Platner’s Fall Shows The Double Standard Of The MeToo Movement

Graham Platner has finally become too big a liability for the Democratic establishment.

Everyone and their brother is rushing to pull their endorsement and distance themselves from the Platner campaign over the recent sexual assault scandal that has come out against him.

Mind you, voters didn’t seem to care about Platner’s laundry list of scandals until a few days ago, when he was accused of assault by Jenny Racicot. Platner faced assault allegations over a month ago from Lyndsey Fifield, yet his lead in some polls only grew.

The trouble with the MeToo movement was never that it sought to shed light on those unfit to hold public office.

That said, in the unfortunate reality that few politicians are saints, we must distinguish between what is unsavory and what is disqualifying. If we barred anybody who ever made an inappropriate comment from holding office, it would be impossible to keep a candidate for more than 30 seconds. A serial abuser, however, should be excommunicated from the public sphere forever.

The trouble, of course, was never with encouraging women to speak up about instances of sexual assault. The trouble was with the attitude defined by the movement’s slogan, “Believe All Women.” Declaring “believe all” anything is going to incentivize certain malicious actors to weaponize society’s sympathy. And to absolutely no one’s surprise, the movement brought instances of baseless accusations designed for political and personal gain.

When Joe Biden was accused of rape by Tara Reade during the 2020 presidential election, you weren’t supposed to believe all women anymore. As with all good witch hunts, the hysteria died when the accusers bit off more than they could chew. Though the accusations did appear to have some merit, the party wasn’t going to drop its nominee over them, so they dismissed the whole case as trivial.

Whether or not Biden was guilty, “Believe All Women” got a lot more flexible when women started saying things the Democrats didn’t like. It became clear that society could not baselessly accept every single accusation, and so the pendulum swung in the other direction, being awfully quick to dismiss even the serious cases.

The simple explanation is a boy-who-cried-wolf dynamic. The MeToo movement of the 2010s had thoroughly desensitized the public to claims of sexual abuse. Or so it seemed until the Democratic establishment finally abandoned Platner over Racicot’s accusations.

But the fact that the Democrats did eventually drop Platner reveals a more concerning dynamic within the party.

What we have now is a situation even worse than the boy who cried wolf. Democratic voters still seem to understand sexual assault to be a disqualifying offense; they just have moved the goalpost of who gets to decide when something is or isn’t over the line. Instead of the natural public response that should come with plausible claims, the public response is manufactured in accordance with the establishment’s response.

I’m old enough (and one needn’t be very old) to recall the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The New York Times furiously backed the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, in dozens of articles, including a 2018 op-ed titled “Sexual Abuse Isn’t Partisan.” I think I have a carton of 2018 milk that has aged better.

Not a single witness could corroborate her story. Ford herself brought forward three individuals, none of whom recalled ever having been to a party anything like the one she described. Ford could not remember whose house the party was at, how she got there, or how she got home. Kavanaugh had attended a Catholic all-boys school at the time, and not a single person testified that he ever knew Ford.

Now let’s talk about the Platner case.

The Times massively watered down Fifield’s story. Unlike the case of Ford, Fifield was actually in a documented relationship with Platner and had provided the testimonies of friends she confided in during the time of the assault. The article conveniently omitted them. It’s also worth mentioning that while Kavanaugh had a spotless character record and reputation before his appointment in 2018, Platner had weathered scandal after scandal on precisely the subject of sexual misconduct.

Since Racicot was a Democrat, the party could no longer claim the accusation was politically motivated. At last, they were forced to act, and the moment they did, it became acceptable to call out Platner’s behavior.

The Bulwark, bastion of honest reporting that it is, published an article on Platner over a week after Fifield’s accusations. The article heavily minimized the scandal and focused on his political talents and appeal. There was no companion op-ed criticizing his behavior or calling for him to drop out over the scandal. Only after Racicot came forward and endorsements started dropping like flies did the Bulwark publish a piece titled “Graham Platner Crossed the Voters’ Red Line.”

Could someone please identify where exactly that red line is? I’m having a hard time finding it.

The MeToo movement has, predictably, done enormous damage to the credibility of victims of sexual assault. The double standard employed by the Left hurts both those who are baselessly accused and those real victims whose cases will be chalked up to political posturing.

Justice is blind and indiscriminate. When the core principles of society are violated, the transgressors must be held accountable. The Platner case demonstrated that it is not a matter of principle, but political convenience that compels the Democratic Party to purge its ranks.

The MeToo movement was supposed to end selective silence. Instead, it simply changed who does the selecting.