Bernie-backed Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner melts down

Maine oyster farmer Graham Platner's Senate campaign is in crisis after reports of offensive online messages over many years.Why it matters: Many national Democrats seized on Platner as a solution to the party's problems with young men and working-class voters in the wake of their embarrassing losses in 2024.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made Platner's bid central to his mission to remake the Democratic Party as more progressive and economically focused.Platner won the adulation of other Democratic senators, raised more than $3 million in the first six weeks of his campaign, and attracted large crowds at his events.Driving the news: Platner, a 41-year-old military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, made crude comments about Black diners, rural white people, police officers and sexual assault victims in years-old comments on Reddit.CNN first reported Thursday on comments from "around 2021" where Platner called "all" cops bastards and described himself as a communist on Reddit. Platner also said rural white people were "actually" racist and stupid. Other media reports followed detailing posts from 2013, in which he asked, "Why don't black people tip?" and said in a thread on underwear created to stop sexual assaults that people should "take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f–ked up they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to?"In another post from 2018, he wrote that if people "expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history."In the aftermath, Platner's political director, former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, resigned from the campaign, Maine's Bangor Daily News first reported. What they're saying: In a 5-minute direct-to-camera video Friday on the social media site X, Platner painted his past posts as the product of a young man who had returned home from his service overseas deeply disturbed."I had PTSD, I had depression, I had all of the things that come with serving in a war and two wars that I eventually began to not believe in at all," he said. "It left me feeling very unmoored. It left me feeling very disillusioned, very alienated and very isolated. And I think, like a lot of people, I went on the Internet to post stupid things."Platner said that things changed in 2020 and 2021, after he moved to his hometown, met his wife and began "to feel connected again.""For those of you who have read these things and been offended, have read these things and seen someone that you don't recognize, I am deeply sorry," he said.Between the lines: Platner's allies are beginning to circle the wagons."This is just…so refreshingly honest, vulnerable, and human. Could use more of this in politics," former Barack Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau posted on X in response to Platner's video.Zoom in: Sanders took the extraordinary step last week of publicly discouraging Maine Gov. Janet Mills from entering the race, even though she is the preferred candidate of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and much of the Democratic establishment.Mills launched her bid anyway on Tuesday. The same day, several youth organizations backed Platner. "Graham Platner represents not the entire solution, but a vital step in the right direction," said David Hogg, co-founder of Leaders We Deserve, on Tuesday. Hogg cited conversations within the party on reaching young and working class voters. A Sanders spokesperson did not respond to a Friday request for comment. Platner's team declined to make him available for an interview with Axios.The bottom line: The drip-drip-drip of revelations on Platner play into Mills supporters' argument that Platner is a political novice who lacks the experience — and vetting — to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).Asked this week about Platner on a podcast, Mills argued that Collins won past races against Democrats "because we ran people who are untested" and "I'm the only one in the race who's actually won an election." She said, "I don't know much of anything about Graham Platner."