Trump Brushed Off His Scandals. Here’s Why Platner Couldn’t.

If a Democrat reclaims the presidency in 2028, the party and its new leader will be faced with a tantalizing question: Now is it finally their turn to behave like Donald Trump?

Probably there is no 2028 aspirant who would want to act like Trump stylistically, or could pull it off. His brand of showmanship and egomania is sui generis.

There is no politician who craves power enough to seek the presidency, however, that he or she would not at least in some moods fantasize about being like Trump in a more fundamental sense: Able to defy convention and shatter precedents with impunity; indifferent to behavioral norms and pieties as enforced by the establishment political class and news media; utterly confident that supporters are too loyal or too intimidated to object.

A president liberated from traditional constraints is simply more formidable than one who has to act within them — on everything from soaring above ethical controversies to unilaterally dominating once-independent agencies to swatting away unfavorable news cycles.

But Democrats are unlikely to ever play by Trump Rules. When they have tried, as Graham Platner did, it typically just doesn’t work.

The Platner drama, in fact, is a vivid illumination of the distinctly different ways that the two major political parties respond to an era in which prevailing standards of acceptable conduct by politicians are in a state of radical flux.

Platner is a flamboyant anti-establishment disruptor accused of a lengthy roster of personal behavior that he declared irrelevant (his swastika-like “Totenkopf” tattoo) or false (Jenny Racicot’s allegation of rape.)

Trump is a flamboyant anti-establishment disruptor accused of a lengthy roster of personal behavior that he declared irrelevant (defying the decades-long principle that presidential candidates release their tax returns, to cite one of dozens of examples) or false (E. Jean Carroll’s allegation of rape.)

Platner was forcibly stripped of the Senate nomination voters handed him just last month when a chorus of Democratic leaders loudly and near-unanimously said he must go. Trump, by contrast, has ignored and in most cases humiliated Republicans who claimed his personal and political behavior is unacceptable.

Those different outcomes in turn suggest wide differences in the coalitions and prevailing mindsets that sustain both parties. Simply put, on questions of political accountability, the parties live in different universes.

Perhaps some Democrats are eager in the Platner episode to claim the moral high ground: See, our party holds its politicians responsible for egregious behavior. But the record of the last month shows they are standing on rather loose soil.

Racicot was one of three women who alleged abusive behavior by Platner in their sexual relationships to the New York Times in an article published on June 4. That article reported that Racicot did not then want to describe clinical details, but her general meaning was clear enough when she said Platner arrived at her home drunk and uninvited and engaged in “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior. Most of Platner’s supporters, joined grudgingly by Democrats who preferred someone else but perceived they were out of other options to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, took the Times article in stride. “There are no saints in the United States Senate,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, perhaps Platner’s most important patron.

It was Racicot’s frustration with that collective shoulder shrug that prompted her to trust the conscientious reporting of my POLITICO colleagues Jessica Piper and Adam Wren, who on July 6 added flesh-crawling detail to her earlier account: The 2021 encounter allegedly included forcible sexual intercourse. But what did Platner supporters think Racicot was getting at in the June 4 story? Why did it take anatomical detail that few people would ever wish to share publicly to cause Sanders and virtually every other Democrat to so swiftly and emphatically change their mind and finally conclude Platner had to go?

In most cases, the earlier logic was something like this: Let’s not get mired in questions about private behavior in the middle of a battle over public power. Trump and Republicans don’t get hung up on these controversies. Why should we? What changed, ultimately, was less an assessment of Platner’s moral standing than of his political standing: After the POLITICO report, they thought he was too damaged to win, and turned on him in a way Republicans have never effectively turned on Trump.

Platner himself plainly wonders about the contrast. His resentful departure speech said the allegations are false but are being exploited by “those in power” in his own party who would rather see Collins win than accept an anti-establishment insurgent. He didn’t say but might plausibly have asked: Trump didn’t quit in 2016 even though his party leaders were freaking out over the Access Hollywood “grab ‘em by the pussy” disclosure, so why should Platner be different?

There are two primary answers. One is political — relating to the nature of modern party coalitions. The other is psychological —Trump’s own unique psychology and the way his party has learned to accommodate that.

Trump’s MAGA coalition is unified in large measure by a conviction that the establishment that controls government and most other institutions is fundamentally not on the level. As one part of the coalition, billionaires like Elon Musk and his ilk believe that the rules and standards that politicians and regulators and journalists seek to impose on society are infused with hypocrisy and mostly serve to muffle the genius of the technologists and entrepreneurs who are truly changing the world. The bigger part of the coalition is working class people, typically without a college degree, who see plenty of evidence that the system is stacked against them. From both angles, Trump’s scandals are not merely not a big deal — his willingness to defy his political, legal and media persecutors is a central part of his appeal.

The Democratic coalition increasingly is powered by college graduates — white-collar managers, lawyers, public employees, educators, and so on. They seethe at Trump’s success. But for the most part they still believe the system of laws, ethical precepts, and evolving norms on personal behavior, including heightened sensitivity to sexual misconduct, is mostly on the level. For this reason, they might envy Trump’s ability to shred standards with impunity — but they aren’t likely to emulate it.

The ultimate factor is more singular. There just aren’t many people, even ambitious politicians, who are wired like Trump. It takes a kind of sublime self-possession to defy censure when it is coming from influential quarters — fellow politicians, the New York Times editorial page, and so on. Trump has that. Even many people with long years in the public arena — for instance, former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) — typically do not. In retrospect, Franken plainly regrets his decision not to stand up to a thunder of denunciation from his own party over allegations of inappropriate behavior around women. At the time, it seemed he had no choice.

The allegations against Platner were vastly more serious. He was ready to fight them, until he had no choice but to face the reality: Graham Platner is no Donald Trump.