If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck . . . well, you know the saying.
Today, if a candidate walks and talks like an obsessive Jew-hater, Democrats swoon.
And in Maine, Graham Platner is making an entire political campaign out of his waddle and quack.
First, we learned that the democratic socialist Platner, who’s competing with Gov. Janet Mills in the Democrats’ US Senate primary, had a large Nazi tattoo — an SS Totenkopf — emblazoned on his chest.
When the revelation set off a public furor, Platner insisted he’d had no idea what the infamous grinning skull symbol meant, and that the only “disgusting” aspect of the controversy was the insinuation he knew otherwise.
Yet Platner has spent the months since proving those “disgusting” doubters right, with a stream of mindless anti-Israel rhetoric and openly antisemitic associations.
In January, he told Nate Cornacchia, a conspiracy theorist fond of blaming the assassinations of JFK and Charlie Kirk on the tiny nation on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, that he was a “longtime fan” as the two sat down for an hour-long podcast interview.
A few weeks later, Platner retweeted Stew Peters, the odious radio host who has characterized Judaism as a “death cult” and advocated a “final solution” to the problem posed by American Jews’ existence.
Democrats are undeterred.
RealClearPolitics’ polling average pegs Platner as the heavy favorite against Mills — and the party’s establishment is circling the wagons.
Jon Favreau of the influential “Pod Save America” defended Platner by noting that he recently wore an “Anti-Fascist Knitting Club t-shirt” and favors transgender radicalism in public schools.
“If he’s a Nazi, he’s really f–king bad at it,” argued Favreau, profanity substituting for coherence.
Last week, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) was so moved by Platner’s plight that he saw fit to endorse him, describing the candidate as a “fighter” willing to stand up to euphemistic “special interests.”
Platner is happy to be more specific.
Mills, he explained in one ad, “has already been endorsed by AIPAC — an endorsement I will never get. Because what is happening right now in Gaza is a genocide.”
In other ads he asks, “Why are we funding Netanyahu’s genocide in Palestine?”
The man knows what his base wants: a laundered version of the world’s oldest hatred.
His success is a symptom of a larger sickness.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris — the two top contenders for their party’s next presidential nomination — have both been courting its antisemitic wing.
Harris threw her support behind Mayor Zohran Mamdani and entertained the “Gaza genocide” libel last year.
She’s also made an intraparty foil out of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, whom she and her staff peppered with bizarre, Jew-baiting questions during her ill-fated 2024 veepstakes.
For his part, Newsom threw Israel under the bus during a recent appearance alongside Favreau and his “Pod” co-host, Tommy Vietor.
“For two years they haven’t even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel,” Newsom remarked in one ignorant moment, before all but calling for the end to military support for the United States’ best partner not just in the Middle East, but across the world.
Now he’s planning an appearance alongside Hasan Piker, the vile podcaster who has celebrated both the 9/11 and Oct. 7 terror attacks.
What’s truly terrifying about the Democrats’ unconditional surrender to these obsessives is its utter cravenness.
Both Harris and Newsom had previously counted themselves among Israel’s supporters.
The switch is motivated not by conviction, but by a belief that they can ride the new wave of Jew hatred into the White House.
The contrast between their self-serving cowardice on this issue and the moral clarity President Donald Trump has demonstrated is stark.
Trump has unceremoniously expelled right-wing antisemites (Tucker Carlson) and their apologists (Megyn Kelly) from his movement, even as the blushing Pod bros welcome Carlson into theirs like starstruck schoolgirls.
“Tucker has lost his way,” Trump shrugged last week. “He’s not MAGA.”
The president has neither the time nor the patience for such witless wickedness.
He and Netanyahu are too busy bringing a shared, longtime enemy to its knees in service to the Iranian, the Israeli, and most of all the American people.
Meanwhile, groyper-adjacent candidates running in GOP primaries, like Florida’s James Fishback, are not rising stars with institutional backing — they’re also-rans with no future apart from hawking junk on their podcasts.
Trump and the Republicans have held the line against this wave of hate; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other pro-Israel Democrats have wilted under fire.
Antisemites — of both varieties, the functional, blissfully naïve ones and the frothing-at-the-mouth types — are no longer on the fringe of the Democratic coalition: They’re steering the ship.
And nobody on the voyage is brave enough to stage a mutiny.
Isaac Schorr is a senior editor at Mediaite.
