U.S. politics! Platner implosion, where’s McConnell?

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Hey everybody, it's Jamie, and today on the show Alex Shepard, senior editor of the New Republic, is with me. the U.S. midterms are coming up this fall. They could flip control of the House and possibly the Senate or not. And a bunch of pretty seismic and messy things have been happening as we hurdle towards them. We'll get into the implosion of the campaign of progressive Democratic candidate Graham Platner in Maine and how that has laid bare a war in the Democratic Party. And what about the Republicans who are embroiled in internal chaos of their own, including the kind of disappearance of Republican Senator Mitch McClain.

O'Connell. Okay, let's get straight to it. Alex, hey, how's it going? Great to have you. It's great to be back. So let's start with Graham Platner. We actually talked about Graham Platner with you recently when we did an episode with you about how toxic it has become for Democratic politicians to take money from APEC because of how critically many people are viewing Israel right now. Graham Platner was extremely critical of Israel. He was also one of these, or is progressive candidates who have been winning in some of these Democratic primaries and have been taking on the more moderate Democratic establishment.

And he did win. We won last night. Resounding, resounding win from the voters of Maine. If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change. And he was set to take on Republican Susan Collins. this fall in the state of Maine. And Democrats thought that they could flip this.

This is like a very, very important state for them. But now he has been accused of rape and talked to me a little bit about these allegations, which he denies and how they came out this week. Yeah, so, I mean, there had been a story a few weeks ago in which several women who had dated Graham Platner in the past described, you know, toxic and in some cases abusive behavior. Graham Platner confirming last month that he sent sexually explicitly

it text messages to multiple women early on in his marriage. Last week, several ex-girlfriends describing, quote, unsettling behavior to the New York Times. One, claiming he got physical. He denies being violent. These stories that dropped this week were basically follow-ups to that. And in two of them, there were allegations of sexual assault, including Graham Platner, forcing a former partner to have sex with him after she had, one, told him to not come over. And then two, after she had said no repeatedly. I looked at him, and I remember this very specific look in his eyes. And I could smell alcohol, and I was like, this is different.

He is heavily intoxicated. Like, and that blank stare was kind of like a photographic memory that I still have of that night. And his, that was me recognizing what the situation was. Another one where he had removed a condom during sex without consent. I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false. So the first accusation of sexual assault was the tipping point. And because Graham Platner for months had basically been telling his biggest supporters and donors, you know, there's nothing else out there.

And specifically, there are no allegations of sexual assault out there. all of his endorsements dried up. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, who backed Graham Platner through earlier scandals, said he spoke to him today and, quote, recommended that he step aside. More than 30 Democratic senators have called for him to drop out, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand,

who's in charge of electing Democrats to the Senate. So, you know, he was basically cooked. And what we now understand is that he's attempting to kind of negotiate an exit from the race now. That, of course, being this Senate race has also turned toxic over the last 24 hours, where it seemed a couple days ago that Graham Platner was ready to get out. And now it seems like he and his backers are trying to make some demands to kind of help choose whoever succeeds him in this race. Yeah, yeah. I want to come back to the successor narrative in a second.

But just to stay on Graham Platner and these accusations a little bit longer, this is a guy who has weathered some scandals before. right? A tattoo that resembled a skull and crossbones worn by Nazi SS officers, old Reddit posts where he used racist tropes and was pretty insulting towards rural voters. Very relevant to this moment, a post where he essentially blamed sexual assault victims. Here it is in part. How about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so effed up? They wind up having sex with someone. They don't mean to. He apologized for all this stuff, said it was from a dark period in his life. So the skull tattoo, I think, was just a skull and crossbone tattoo that I got in the Marine Corps with a bunch of other Marines. And then, of course, two months after we launched the campaign, it was brought to our attention, the affiliation with something that the Nazis use. So I promptly got it covered up because I have no interest in having something like that on my body. So that's obviously like a... And people, you know, obviously looked past that and you won the primary. But do you think that there were mistakes made here?

