The same Democratic lawmakers who once demanded that men "just shut up and step up" over sexual misconduct allegations now have remarkably little to say about their own party's Senate candidate in Maine, and the silence tells you everything about what the left's principles are actually worth when a Senate majority hangs in the balance.
Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate trying to unseat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, faces allegations of physical abuse against former girlfriends, sexting other women while married, and, per a New York Times report, locking a former girlfriend in a bedroom. Platner has denied abusing any of his exes and called the allegations "politically motivated."
But the party's loudest voices on sexual misconduct? They've gone remarkably, conveniently mute. And behind the scenes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is scrambling not to address the allegations, but to manage the political damage before Democrats lose their shot at winning the chamber this fall.
The New York Post pressed several prominent Democratic women for their reactions to the Platner allegations. The responses ranged from evasive to absurd.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described survivor of sexual assault who has never been shy about condemning misconduct when the accused sits on the other side of the aisle, offered this:
"I have to read up on this latest reporting. I don't want to speak until I've dug into what's out there."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, asked whether party leaders should referee the situation, brushed the question aside. "Referee what? That's up to the people of Maine," Warren said, this just days after she joined a meeting of party elders who grilled Platner about whether any further revelations might surface. Warren evidently had enough interest to attend the closed-door session, but not enough to share a public view.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin kept it short: "I'm leaving Maine up to Mainers, I'm not weighing in." Baldwin has pursued answers about what she has described as "decades long" sexual assault within the U.S. Coast Guard. Apparently the principle stops at the party line.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire came closest to a statement of principle, then immediately retreated from it. "I think inappropriate sexual behavior is wrong, no matter who does it, but it's up to the voters to decide," Shaheen said.
Perhaps no response captures the double standard more sharply than Sen. Mazie Hirono's. During Justice Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 confirmation hearings, Hirono told the men of the country to "just shut up and step up" and "do the right thing for a change" over high school assault allegations that were never corroborated.
Faced with the Platner situation, Hirono offered a different tone entirely.
"It's mainly a voter thing that the people of Maine are going to have to decide how they think about these factors."
A voter thing. Not a moral thing. Not a shut-up-and-step-up thing. Just a voter thing, when the accused is a Democrat running in a race that could determine control of the Senate.
To his credit, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia broke from the pack. The senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta said plainly what his colleagues would not.
"These allegations are deeply concerning. And I think the people of Maine deserve answers. And this kind of abuse is something to be taken very, very seriously."
Warnock's willingness to speak only makes the rest of the caucus's hedging more conspicuous.
While rank-and-file Democrats dodged questions, Schumer was already working the problem, not by holding Platner accountable, but by lining up a replacement. The minority leader recruited 78-year-old Maine Gov. Janet Mills to run for the seat. Mills has since suspended her campaign but remains on the ballot for Tuesday's primary, a fact that gives Democrats an escape hatch if they decide they need one.
A top Senate aide described the mood inside the caucus in blunt terms, telling the Post that some Democrats are furious and that the party may face spending millions to "resuscitate" Platner's candidacy. The aide said left-wing lawmakers who backed Platner are now "all quiet, because it's like, maybe we shot ourselves in the foot here."
The aide added that Platner "can't take a heat lamp, let alone a real spotlight," and that for Democratic strategists at the top, the reaction is "I told you so", with more trouble expected.
An unnamed Democratic senator offered a candid assessment of the party's bind. Platner, the senator said, has "got everything to gain by going forward and nothing to gain by getting out." The same senator laid out the options in stark language: "I don't know what they can do. Either they convince him if the s*** is serious beyond what we see, to get out. Or they go along."
That's the calculation. Not whether the allegations are credible. Not whether the women involved deserve to be heard. Whether Platner can still win.
The political math explains the cowardice. A Friday GOP poll showed Platner and Collins tied in the Maine Senate race. For Democrats chasing a Senate majority this fall, that kind of number makes a candidate very hard to cut loose, no matter what the New York Times reports about his personal conduct.
Longtime political consultant Hank Sheinkopf faulted the lawmakers who are carrying water for Platner. After Ocasio-Cortez's office failed to provide further comment on the allegations, Sheinkopf called her "the greatest player of hopscotch in American politics."
Sheinkopf offered a broader diagnosis of the party's behavior:
"The political industrial complex controls the argument, conscience doesn't matter anymore."
On Schumer's recruitment of Mills, Sheinkopf said the minority leader "was onto something. He understands that Platner could cost them any shot of getting the majority back. [Platner] could be in national ads."
That fear, not principle, not solidarity with accusers, not the moral clarity Democrats once claimed as their brand, is what's driving the party's response. Schumer isn't worried about whether the allegations are true. He's worried about whether they'll end up in a thirty-second television spot.
The #MeToo movement was supposed to be about believing women and holding powerful men accountable regardless of party, status, or political convenience. Democrats built entire campaigns and confirmation battles around that premise. They fundraised on it. They gaveled hearings over it. They told men across the country to sit down and listen.
Now a Democratic Senate candidate faces allegations of physical abuse reported by the New York Times, not an anonymous blog, not a partisan opposition dump, but the newspaper Democrats themselves treat as scripture, and the party's most vocal advocates for accountability suddenly need more time to read up on things.
Platner denies the allegations and calls them politically motivated. He is entitled to that defense. But the Democratic senators and representatives who once insisted that accusers must be heard and that silence is complicity owe an explanation for why those rules apply only when the accused has an "R" next to his name.
The voters of Maine will make their choice on Tuesday. The rest of the country can already see what the Democratic Party's principles are worth: exactly one Senate seat.
