I was thinking yesterday of adding the following questions and observation to my post on Platner: what is he mulling over? Why not resign immediately? Not only is he mulling over what he’ll get from the Democrats if he drops out as they wish (as I stated in the post), but I think there’s at least a decent possibility that he’s such a narcissist, so tremendously full of himself and arrogant, that he might even refuse to drop out at all.

That would be quite something to see. After all, if you promote a scumbag, you have to deal with a scumbag.

So now I see this NY Post article. An excerpt:

Maine Democratic candidate Graham Platner appears to be holding the Democratic Party hostage — refusing to drop out after he was accused of rape unless he gets to approve his successor to run for the Senate, The Post has learned.

A source familiar with the campaign discussions said Platner, his campaign and political strategist Morris Katz are deliberating about the Maine Democrat dropping out but only if his replacement shares his left-wing values.

So the report is that he’s making demands and threatening not to drop out if they’re not met. Nice.

It certainly makes sense that the powers-that-be would like someone more moderate, in order to appeal to the somewhat purple state of Maine. Then again, Collins is pretty moderate herself. But my point is that Platner knows he has some power here and is loathe to give it up.

Needless to say, there’s been a ton of coverage of Platner in the last 24 hours, much of it about how the Democrats supported him till the current revelations about rape. Not date-rape, but what Whoopi Goldberg might or might not refer to as “rape-rape.”

Ace has a good summary of how the NY Times did a limited modified hang-out a while back by trying to get ahead of the rape and assault allegations without actually covering them truthfully. Rather, they mostly covered them up. It’s a long and involved post, but here’s some of it to give you the flavor:

The New York Times Knew All About Graham Platner’s Rape Allegation But Deliberately Buried It …

They also buried the allegations of non-rape abuse by Lyndsey Fifield — and she says she gave them the names of five friends who would corroborate the story (at least as far as her telling the same story contemporaneously).

Two of those friends, she told them, didn’t know about the abuse, but could corroborate the dates of their relationship. The other three could corroborate the abuse.

The New York Times chose to only contact the two friends Fifield expressly told them could not corroborate the abuse. They didn’t contact the three who could corroborate the abuse, deliberately.

Then the Times wrote that they contacted two friends “who could not corroborate” Fifield’s claims of abuse.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the people who write at the Times are stupid. They may be both knaves and fools in the classic sense, but they are not stupid and they know how to write exactly what they want to write.

There’s also a good piece in National Review in terms of a summary of what went wrong with Platner. But it has a flaw that I’ve noticed is present in just about every article I’ve read from the right about Platner, an omission that puzzles me.

For example, here’s a quote from that link:

If Platner fooled you [he’s addressing reporters on the left], maybe you should find something to do with your life besides writing columns about politics. Because the U.S. political landscape is full of creeps, cretins, con artists, crooks, and cads of every kind, and it always will be. If the media has any useful role to play in our system, it is to look beyond the spin and the campaign-crafted image and to tell the world who these candidates really are, warts and all, so the electorate can make an informed choice.

Talk about an idealistic vision! The point is that Platner did not fool them, not for a single moment. Nor will they ever “look beyond the spin.” They proudly create the spin. There is no devotion to the principle of truth. It’s about winning, period.

What’s more, this story did not come out now in the interests of truth. It came out now because Democrats and the MSM (redundancy, I know) realized Platner almost certainly would lose. So they had to torpedo him. They had held back the rape story not only to protect him till now, but to use in case they needed it in the future. Now they need it, so it’s printed. I think it’s just as simple as that.

And so you have a flood of people (take a look here) suddenly saying he has to go, people who defended him mightily till now. I repeat: it’s not the result of the story itself. The story being revealed is the result of the polls. The outrage at Platner’s behavior is the result of the polls. That’s all it is. Now, maybe they were outraged and worried even earlier, but they had to keep their mouths shut and pretend to defend him, all in the interests of winning. Once he no longer was a winner, they’re free to suddenly virtue-signal about him.