Because there is this excitement from like a wing of the Democrats right now when they find these outsiders who can really shake things up, who can sell these more progressive policies like universal health care, stronger unions, et cetera. Graham Platner is a very, very strong communicator. And do you think that people were blinded to some warning signs here? Yeah, absolutely. I think I think part of the issue is that the way. that Graham Platner responded to the first wave of accusation. So he gets in the race in the summer, and then in October, there's this huge landslide of old Reddit posts that are released. Those releases timed to the sort of Democratic Party back challenger, the state's governor,

Janet Mills, entering the race. And Graham Platner responds by saying, as you mentioned, oh, that was a dark time in my life. I've changed. I show that, you know, that people like me can become better and better adjusted people in the world. And that's what I'm here to do. And that was part of his larger narrative, right? And I think one of the reasons why so many Democrats kind of fell for Graham Platner was that, you know, his emergence in the summer of 2025 seemed to really scratch an itch, right? Like the Donald Trump had just won an election, thanks in large part, to an astonishingly strong showing with young men, young men, you know, across race and class, basically. And so I think Graham Platner for a lot of people seemed to answer this. And,

the problem with all of it was that he was lying, right? Some of these accusations are from quite recently. And, you know, I think that there was a tendency here, I think, partly because of the thrill of having, you know, someone who seemed to address democratic vulnerabilities with men and with working class men, even though Graham Platner has never pulled particularly well with working class men, that they could kind of excuse a lot of that stuff. And they just held on for far too long. And after it had become very clear, I think, that he was lying about several things and that this sort of toxic behavior that he had described continued until really quite recently.

You know, as you mentioned, Super PACs and fundraising arms pulled their support. Bernie Sanders said he should resign. I think Elizabeth Warren did too, rising political star. or in Zohran Mamdani, I think something like 34, seven Democrats are saying he should step down right now. Like, do you think we would have seen the same result if this was happening on the other side of the aisle in the Republican Party? I would say probably not. I think in general, what we've seen particularly in post-Trump Republican politics is a, is candidates being rewarded for actually like continuing to press on despite numerous allegations of, of, bad behavior, let's say, to put it mildly. I mean, if you look at, for instance, Ken Paxton in Texas, this is somebody, you know, who has a wheelbarrow full of scandals, you know, maybe even a sort

of bigger, you know, rap sheet than Graham Platner. And, you know, he's the state Senate nominee right now for the Republican Party. And so I think that there is a bit of a difference there. Now, I mean, it's a little tricky here because part of the reason why Democrats are rightly freaking out, aside from the fact that, you know, continuing to back this guy would obviously immediately undermine many of their key criticisms of Donald Trump, who has also been found civilly liable for sexual assault, among other things. He's a thug. And they're trying to make excuses for him.

I mean, he's worse than any human being that's ever run for office probably. Is that, you know, Maine, this is the most important Senate race for them. If they want to retake the Senate, they basically have to win this seat. and Maine, generally speaking, is a plus six, I think, Democratic state, but it's been represented by a Republican, Susan Collins since the 1990s. So this is their best chance to unseat Susan Collins and pick up a seat that they should have, you know, frankly had for several decades now. If you look at the fact that, again, this is, you know, a state with a pretty sizable Democratic majority. And it's a very favorable, you know, election year, election environment nationally. you know, it's very important to not run a candidate who is a liar and who has been credibly accused of sexual assault.

