Yes, but He's OUR Adulterer is not the Flex You Think It Is
A picture is worth a thousand words.
A tweet is worth a thousand more. Especially when it perfectly encompasses the Far Left.
With last week's revelations regarding Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner's infidelity and the fact that this information was known throughout his vetting process, we proceeded to have multiple hot takes from those across the political spectrum. While Republicans were naturally having a field day with the latest Platner scandal, we also got to see how Platner's most vocal supporters reacted to the news that the recently married Platner was sexting twelve different women on a dating application known as Kik shortly after publicly pronouncing his formal vows in 2024. Platner's wife came to his defense and released a video on Instagram in which she claimed the latest scandal was a distraction and was intended to hurt her husband's campaign. So with Platner's key political supporters Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Tim Walz remaining silent, there had to be someone in Democratic circles willing to step up and support the far left's golden child.
Enter none other than podbro Jon Favreau.
On Saturday, Favreau published the tweet above, which quickly went viral for all the wrong reasons. It primarily caught fire because it exemplified how the Far Left will ignore everything to get a mediocre White man elected to office. Favreau's tweet and subsequent subtweets attempted to whitewash Platner's latest scandal by implying that it's more important what policies Platner believes in rather than how he conducts himself in his personal life. This hot take was something to behold, and it led to some fiery dialogue between Favreau and former Biden adviser Neera Tanden, with Tanden questioning why Favreau wasn't more concerned about how and why Platner's campaign willingly brushed the infidelity issue aside when they knew it would be weaponized by Republicans down the road. Favreau kept returning to his main talking point that it was up to the voters of Maine to decide and conveniently refused to answer Tanden's question. Because if Favreau genuinely answered the question, he would have to admit that the Far Left doesn't actually care about a candidate's values as long as they share a certain set of policy goals.
And that's the part that Favreau, his podbros, and everyone from Our Revolution and DSA don't want to say aloud. But it's true: they don't care about their candidate's personal lives as long as they're for Medicare for All and taxing billionaires. They're so desperate for a win that they are willingly hitching their wagon to a perverted, Third Reich adjacent adulterer simply because he's running a populist campaign. When someone like Favreau attempts to say that adultery is a "distraction" from the real issues, what he's saying is that he wants a Trump of the Left. He wants someone who can accomplish the Far Left's policy goals regardless of what kind of human being they are. He wants a political outsider rather than someone who has dared to study and work in politics throughout their entire professional lives. Favreau and his ilk have come to believe that it no longer matters what a person does in their personal life as long as they commit to enacting the Far Left's populist agenda while in office. For them, there is nothing that will cause them to stop supporting a candidate like Graham Platner.
Which is why people like Tanden are pushing back. Because we "normie Dems" still care about our candidate's values. The Democrats are a big-tent party, but that big tent should never include perverts, antisemites, and adulterers, and especially not a single individual who is all three. It's not that Graham Platner isn't ready for prime time; it's that to this day, we still can't be sure he's an actual Democrat. His now-deleted social media posts had views all over the place, from stereotypes about Black people to support for the Second Amendment to criticism of Donald Trump. While he has stressed his blue-collar background, he also attended a $75,000/year prep school in Connecticut. His feigning ignorance about his Nazi tattoo and January interview with neo-Nazi podcaster Nate Cornacchia demonstrate a severe lack of judgment as well as lingering concerns about his antisemitism. Even his latest adultery scandal makes him seem more Republican than Democrat. The absolute hubris of someone going to marriage counseling for sexting while maintaining an active profile on the site he used to sext a dozen women reeks of the kind of destructive personality traits we so often see among Republican men. Combined with the fact that it's Platner's wife and not him addressing the latest controversy, it's hard to say there is now any tangible difference between Platner and his Republican counterparts.
But none of that matters to the Jon Favreaus of the Far Left. They're pot-committed with Platner. We've all seen Bernie Sanders' horrific track record of endorsing Democratic trash like Tulsi Gabbard, Nina Turner, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman. Elizabeth Warren has been slammed for raising concerns about Pete Hegseth's tattoos while conveniently ignoring those of Platner. The Far Left's fledgling movement needs wins, and they're so desperate for one that they'll hang on to someone like Platner up until the very end. When someone like Jon Favreau says, "It's up to the voters of Maine," what he's really doing is absolving himself of all responsibility for hoisting his own terrible candidate on the voters of the state. Platner should have been buried when the Nazi tattoo scandal broke in the fall, but mediocre White men like Favreau and Bernie Sanders have the hardest time admitting they are wrong. When Neera Tanden asked if there was anything that would cause Favreau to withdraw his support for Platner, she knew the answer before she even posed the question.
That's what separates us normie Dems from the Jon Favreaus of the Far Left. We actually vet our candidates. And when a troubling candidate does somehow manage to break through, we immediately disavow them, like we did with Melinda Galindo in Texas. Because, unlike the Far Left, we're not desperate for wins. We have standards for our party. Perversion, antisemitism, and adultery are all deal breakers. They're especially deal breakers for the same individual. True Democrats won't compromise our values to eke out a win, even if that win would finally rid the Senate of the perpetually concerned Susan Collins. That's what distances us from the Jon Favreaus of the world and from the Republican Party as a whole. We still believe the Democratic Party should have a basic standard of decency for its members. As we saw on Saturday, Jon Favreau completely disagrees. He believes a candidate's character no longer matters as long as the candidate in question can win the race. It is a view that is completely consistent with the modern Republican Party.
And we'll be damned if we let that same view take over the Democrats.