He holds a lot of cards:

Micky Kaus pointed out that Platner “has the leverage. All he has to do to screw the Dem party is… nothing.” And my RedState colleague Bonchie described the Left’s “nuclear levels of cope” over their rapey Nazi: “He’s a mentally disturbed do-nothing who works for his mom. He doesn’t care about the party. Why would he? And there is no mechanism to forcibly remove him.”

You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Platner seems like the kind of guy who likes to throw his weight around, and not just with women. Right now he’s the nominee, although the Democrats would like to forget that inconvenient truth.

From Devon Murphy-Anderson, the Executive Director of the Maine Democratic Party:

“We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like,” she noted. “We have also reiterated that Graham Platner must drop out of this race so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November.”

No, neither Platner nor his “team” has a role in determining the next Democratic nominee from Maine for the US Senate. But he certainly as a role – a big one – in determining who is the present Democratic nominee from Maine for the US Senate, because at present he is that nominee and he can’t be forced out. Murphy-Anderson speaks of the “process” but acts as thought that process is that she will tell Platner what to do. But he’s not a party animal – that is, he’s not a Party animal. So he doesn’t need to do it – unless they make him an offer he doesn’t wish to refuse, whether it be money or status.

As I wrote yesterday:

… 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.

However, Platner doesn’t actually hold all the cards here. The Democrats have one huge card – at least, as far as I can tell – which is the threat of prosecution for rape. I looked up the statute of limitations in Maine for the crime, and although the law is fairly complex in that it depends on certain elements of the crime, it’s pretty clear that – since the incident is alleged to have occurred in 2021 – there is plenty of time to prosecute.

However, because this case rests almost entirely on the testimony of the alleged victim, she would have to agree to testify. That could be a stumbling block.