Democrats decided they finally found a line in the sand they wouldn’t cross, and surprisingly enough, it brings us back to the MeToo movement.

Graham Platner, the freakishly flawed candidate chosen to unseat comfortably boring Susan Collins in the Maine Senate race, was yet again accused of being too handsy with the women in his life. This time, instead of being rude or pushy, an ex girlfriend claimed he raped her.

Rape became watered down with the MeToo movement, when even a lascivious gaze from your office mate became the basis of a possible sexual assault. But with Platner, the details matched the act.

The ex said he literally forced her to have sex with him while under the influence of some drug, and that is the classic definition of rape.

Democrats were aghast, as they should have been.

But the rest of us were aghast at the fact that it took an actual rape allegation to make them abandon Platner, a ship that was even more doomed than the USS Maine, which exploded in Havana Harbor over a century ago.

From the very beginning, there was something seriously wrong with a man who had seared Nazi symbolism into his skin.

He wasn’t wearing an SS uniform at a Halloween Party. He didn’t shout slogans from his front porch or raise his hand in a Nazi salute. He didn’t fly the swastika from his chimney.

These were things you could peel off, beg forgiveness for, and erase from your timeline.

Platner had someone inject ink into the skin of his upper torso to send an indelible message to anyone unfortunate enough to see his naked chest.

Platner kept that ink on his body for two decades. Platner knew what it meant. So do his supporters.

My point is this should have been the end of his campaign and not one of many land mines strewn across the way.

The people who made excuses for him, like Ro Khanna, Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, not to mention a lot of Mainers, were literally saying that embracing the Nazi culture isn’t a deal breaker for them.

Hitler, in other words, was negotiable.

A lot of Democrats reject that interpretation and immediately pivot to Trump. It’s what I called the “Whatabouts,” people who are cursed with mediocre intellects and reflexively raise the sins of their adversaries in answer to accusations that one of their own is guilty.

Platner raped a woman? Well Trump had to pay another woman millions of dollars because a court said he raped her, which, by the way, is wrong.

Platner cheated on his wife? Well Trump cheated on Ivana with Marla and then on Marla with Melania and a bunch of women in between.

Platner never had a real job, because his only client on that oyster farm is mommy? Well, Trump inherited money from daddy and never had to work a day in his life because it was handed to him on a platter, which, by the way, is easily disproved by a simple Google search.

You know what Trump never did? He never got a Nazi tattoo. He never made excuses for obvious antisemitism. He moved the U.S. Consulate to Jerusalem. And his daughter and grandchildren are Jews.

I’m not here to defend the president against his critics, because I can’t put my heart into it. He is making my life miserable with the things that he and his people are doing to immigrants.

However, we can set that aside for purposes of this column.

What matters is that Trump was never the sort of candidate Platner has proven himself to be, and the Democrats who are pointing fingers, like Sophie Cunningham, at the rest of us have no institutional memory.

They think that being sexual abusers is a bad thing, and indeed it is, but they yawn at suggestions of Jew hatred.

More importantly, they’re not honest. Platner has been telling his party exactly who he is since he first took off his shirt. He never apologized for getting a Nazi tattoo and was embraced by the sort of folk who think that there really is a genocide in Gaza, and that Hamas are freedom fighters.

These people do not belong in office.

So while I am happy that the Democrats finally woke up to the horror in their midst, I think the greater tragedy is that it took them this long to get here.

Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers