Something I think a lot of white Democrats don't get about Southern Black voters is that they're not just "pragmatic;" they're hyper-vigilant. Anyone who lives in an environment where they could be harmed develops hyper-vigilance. It's one reason they don't fall for snake-oil.

https://twitter.com/keithedwards/status/2063091924626538868

I worked in the Nashville school district. Even Black children are hyper-vigilant around white people in the South (which is heart-breaking). They have to be. B/c in the schools, there are white people who are neutral, white people who are helpful, & white people who are harmful.

It's not a mistake when a man harms multiple women. When men harm women without seeking some kind of intervention, they want to harm women. Look, a lot of us can imagine human darkness, right? Your worst moment. Maybe you wanted to hurt another person. Imagine taking that person's arm so hard it bruised them. What would you feel? I think most of us would feel something. Like, "Shit. I just hurt a person."

I thought about the claim that I am "obsessed" with Graham Platner last night. Am I obsessed with Graham Platner? The truth is: I'm not. I think he's boring. But I think I am "obsessed"--or at least hyper-focussed--w/ how little others care about things that I think should matter I don't like pathological lying. I don't like being gaslit about pathological lying. Honesty should matter. I also think Nazi tattoos should still matter. I think it's important to consider a person's character. If they're a serial cheater, blame rape victims, & like violence.

I keep seeing people say that Graham Platner's ex-campaign manager is on a "revenge tour." What evidence is there of that? She quit her own job, cited ethical concerns at the time, & then stayed silent for months. Is telling the truth about a problematic person "revenge?" Platner didn't fire her. She quit. Because of the Totenkopf & other reasons. Then she stayed silent for a long time. Then she confirmed some things to journalists. If she's on a "revenge tour" what's the revenge in response to?

Have you ever threatened a smear campaign in your life? Have you ever told a person, "If you tell the truth, I will destroy you?" I would like to think we can collectively agree that people who do this are bad people. We're all guilty of something. Of lying at some point. Or encouraging someone else to lie. Maybe you're even guilty of subtly pressuring someone to lie. "It would hurt me if you told the truth about this." But a smear campaign? "I will destroy you." Not many people do that.

People should start asking why. This is a very important Senate race. When Mills first dropped out, there were tepid endorsements. That's ceased. Did people in DC & Maine debrief the Mills campaign or otherwise find out new information about Platner. Their silence is deafening.

https://twitter.com/LakePerspective/status/2059120149177724952

Control of the Senate goes through this race. The GOP is about to pummel Platner. They've invested a huge amount. And, yet, Democrats seem to be fairly quiet on their own fundraising/support for the man. Why?

Maybe Graham Platner defies easy characterization because he is a pathological liar. "I've never been close to money. . .I don't think anything I've ever done has been outside the realm of what people do when they struggle." Platner vacationed at his grandfather's chateau in CT, went to $20k/yr East Coast private schools, & went back-backing in EU for 6 months.

"Israel trained dogs to rape Palestinians" is

-False
-Grotesque
-Yes, "blood libel"
-Will reduce the salience of actual mistreatment Palestinians or anyone else might face in any military/state custody

The "maximally evil Israel" lies protect no one; hurt many

Tell the truth

https://twitter.com/elikowaz/status/2050974317710659864

The entire Israel/Palestine conversation is just drenched in maximalist characterizations & lies, thus removing accountability from *everyone*. Israelis are dehumanized as monsters. The malfeasant far-right gov't denies the extremist lies & then the actual truth never gets told.

"Did Platner know it was a Totenkopf? And, if yes, did he therefore lie in 2025 when he said he had no idea?"

Most surely: Yes & yes.

Apparently there was a whole thing re: Marine Scout/Snipers ("SS") getting SS (Nazi Tattoos). This story broke in 2012. It was a military scandal.

Then, in June, 2020, Platner got in a long debate on reddit about Marines and SS insignia, related to the previous scandal. This is all publicly accessible.

Others on the same reddit thread, including at least one self-identified Marine, argued whether or not SS insignia is bad and/or, within the Marine Corps, signals Nazi ideology. The Marine who argued YES, it does signal Naziism, wrote:

"The US Marine Corps DOES NOT TOLERATE NAZI SYMBOLISM... The Commandant of the Marine Corps gave orders to stop it, issued an apology, and ordered an investigation."

Separately, Platner, who had a Totenkopf on his chest, argued the opposite, while invoking Black Marines.

Specifically, a user named SP4CEM4N_SPIFF wrote "I remember this being exposed nearly a decade ago. It's like people claiming the confederate flag isn't about hate," to which Platner replied: "I will be sure to inform the black guys I know with bolts that they're Nazis now and not USMC Scout/Snipers."

Here, Platner is directly making the connection between SS tattoos & their intentional use by U.S. Marines (which was previously a scandal), while also doing kind of a "Black person human shield" thing. Note, again, others in the thread are really disgusted by the use of SS insignia & support the military taking strict action.

The original thread was about Zachary Sanns, a former Marine who was arrested for impersonating a federal officer at a Las Vegas BLM protest while armed and bearing SS tattoos.

Platner was not Scout/Snipers. He was a machine-gun operator. With a Totenkopf. And he recently told everyone, including those in the Democratic Party who support him, that he had no idea what the symbol meant.

I think the most galling thing, for me, to read, is that Platner argues with the guy who says "it's like saying the Confederate Flag isn't about hate."

It's galling because the guy with the confederate flag comment is right. It's also galling because now we know, for sure, in 2026, that Platner has been through this whole conversation--does your Nazi tattoo mean you're a Nazi?--before. And he's acting completely ignorant of it.

