, the loss of a candidate who has led Democrats to hope to finally unseat Susan Collins in Maine and shift the balance of power in the Senate is devastating this late in the game and in this manner. There is no spin that can make this good news, at least not in the political arena.
But from a humanitarian perspective, we should be here today as a movement and as a people. This is where we are there is It has to be if we’re going to win as a civilized society, if we’re going to separate ourselves from the ever-deepening moral quagmire along the way that makes us sad and angry.
We cannot allow power to become the end by which all means are defensible, and Plattner’s campaign, if it went ahead, was in danger of starting our collective slide into the abyss. We could easily start down the steep and greased path to becoming a people who choose the instant gratification of political victory over the more difficult and costly long game of remaining human.
As a growing list of troubling revelations about Plattner surfaced in recent months, a concerning number of people on the left have begun to do exactly what we on the right have spent a decade bemoaning: reduce the intensity, get involved, move the goalposts, and talk about the importance of “winning” above all else.
We know where they lead, how cancer travels through the bloodstream, how ambition consumes people from the inside, how it digs deeper into inhumanity. Over the past ten years, we have watched in disbelief as millions of our family members, friends and neighbors have abandoned every alleged conviction and denied every claimed value in order to engineer the ascension of a utility giant. They have defended their morals, denied their religion and imprisoned their good angels for the presidency. They have gained a world of SCOTUS seats and legislative carte blanche and lost their collective soul, and we rightly condemn it.
On the left, there’s a morbid Dev Vu, as we’ve seen in this movie before: a promising political candidate or sitting legislator voluntarily withdraws or succumbs to public pressure—while the other side gives in, holds their nose, and scores more political victories.
It cannot be what we become, no matter how we want to justify it, no matter how much we aspire to do good with the political capital we chase, no matter what stories we tell about our lofty aspirations.
We cannot say we trust women until it becomes politically costly to trust women.
We can’t crusade against a voting block to cover up a serial predator and then tolerate the sexual sins of candidates who might lead us to the promised land of congressional control.
We cannot claim or hold the moral high ground over rights if we are comfortable ignoring red flags, rejecting lawlessness, or turning a blind eye to brutality.
And while we don’t want to fall into a pure politics that sets an impossible standard for the people we choose to represent us, we can and should have dealbreakers, red lines that we simply refuse to cross because if we don’t, we’ll be just like the people we’re trying to remove from power right now.
Given his past, Graham Plattner should never have been elected in the first place and had such a shameful failure in the vetting process that he should have been disqualified before his campaign even began. Those are topics for another time
But today is a good day to remind us that these moments always feel like losses, but in the most important way, they’re not.
As Democrats try to choose his replacement and defend a victory in Maine, progressives, liberals and moderates who are outraged today need to remember that this is still a victory in high places that transcends politics.
Choosing not to align with obscenity always is.
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MAINEiac4434 on Wikimedia under CC license
