MORNING GLORY: California Democrats dumped Porter, but Maine Dems hold onto Platner for dear life
Former Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter got smoked in Tuesday’s "jungle primary" for California’s governor’s race, the runoff for which will come in November. Right now, it looks like Steve Hilton vs. Xavier Becerra will face each other in the general election, though that won’t be certain for days — but we do know Porter won’t be in the final. She plummeted from her position as the early front-runner and darling of progressives last year after questions about her temperament surfaced and she never left.
When ABC News ran headlines like this last month, readers knew her campaign was finished: "Katie Porter fights questions on temperament as the only woman in crowded California gubernatorial race.
Experts are mixed over whether she should have raised outbursts that went viral."
Porter wasn’t the only casualty among former members of Congress who were only months ago measuring drapes for their Sacramento offices.
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PBS congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins reported on former Congressman Eric Swalwell after his implosion and exit, not just from the race, but from public life:
"Rumors first rose over social media for the past few days, but starting on Friday and over the weekend, we saw reporting first from The San Francisco Chronicle and then CNN, bombshell, specific accusations against Congressman Swalwell.
CNN said that four women accused Swalwell of misconduct. Most were anonymous. One was named. Now, those charges range from unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos, to unwanted touching, to one accusation of rape."
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So Porter and Swalwell both fell from favor among Democrats when issues of their personal conduct overwhelmed progressives’ approval of their far-left policy positions.
That hasn’t happened to the presumptive Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, Graham Platner — yet. As the primary up north is Tuesday, June 9, it is late in the day for Democrats to swap out Platner for someone more palatable. Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign, but her name is still on the ballot, as is David Costello’s, but Democrats are standing proudly behind the troubled candidate with the Nazi tattoo and a list of scandals that continues to grow.
This drama must make at least Porter marvel at the scale of the left’s double standard. She lost her temper with staffers and got the cold shoulder from hard-left California Democrats, who quickly turned either to Xavier Becerra or Tom Steyer. On the day of the vote in California, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer held a short press conference in which he went full Bill Belichick on the former Patriots head coach’s legendary "We’re on to Cincinnati" moment of a dozen years ago.
On Tuesday, Schumer was pressed by reporters about his backing of Platner after the latest batch of awful headlines about Platner’s increasingly chaotic campaign.
"I met with Graham Platner today. We will beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate," was Schumer’s response to the first Platner question. More questions about Platner followed. Schumer repeated the refrain of beating Collins and taking back the Senate four more times and then, frustrated by reporters following up about Platner after each deflection, Schumer ended the news conference — but not the questions.
Why are Democrats standing behind Platner when they abandoned Porter and Swalwell?
We can’t really compare apples to apples yet, as details about Platner’s many questionable decisions are dripping out in torturous fashion, and there is surely more to come.
But any fair observer has to conclude that Porter’s problems pale next to Platner’s.
And while Platner fell for the SS symbol and much else, Swalwell is believed to have fallen for "Fang Fang" — Christine Fang, an alleged Chinese spy — but remember that failure of judgment didn’t torpedo the congressman’s ambitions. https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-poetic-justice-in-eric-swalwells-relationship-with-a-chinese-spy/
Swalwell had seemingly survived that tawdry episode and was even sending "cease-and-desist" letters to the FBI when its director, Kash Patel, was reported to have been working to release the "Fang Fang" files related to their relationship.
Swalwell was playing offense and leading in the polls — until he wasn’t.
Whatever drove Swalwell out of Congress — the details of the allegations by four women against Swalwell are not known — there is a standard in there somewhere against which to measure Platner’s many bad choices: Too much bad conduct in too little a span of time, and over the side of your political ship you go.
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Democrats know this, of course, and their shaky support for Platner reflects the fact that their candidate is badly damaged. That’s why most Democrats won’t comment on Platner now and why Schumer went into his endless-loop response.
The explanation of the Democrats’ 2026 double standard is simple: They don’t have a fallback plan in Maine. They are overcommitted. Gov. Mills announced the suspension of her campaign at the end of April. Sen. Elizabeth Warren had thrown in with Platner in March, joining Sens. Martin Heinrich, Ruben Gallego and Bernie Sanders in Platner’s parade, and Mills must have concluded that there was no fighting the far left of her party.
Some of Platner’s outrageous Reddit posts had come to light when Warren joined up, but his attacks on fellow soldiers, both living and dead, had not, nor had his troubling texts to women other than his wife.
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The drive to force Mills out succeeded, but when Platner’s peccadillos mounted in May, there was no one to turn to. California Democrats had a long list of replacements for Porter and Swalwell. That wasn’t the case in Maine. If Democrats give up on Platner, they are giving up on their chance of gaining a net four Senate seats and getting Schumer’s title changed from minority leader back to majority leader next year.
"Sunk costs" have crippled many a business and life decision, and they plague politics too. Sunk costs are expenses or investments that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered. Rational decisions focus on future costs and benefits, not past expenditures. Sunk costs can lead to emotional decisions in business and personal finances. And politics.
Continued support for Platner will lead to more embarrassments such as Schumer’s on Tuesday. Every new story about Platner will see reporters hustling after high-profile Democrats asking for answers. Republicans have lived this political nightmare before and learned that there is no upside to sticking with a candidate whose campaign can’t possibly succeed, and about whom more awful stories are likely to appear.
We have to wait to see what Katie Porter has to say about this double standard, if she says anything at all.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.