Okay, let's get to the drama over who might succeed him, right? As you alluded to before, we're talking at, what, 2 o'clock Eastern time on Wednesday, and he hasn't resigned yet. I know there's some reporting that he might even do so today, but as you said, there's also a lot of reporting. he's trying to like negotiate who his successor will be and use that leverage with the state Democratic Party in Maine, which I guess appoints his successor. And just why would he want to do that? What do you make of that strategy? Does whoever follow Graham Platner here want his endorsement at this point? I mean, it makes it a huge mess. I think, you know, the sort of steel man argument here, which I think is being exceedingly generous to people that do not deserve it, is that Graham Platner

represents a rebuke of the sort of Democratic Party establishment. Again, this sort of Democratic senatorial campaign committee, the main financial arm that Democrats in the Senate used to elect their own had backed the state's 79-year-old governor, Janet Mills. She was trounced, basically, in every poll. She was losing to Graham Platner by like 35 points. And so what his allies are saying publicly is they understand the heart. beat of Maine and therefore should be involved in this process to replace him because this sort of mainstream state Democrats can't be trusted. Now, I think the other explanation here is that they're just trying to buy time and figure out if they can actually just stay in the race and weather this.

They've been sending out a lot of like polls and other kind of, you know, text based communications to supporters essentially asking them, you know, what's your message for Graham, you know? And that that's, I think, a way of kind of trying to test the larger climate here. So, you know, I think that the signs are that Graham Platner, I think on some level, knows that he should get out of the race, but is not quite willing to make that step yet. And they still have a week, essentially, to file to replace him. One candidate, Troy Jackson, who I believe was the leader of the main state Senate for a long time. He lost the Democratic primary for governor this year. He's already filed. He's one of the candidates that the sort of Graham Platner folks have said that they would find acceptable.

You know, there's a movement here in Maine across this country of people that are fed up. And I think that is going to carry whoever is a nominee to victory over Susan Collins because she doesn't offer any of that. And so that's what I think. I mean, short timeline, obviously money and all that is going to be a challenge. But I definitely think it's doable because the message, the movement is right. And that's what's important. But, you know, it's just a mess. And I think, you know, until he formally says I'm not running, there are,

plenty of reasons for Democrats to be nervous that he will try to just forge ahead, even though, you know, it seems increasingly unlikely based on his scandals and the fact that he will go into November without any endorsements or money, you know, that those would be pretty sizable hurdles to become. Yeah. And just to be clear here, he's the only person that can pull himself out of this race because he's won now. Yeah, he won the primary, which was last month. And again, which that primary happened, you know, when all these scandals were happening. But, you know, he was essentially unopposed. Mills had suspended her campaign weeks earlier.

Personally, from CBC podcasts, allows you to get lost in someone else's life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, like mine in Run Hide Repeat, to learning to laugh in the face of dementia in, let's not be kidding. Each season of personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story or season at a time. This is what it sounds like to be human. Find personally wherever you get your podcasts. This scandal has really kind of laid bare this division within the Democratic Party between the progressive wing and the more establishment wing. I mean, the main Democratic Party, who you said back that, you know,

establishment candidate, the elderly governor, right? You know, they're pushing back and saying that like, platinum, like these guys have no role in who the next nominee would be. Like, how bad could this fight between these two wings get? And then how bad could that be for the party writ large? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the places, I think when we talked about APEC, the last time we talked a lot about the race in Michigan, which is our sort of other big proxy

battle there. You have an establishment back candidate, Haley Stevens. She's running against a progressive, you know, Bernie Sanders-aligned young doctor, Abdul El-Sayed. And that race, I think, has become, you know, particularly vicious as the primary Drusclos from Michigan. God help us does not go to the polls until I think August 4th. But I think that what we're seeing right now is a shift in the mood of the electorate. I think that there's a, there's a tendency, especially among establishment-aligned Dems, to act as though what they're facing as a kind of like, you know, astroturfed, bad faith, sort of groups, you know, working in concert to undermine the establishment. But the reason why so many of these outsider candidates are winning is because there's just

real anger at the grassroots at the party's leadership, especially like the fact that many Democratic voters that I have spoken to over the last year and a half see the party. is having been asleep at the wheel at the start of the sort of second Trump term. They're just furious at Chuck Schumer. They're furious at Hakeem Jeffries. And so candidates that come along and are not backed by the sort of traditional party or have not come up as, you know, Haley Stevens is a sitting member of Congress right now. You know, outsider candidates, I think, are just appealing to a lot of people right now

