AI Summary
5 min readThe One Lesson Both Parties Keep Forgetting
Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, suspended his campaign this week after a woman accused him of sexual assault. The allegations joined a pre-existing pile of public scandals: a large SS tattoo on his chest, online comments about wanting to rape a home invader, and a history of posting on grooming-adjacent forums. The Democratic Party had spent months running him as their nominee against Susan Collins.
But Ben Shapiro argues this isn't really a story about one weird dude in Maine. It's a story about a party so high on its own supply that it thinks it can pour some Zohran Mamdani magic into any Senate race and just win.
The Disease That Cost Republicans the Senate in 2022
Shapiro draws a direct parallel between what Democrats are doing now and what Republicans did in 2022. Back then, a chunk of the Republican Party convinced itself that all you had to do to win was imitate Donald Trump. They forgot that Trump wasn't a transferable formula — he was his own figure. So they ran Herschel Walker in Georgia, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Kari Lake in Arizona, Blake Masters in Arizona, Tom Balucci in New Hampshire. They lost at least four Senate seats and at least one gubernatorial seat they probably should have won.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (03:56) **The Core Thesis: Parties Get High on Their Own Supply** - Shapiro argues that both parties make the same mistake: believing they can clone a successful candidate's "magic" and pour it into any candidate, ignoring candidate quality.
- 2 (06:32) **Graham Platner Drops Out: The "Rapey McNazi" Case** - Platner suspends his Maine Senate campaign after a sexual assault claim and a history of scandals, including a Nazi tattoo.
- 3 (12:36) **The Broader Democratic Candidate Problem** - The Platner disaster is part of a pattern: the DSA is "eating" the Democratic Party from the inside.
- 4 (29:36) **2028 Democratic Primary Implications** - The party's leftward shift will make it impossible to nominate a pro-Israel Jewish candidate like John Ossoff or Rahm Emanuel.
- 5 (34:39) **The Republican Warning: Candace Owens and the "Maroon Shirt" Conspiracy** - Shapiro pivots to a parallel warning for Republicans, using Candace Owens' conspiracy theory about Charlie Kirk's murder as the example.
- 6 (41:38) **The Iran War: Reality Wins** - The war with Iran continues; Trump ditches the Qatari Air Force One over security concerns.
- 7 (47:46) **NATO, Russia, and Turkey** - Trump awakens to Russia's threat, has a good meeting with Zelensky, and grants Ukraine a license to produce Patriot missiles.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Senate Democratic candidate for Maine Graham Platner drops out of the race after it turns out he was a Nazi-tattooed alleged rapist; we examine the other nutty Democratic Senate candidates dotting the map; and Candace Owens offers to help the defense for the guy who allegedly murdered Charlie Kirk.
Ep. 2461
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