Look, it makes sense to be concerned that the progressives who are trying to run a coup on the Democrat Party are now openly calling themselves “socialists,” but don’t forget that we have an advantage. They are morally bankrupt nincompoops who have been beaten by the establishment like the rented mules they are. Do progressive Democrats have any self-respect at all? It’s a legitimate question. The Democrat establishment, those ancient, corrupt, sleazeball party hacks, keep humiliating the eager Leftists, and they keep taking it. Their repeating the mantra “Vote blue, no matter who” is like slapping a “Kick Me” sign on their collective collectivist back.
The Leftists are not harmless, but they are also not unstoppable. Sure, the socialists have grabbed a few urban seats in deep blue areas, in each case trading one long- established geriatric communist for a slightly more Palestinian-focused, but much younger, kind of communist, but that is just playing around the margins. That’s all the establishment has allowed them to do. Graham Platner was going to be their coming-out candidate in not-deep blue redoubts. Now, the bosses have shived him, and the poor progressives are just going to have to take it.
I’d be embarrassed for them if I wasn’t so busy laughing at them.
Who are “them” anyway? You need to understand the socialist insurgency in the Democrat Party as less about ideology than about raw power. Right now, the power is held by elderly mandarins like Nancy Pelosi who have been around forever—ancient boomers who kept their jobs and froze out Gen X. They’d like to freeze out the millennials too, but they’re getting old, and when you get old, you get tired, and people get tired of you. So, the establishment is perceived as vulnerable. It’s not enough to start an insurgency saying, “Hey, it’s our turn.” You must have something else, and what they have is socialism. They present that ideology, and themselves as its standard bearers, as the answer to the failures of the Democratic establishment and the frustrations with it that have grown over the decades. If you look at the politics, the old Democrats being traded out in New York City, Los Angeles, and Colorado are not that different from those replacing them. Hell, Karen Bass in Los Angeles went to Cuba to get trained by Castro’s secret police. The establishment is already Left. No, socialism is really a branding tool. They’re all socialists, or rather, communists.
But the older ones don’t want to give up power. They’ve been fighting the insurgents, using every lever and tool at their disposal to frustrate the younger generations’ desire for power of their own. This has been going on for a while. It’s nothing new. And the older generation has been utterly ruthless. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was going to win the nomination in 2016, and the establishment stole it from him and them. They were trying to do something progressive in 2020, but the establishment shoved in Grandpa Badfinger. And when his dementia became undeniable, they didn’t even bother faking a primary and just forced Kamala Harris down the party’s throat while demanding the progressive vote for her.
And the progs took it, like the obedient little worms they ultimately are. It’s sad when you have no personal dignity. It’s mortifying. It’s also kind of funny. The Democrats’ pain should fill you with joy. It’s also a huge opportunity for the GOP. Let the good times roll.
But the GOP is not behind what happened in Maine. It wasn’t Republicans who dropped the last and probably final fire bomb on the political Dresden that is Graham Platner. It was establishment Democrats who fully understood that this guy was electoral poison. They are behind this week’s hit. The Republicans sure didn’t do it—if it was a couple of weeks after July 13, the last day for Democrats to replace their candidate, then it would’ve been them. But it wasn’t. We have always been perfectly happy to have Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) face the guy with a Nazi tattoo who masturbates in outhouses when he’s not on a child exploitation social media site calling his fellow Mainers racists and idiots and himself a communist.
The establishment Democrats, while not geniuses, do possess a certain animal cunning. Even they know that that kind of resume was probably not going to sell in the Maple Syrup State, as the recent polls seemed to confirm. So they moved to get rid of him. Better to substitute somebody else, anybody else, who might actually have a shot at the seat. But that’s establishment thinking. It’s practical and pragmatic, just the thing that progressives are tired of being, because practical and pragmatic always inevitably means they should shut up and do what they’re told by the same party bosses they despise. And for a decade, they’ve done that.
But this time, maybe they’re ready to go down with the oyster boat. And they can tell themselves it’s all a lie. Platner denies that he has raped anyone, and the only real surprise about the revelations against him is that they weren’t much more grotesque and mirror his openly expressed fantasy about the very specific type of sexual dominion he would establish over someone he caught breaking into his house. But, in the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter to them if it’s true or not. He hates Trump sufficiently, so what’s a few sexual assaults among Bumble buddies?
They’re so fixated on power that the moral component never comes into it. The prog base would love to fight it out – hey, to make an omelet you have to rape a few eggs, right? The pols were less ready to go down with the oyster trawler; they faked withdrawing their eager endorsements after this umpteenth revelation finally made them cave. Whether he did it or not, and I know which way I’m betting, is irrelevant. It’s whether there’s plausible deniability. Of course, in their ideology, as applied to everyone else, denial is a confirmation of the accusation's truth.
It’s pointless to talk about the hypocrisy of Democrats demanding that we believe all women, except when what the women expect us to believe is inconvenient. Remember, it’s not hypocrisy unless you actually believe in the principle. Democrats don’t; we learned that under Bill Clinton, and they’ve done nothing to disabuse us of that understanding ever since. If it’s an accusation against a Republican, it’s got to be true, no matter how unsupported or outlandish. Just look at Brett Kavanaugh, convicted by the Left with zero substantial evidence of the who, what, where, when, why, and how. If it’s an accusation against a Democrat, the notary who verified the videotape of the act is a Republican stooge.
And of course, you can always expect the regime media to get in there and help. Platner’s latest alleged victim had already talked to the New York Times. It wasn’t the New York Times that broke this story. It was the New York Times that tried to hand-wave it away to focus on the lesser allegations by another of his victims of merely pushing women around. For a couple of months, Dems have been looking at each other, going “It can’t get any worse, can it?” And you know, all of us knew it was totally going to get worse. But the socialists wanted to roll the dice on the progressive, instead of on the safe, boring, dinosaur establishment candidate, whom he figuratively beat to a pulp in the primary.
And that means the progressives could not care. They could not care about that Totenkopf, or the onanism, or the raping. They only cared about the communism, and Graham Platner was there for them. He was a real progressive, but more importantly, he was a real progressive in one of those flyover-type states where progressives aren’t supposed to have a shot. If they could convince normal Maine voters to elect him to the Senate, then that kind of hard-core left-wing nonsense could be sold almost anywhere in the country. That was the power of Graham Platner. He was proof that the gangrene could spread. But, at the end of the day, he was gangrene. So the establishment had to amputate.
Whatever happens with Graham Platner—by the time you read this, he may have pulled out of the race in disgrace—this insurgency is not over. The progressives are going to learn lessons from this. One is to vet their candidates a little better, you know, by not picking people with Nazi tattoos in the future. But the other lesson is one they should’ve learned long ago. The establishment is serious and ruthless. It will figuratively cut their pinko throats without a second’s hesitation. And in that way, I guess you can’t paint anybody all black.
🛳️ Ahoy, join me on the conservative Gulf of America Cruise that isn’t just a bunch of obsolete losers guzzling Zima on the Lido Deck! Larry O’Connor, Scott Jennings, and I are sailing the Caribbean this November on an epic voyage of discovery and owning the libs. All aboard this Salem/Townhall event! Sign up now!
BIG NEWS! Kurt’s next action-packed conservative novel, “American Warlord,” is out for presale now! Read Kurt’s Kelly Turnbull/People’s Republic series, including the latest "Panama Red," and follow Kurt on X @KurtSchlichter!