Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
The news of the days – or, rather, yesterday – is that the Democratic candidate running for the Senate from Maine named Graham Platner is alleged, again, to be a rapist.
Duty demands that I mention he denies the accusation.
In fact, he denies lots of things. He had a Nazi tattoo on his chest for some 19 years, but denies knowing that it was a Nazi tattoo. Notably, his friends deny his denial.
Before he was alleged to be a rapist, and during the time he sported a Nazi tattoo that he didn’t know was one unless you believe his friends, he pretended to be an oyster farmer. Or oyster fisherman. Or whatever you do to catch an oyster.
One year, he made about $5,000 as an oyster whatever. It was a lousy living but a good campaign story.
Back to the rape allegations, of which there are several, none of which is a good campaign story. This time, there’s a tendency on the left to believe the woman because she’s a Democrat. You should always believe the woman, if she’s a Democrat.
And so, the Democrat establishment have, finally, called on Platner to quit the race.
His Republican opponent, Susan Collins, makes the heads spin of Republicans because she is not in the tank for the President, but she makes the heads spin of Democrats because she allegedly is.
In any event, Senator Collins lacks even a decent taint of corruption over her several millennia in the Senate, unless one of those two head-spinning traits constitutes corruption. She has never been accused of raping anyone.
Platner has been urged to quit by even king-maker socialist Bernie Sanders. When a socialist loses Bernie, he’s lost everyone.
But Platner still won’t quit. Why not?
Here’s my theory. Like all good socialists, he wants some money. Rather, he needs some. So, he’s busy negotiating with the Democratic establishment for a Big Payday. It’ll beat oyster farming/fishing/whatevering for $5,000 a year.
If he stays another couple of weeks, the law of Maine will prevent the Democrats from replacing him with a new candidate.
In other words, he holds all the cards, if not the oysters. He has both the need for money and the ability to get it. It’s a great blend of socialism and capitalism. Tell them you plan to stay, Platner!
Over the last year and a half, the Democrats have gnashed their teeth about why they lost in 2024 – against Donald Trump, the candidate they hate so much they imagine that everyone else does, too.
Was it because the Democrats advocated transsexual boys in the girls’ bathrooms? Was it because they favored abandoning the southern border while simultaneously lying to us that it was secure? Was it because they nominated a nitwit candidate without a nomination convention? Was it because the sitting Democrat President was demonstrably incompetent, and they lied to us about that, too?
The consensus was that they lost for all of those reasons. If they want to turn around their electoral misfortunes, it was said, some moderation was in order on all of those things.
Yet, here we are. Nearly two years later, the Democrats are not busy getting the transsexual boys out of the girls’ bathrooms. They have no time to secure the southern border. They threaten to nominate the same nitwit candidate (presumably via a bona fide nomination convention this time).
The incontinent sitting Democratic President has graduated from sitting to lying. Though he is persona non grata, he’s not entirely out of the limelight and onto the beach; his wife has some books to sell. Perhaps those books will be in the husband’s “library” which will be an added wing to Mordor, the library that Obama built. (Who would have thought that the south side of Chicago could be worse?)
All of this has nothing to do with the Democrats’ 2024 loss. Nope. Instead of moderating their crazy stances, the Democrats are hard at work in perfecting their pitch to be the world’s greatest at something alright – at being socialist antisemites.
They’ve elected an admitted socialist for Mayor of America’s greatest city. They nominated his apostles for the U.S. House of Representatives. Other self-proclaimed socialists have come out of the worm-infested woodwork nationwide and are running for office on the Democrat side. They don’t even hide their socialism anymore; they boast of it.
And they boast of their hatred for the Jews.
One of the nominated socialists brags that the Jews had it coming on Oct 7. She refuses even to condemn the 9/11 attacks on New York City. This is a candidate who will represent, in a manner of speaking, that very same New York City in the halls of Congress.
The Jewish angle is interesting. Antisemitism, socialism and Zionism have a complicated history. Let’s not forget that the architects of the Holocaust went by the name of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nor that the term “fascism” was from the party of Benito Mussolini, a former labor leader before he brought Italy low. Nor that the Soviet Union blatantly and patently discriminated against the Jews.
And so, the Democrats have re-discovered a winning formula. Don’t side on the 80 side of 80/20 issues like transsexual boys in the girls’ bathrooms and illegal immigration of people who want to make a living by cleaning American’s toilets or putting their drywall up. Too many of those issues involve too few people. And to the extent they involve a lot of people, well, who are you going to get to put up your drywall?
The way to get elected is instead to own two timeless issues that almost everyone likes. One, is that really successful people have too much money compared to . . . um, me for example.
There are lots of reasons for that disparate rate of money-getting, including the fact that people who get money tend to be more adept at getting it. But let’s settle on one fact: luck. The good luck of those successful people and the bad luck of . . . um, me for example.
Luck is by definition not fair. So, let’s take some of that unfairly-gotten money from the people who unfairly got it, and give it to the people who unfairly didn’t . . . like, um . . . me!
The other timeless issue for getting elected is to rely on people’s prejudices and bigotry. This is tricky, because it’s quite fashionable these days to be a racial minority. A politician cannot rely on people’s inherent bigotry if that bigotry is against what is fashionable.
It would be better to find a bigotry that is not racial per se, and offends only a small minority of the minorities – say about 2% or less. It would be nice if that minority has always been one step from being ostracized, anyway. It would also be helpful if that minority were to have a history, at least recently, of being financially successful. Such a history would dovetail nicely with the socialism.
What better than antisemitism? It might just work. After all, it has before.
Forget about moderation. As the person known for christening New York City “Hymietown,” let’s imagine that the late, great civil rights activist, Jesse Jackson, were still alive. He might say, rhymingly and rhythmically, who needs to moder-ATE if you have Jew-HATE?