because of that kind of just, I think, sense of frustration that's permeating. Do you see any attempts on the part of the Democratic Party establishment to try and address any of those concerns the voters seem to have as we kind of hurdle towards the midterms? Or do you see them kind of taking this approach of like sitting back and basically laying low with the strategy of like let Trump do the work to sink himself? Like are they are they trying to mount a coherent argument? for why people should vote for the Democrats in the fall? I don't think that they are particularly. I mean, one could argue that there's a certain, like, and this has kind of been true since Trump took office again, that essentially the Democratic establishment strategy has been

to just sit back and basically try to make as little fuss as possible and just ride this wave of outrage at Trump. And I think one could, I think, kind of reasonably argue that that has worked, essentially that voters are just so frustrated with this administration that even though the Democratic brand is still toxic and that, you know, a lot of voters, not Democratic voters, but a lot of voters, you know, still don't like to abide in and still think that the party was up to something nefarious by kind of propping them up for so long, that they have, they're still, you know, polling at the generic ballot, something like, you know, seven points ahead of Republicans,

which is pretty significant. You know, centrist Democrats are still doing reasonably well, right? Like, you know, there have been blips here in New York City, in Colorado, maybe in Michigan. For the most part, the party's establishment is still, you know, winning the elections that it's supposed to win. But I think that, you know, one of the stories that is fascinating to me, especially as we draw closer, again, God help us to the 2028 presidential primary is that all of the kind of intellectual energy and messaging forces on the side of these kind of insurgent or more progressive Democrats. And, you know, by, I think, sort of backing away. the sort of party's establishment and parties mainstream has ceded the kind of narrative to the left. And I think there's some panic, I think, in some circles right now, especially as more radical or progressive candidates have won a couple of elections. And I think there's a slow realization

that that's the case. But I think that right now, you know, even somebody like Rahm Emanuel, the former Obama chief of staff, who's clearly going to run for president announced earlier this week that he's going to give a speech about how the U.S. should stop giving military aid to Israel. You know, I mean, that, that to me is a sign not just of how, as we've discussed before, the Democratic Party's base has shifted on Israel. It's a sign of just how much the sort of progressives now control the sort of narrative. They have all of the momentum in terms of agenda setting.

Okay, so let's talk about the Republicans and where they are at the moment. As we've been talking about, they are facing pretty heavy headwinds here. Trump's polling numbers are very bad. You know, as you were mentioning before, the Democrats are just generally pulling ahead of the Republicans. There's lots of voter disengagement within the Republican Party. You know, they're losing young men who really kind of propelled the Trump administration to office. But they also have structural advantages, right? This recent Supreme Court ruling that found political parties can coordinate a lot more with campaigns.

They struck down limits on how much a party could spend on a candidate. And as I understand it, Republicans have more cash on hand than the Dems. So that's one example. Like just what kind of results are being predicted? at the moment, I mean, could they lose this trifecta that they have? How likely is that? Yeah. So, I mean, the Democratic brand right now is toxic, but even in spite of that, I think the mood has soured so much against this administration that what we're looking at, especially in the House is a wave election that would be on par with something maybe that we haven't seen since 2006. House and Senate Republicans are panicking. I think one of the reasons why there's so much focus on Graham Platner is just that that has been. become a kind of gift to Republicans that, you know, that should be a seat that Democrats should

be able to pick up. But, you know, it seems at least for now up for grabs. But even with the sort of advantages that they've been given via the Supreme Court, which is basically, you know, undone the Voting Rights Act, which is allowed, you know, heavy, heavy, heavy gerrymandering, particularly in southern states, which vote Republican and has lifted caps on, you know, the few remaining caps on campaign spending that that were still in place. There weren't many. Yeah, there weren't many. You know, I think there was a lot of panic about those decisions when they came down earlier

this year, the spending decision quite recently. But, you know, in the short term, the environment is so unfavorable to Republicans. I don't think that Democrats have a ton to worry about, aside from the Graham Platner fiasco that we've been talking about. The bigger issue for Democrats is that they're going to be running in the, most advantageous electoral environment that they have had since probably 2006. And those don't come around very often. And we're going to have a census again in 2030, right? We're going to redraw the maps. And where are the seats going to go? They're going to go to Florida. They're going to go to

