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It would seem that, with the horrid and credible allegations surfacing about Platner, fate has bestowed upon Susan Collins, the GOP senator that promised to serve only two terms, a successful election returning her to the US Senate for a sixth term. Swapping out Platner this late in the cycle for another candidate, most likely the aged Janet Mills, is unlikely to produce an electoral victory for the Democrats, imperiling their quest to take control of the Senate from the spineless and corrupt Republicans.
Given the stakes involved, it is heartening that voices raised in support of Platner are, to quote the bard, ‘But few of any sort, and none of name.‘ However, this is a vital and important ethical juncture for the Democratic Party. The desire, the need, the critical importance of wrestling control of the Federal government and bringing vital checks on this rogue and unlawful administration is a goal that I deeply share but it must not become something so all-consuming that the quest for power renders all other considerations immaterial — that is the path that led, in part, to the GOP becoming captured by Trump and his slavish cult of personality.
Rightly or wrongly, for the last 20-30 years the Republican Party has become more and more myopic about the Democratic Party, seeing them not as a party with the same love of country but simply different policy goals but instead as an evil and wicked force that must be eradicated from the public sphere. The coordinated campaign destroying Bill Clinton was not about tax rates or welfare reform and the years and years spent investigating his supposed financial corruption and the endless berating on his lack of truthfulness were merely means to an end and not an application of principle. The defense and devotion to Trump reveals that lie all too plainly. It was the quest for power and total control that paid false fealty to our Republic while undermining it at every turn that ultimately led to acquiescing to a man who attempted to overthrow the government. And many in the GOP, but far from all, believed that they were on the side of the angels, quite literally, that their ‘just’ end excused every lie that escaped their lips until they welcomed racists and Nazis into their tent, until even the execution of citizens in the streets could be excused.
This is the warning to the Democratic Party, that the single-minded desire to do ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘save the nation’ can in the end damn that which you seek to rescue. I believe that the Republican party must be driven into the wilderness, to wander the trackless political desert until it has shed its sins, but to achieve that goal the Democratic Party must not become the very monsters that they combat. It starts with Platner and doing what the Republicans are unable to do: throw a credibly accused rapist from the party.