2012 Marine Scout Sniper SS scandal (CNN): cnn.com/2012/02/10/us/…

Zachary Sanns - the man the Reddit thread was about (Las Vegas Review-Journal): reviewjournal.com/crime/armed-ma…

Full Reddit thread archive: api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

Platner's "black guys" comment:

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

SP4CEM4N_SPIFF's comment - what Platner directly replied to:

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

HughGedic- self-identified Marine arguing SS insignia is Nazi symbolism:

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

Platner's second comment ("was never a STA guy"):

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

Original Reddit submission (the post itself):

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…


This comment in the thread is, I think, quite relevant.

The "should Democrats embrace Hasan Piker" question has been well-answered by now, but this new pathetic twist is that GOP media was all pre-emptively keyed up to respond to us "embracing Hasan Piker," which we outright refused to do. Looks like we did good, fellow Dems.

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/2041987630997365039

Now take this lesson and move on from the human tinker toy and focus your sites on the corpse-desecrating-rape-denying-Nazi-tattoo-wielding little psychopath from Maine. It's gonna be the same thing. You know it will be.

I asked "Claude" to fact-check 2 claims for me: 1) That the Michigan Synagogue attacker was inspired by Hezbollah & 2) That the attacker aimed to murder Jewish children. The ChatBot answered #1 correctly; #2 incorrectly. I queried it & asked it to describe its errors. Please read

I experiment with AI all the time. I ask it to fact-check, but often find myself having to correct it. It is based on statistical frequencies in input. If input contains flawed majority frames, that's what the AI spits out. This has real consequences, esp. for knowledge-building.

I had a court victory today. My abusive ex was concealing income from his ex-wife, the bio mom of my stepchildren, whom he abused as well. I gave her a detailed account of his income, from my time w/ him. Today she obtained more child support for her children, my stepchildren. Few people ever seem to understand just how much you can love children who are not biologically your own. I would have done--and would do--anything for my stepchildren. There was a point at which I realized I could not do anything to legally protect them. But their bio mom could.

I really want strategists to start thinking about how THEY feel when the topic of Israel/Palestine comes up. I'm not talking about frothy antisemites. I'm talking about Normies. You're at Happy Hour w/ friends from work. Someone says, "Let's talk about ISRAEL." How do you feel? Personally, I would think "Oh fuck. I'm about to lose some friends." I can't even talk about Israel/Palestine WITH MY PARENTS and I think we're almost 95% in agreement. Not an issue I would want to push to the forefront of my electoral politics.

The lesson that every Dem needs to take from this--as well as the previous ~10 years of politics--is: Don't depend on the online Far-Left for political support. No matter how much you cater to them, if you say *one* thing that diverges from "The Party," they will sabotage you. And it's not just that they will sabotage you for the slightest thought-crime, they will never, ever reward you, unless you are a cult-leader, when you do what they ostensibly like. When Biden took on student loans, it ONLY generated bad headlines. Because it wasn't "good enough"

Platner's sincerely asking Maine to not judge him for the worst thing that he ever posted on the worst day of his life. Why was it the worst day of his life and why did he respond to this horrible day by saying women should wear kevlar panties to not get raped?


Per Platner's own account, he wrote his rape comments on the worst day of his life. He doesn't want us to judge him for that day. Why was it the worst day and why did he respond to having such a bad day specifically by talking about what women should do to not get raped?

If we look at the electorate broadly--not the extremes--the clear picture is that voters do not want to hear about I/P anymore. Even if they tend to be vaguely anti-Israel, they don't want to hear about it. They find it confusing, depressing, & disconnected from their lives.

https://twitter.com/BarneyFlames/status/2034114050238615644

Americans have *never* liked hearing about foreign policy, for the record. Post-9/11 was a unique era and, I'll add, a time when what Americans heard about foreign policy was a bunch of bullshit w/ a subtext of jingoism.

spaniards always take issue when i talk about antisemitism in spain. i respect different personal experiences, but you will never be able to convince me that antisemitism is not a problem in a country where my own fiancé's grandmother told me, "you look less like a jew today."

https://twitter.com/magi_jay/status/2033627514053034129

i'm not even jewish, for the record. i insisted that despite my last name--'jacobs'--my father's family, as far as i knew--were protestants. what did these "fact" get me? people made jokes about my 'dirty blood'. a jew disguised as a protestant! the worst!

We've also never had a real convo about the fact that Biden really did try to go as progressive as he possibly could & not only did the center punish him, the left punished him too. B/c it was never enough. These people aren't just a curse on Dems. They're a curse on progress.

https://twitter.com/trouble_man90/status/2012227864268030118

If you actually go out & talk to voters, you will never hear the end of this sentiment: "Biden campaigned as a moderate; went too far left as POTUS." I'm talking about people who voted for Harris. It's what they believe.

This week I wrote an 11 page summary of violence my 6-yr-old stepson witnessed. I provided this to his biological mother. The bio parents each gave their accounts to the therapist. My stepson, based on my testimony, provided by bio mom, got enrolled into DV-specific therapy. It is such a strange, horrific experience. To document one's own abuse so extensively for another woman. In this case, my partner's ex-wife. The rewards can feel so small. But therapy is not small. I told the truth. To other adults. A child will not live in that darkness alone.

Extreme interpersonal psychological abuse is, I am coming to understand, something we don't at all have a good cultural handle on and also much more frequent than I would have previously assumed. The more I talk about psychological abuse--and I am cautious in speaking about it--the more people contact me & I realize it's something that has affected many lives. I wish I had been better educated on the matter.

Just as a matter of shared truth/history: there was a period in the Summer of 2024 when Black Democrats were begging "activists," et al. to vote for Kamala Harris for the good of Black Americans & others who would be especially vulnerable under Trump. They were met w/ racism. This is something that happened. Because it happened, we should acknowledge & document it, at the very least.