Texas. Where are they coming from? New York and California. So I think the longer term outlook for the Democrats is incredibly, incredibly bleak, especially when you factor in the fact that, you know, the Supreme Court should have a Republican majority, you know, until the 25th. 50s at the very least, if nothing changes. And, you know, I think that the larger outlook for Democrats is apocalyptic. But in the near term, I think they should, you know, even in a heavily gerrymandered environment, you know, easily be able to retake the House and, you know, whether they get 51 seats in the Senate is anyone's guess. That was a really interesting long view from you. But just the Senate, regardless,

is going to be close, right? Which I think is a good segue. to Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Senator, who is missing, kind of, I guess. What is going on here? Yeah, so Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader, currently the senior senator for Kentucky, had a heart attack, I believe, three weeks ago, and no one has seen or heard from him since, although there were reports yesterday that he had had a series of conversations with, you know, people in politics essentially, you know, I think the Senate majority whip and Scott Jennings, CNN pundit. Now, I think there were some questions about the veracity of those reports, but the issue here is, you know, that they're all concerned, they're all Republicans.

They're all Republicans and everyone was just like, yes, I had a great conversation with Mitch Mitch McConnell. And we talked about all of the exact same things. We talked for about 17 minutes. He talked a lot about the situation with Iran, talked a little bit about Ukraine and what's going on in Europe. I told him I'd been to the Teddy Roosevelt Library. We talked a little bit about the history of the vice presidency and how Roosevelt had transformed that in the modern presidency, a little history of the Senate. I mean, it was a wide-ranging conversation.

I talked to them all. And, you know, I think Kentucky should not be a pickup for Democrats, but, you know, one of the reasons why there's so much focus on this race is that Kentucky is one of, I think, only four states that sort of mandates special elections within a certain time frame. if there's a vacancy. So if Mitch McConnell were to resign for health reasons or if you were to pass away, then it would automatically trigger a special election. And for Republicans, that could be a nightmare. I mean, the speculation out there is absolutely wild. I'm not sure if they have

confirmed that it was a heart attack, but I guess there was this 911 call where reportedly an unconscious person was mentioned and CPR was mentioned and cardiac arrest was mentioned. And then also there's like just wild speculation coming from the Magaside as well, like Laura Lumer and those guys saying that like sources are telling them and he is, he's brain dead. It's getting really crazy. Like Andy Beshear, that the governor of Kentucky is is basically saying in a letter that he needs to update constituents on the state of his health. You know, you mentioned Scott Jennings, the conservative commentator. Like even on CNN, the anchors like coming back at Scott Jennings being like, do you think he'd be willing to call into the show? Could we get him on the phone now?

that election would happen sometimes in September. Now, the insane thing about that was that it would only be to finish out his term. So, you know, if you were elected in September, you would just serve until the end of the year. However, one of the things that is interesting about it is that, you know, you say, okay, well, there are already two candidates for this race. Like, they would probably run in a special election for the seat that they're already running for. But an independent candidate could also run. So one of the reasons why there's so much interest in this is Thomas Massie, the libertarian and sort of Trump Thorne inside who lost his primary earlier this spring, could enter that race as a spoiler candidate. And, you know, it's possible that Thomas Massie could win.

I think that that's pretty unlikely. But if you were to enter, it would make the chance of Charles Cory Booker, the Democrat in that race, increased exponentially because Thomas Massie would essentially be pulling away, you know, a certain level of Republican voters. And, you know, it's a remarkable story. And I think it's one that also points to just how bad the environment is for Republicans, right? Like, they're worried about a special election in Kentucky. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. And I guess just to be clear for people listening, like, if Cory Booker, the Democrat won in the special election, then he would have more time in office to familiarize himself with voters and, you know, be the incumbent, quote unquote, so that when we get to the midterms in the fall,

the idea would be like maybe that would better his chances, right? Right? Fair? I mean, you have a huge, yeah, you have a huge incumbent advantage, right? And I think even if you're just an incumbent for like 50 days. I think it would still help. And I mean, also it would help because you've beaten this guy already, right? Like you're, you've already shown that you can do it. And I think that that would make a difference. Right. People don't like voting for losers. You know, it's one of the reasons why Trump is so insistent that he won the 2020 election. Yeah. It's, I think it's really hard for people to hold their nose and vote a second time for somebody that they know is already lost. Excellent point.

We talked earlier about the divisions in the Democratic Party. It's also a mess in the Republican Party. I just couldn't help notice the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson completely lost control of Congress the other week. Because a member of his own party, he basically had to send people home early after this showdown over the Save America Act, which means all voters must show voter ID. All voters must provide a little thing called proof of citizenship.

The Trump really wanted to pass and just explained to me maybe very briefly what happened and how much of our problem is this disunity for the Republican Party heading into the midterms. Yeah, so I mean basically what happened was that Johnson trying to move through it, an annual defense bill, basically, just to kind of pro forma, rubber stamp kind of thing. And far-right Republicans, as they are want to do, basically rose up and said, we're not going to do this and that we don't want to do anything until this act, the Save Act, this kind of insane and probably unconstitutional voting bill that would essentially give the federal government sweeping powers over elections that it does not have because our elections are federalized. The states

run them. You know, that Trump is basically saying, I don't want to do anything until this gets done. It's the most important thing. And now we're seeing, you know, far right or MAGA aligned Republicans saying, you know, unless we do exactly what the president says and take up this, you know, awful voting bill, like we're not going to give the military any money, which is kind of crazy. But I think what it points to is that, you know, I think Johnson, as Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is surprised a lot of people, myself very much included by

how long he's been able to hold on and what is probably the worst job in this country. But for a long time, he was largely able to do that by giving the sort of far right what it wanted and essentially daring moderates to stop him, right? And he made a correct bet most of the time that he could hold on because the moderates would go along with the far right because they didn't want to be the kind of stick in the mud or didn't want to be the people that were stopping, for instance, defense bills from getting signed. But what we're seeing now, I think it's just a total breakdown of that. And, you know, the House has just been a shambles for, you know, most of Trump's second term, partly for this reason. And, you know,

I think the other reason is that, you know, the SAVE Act, this voting bill is this kind of central piece of the president's legislative agenda. But it's DOA in the Senate. It just is never going to pass. Johnson knows it. We have to press for election integrity measures. That's why we've made it a top priority. It has been stuck in the Senate. And here's why. Because no Democrat in the House or Senate will vote for the Save America Act.

Those two things I just told you, they vote against that every single time. And they will. Why? You ask that, that's a rhetorical question. You should go ask them the actual question. Why are you against? And Johnson knows that the fight to get it to pass in the House would be bruising. It might cost him his speakership.

So, you know, he's just in a really unendent. viewable position. And I think, you know, for Republicans, too, I think, you know, for some Republicans, they are thinking about their long-term prospects. Like, they don't want to be seen as having, you know, stalled the president's, you know, most important bill because they're worried about getting primary on the right. But, you know, there's only 40 seats in the House that are really, really up for grabs. So for most Republicans, you know, they don't really have to worry about getting anything done. They can just kind of go on these, you know, crusades that, you know, will get them Instagram followers and Fox News appearances, but don't get anything done. And I think Johnson is,

you know, he was once able to kind of wrangle those people. And now we're just seeing it. He's not able to do that at all. Right. Alex, this is fun. Thank you very much. It's always great to talk to you. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

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