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Loathing of Trump drives liberals to back a very flawed Maine Democrat

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by Bernard Goldberg, opinion contributor - 05/15/26 11:30 AM ET

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by Bernard Goldberg, opinion contributor - 05/15/26 11:30 AM ET

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Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks at a news conference Thursday, April 30, 2026, in Lewiston, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

If you want to know how far some liberals are willing to go to register their fear and loathing of President Trump, just read the recent opinion piece by Frank Bruni in the New York Times.

Here’s how his column begins: “Graham Platner isn’t my ideal Senate candidate. Not even close. I’m deeply troubled by the thinness of his political experience, by the primacy of raw anger in his appeal to voters and by the oddities and ugliness from a Nazi tattoo to a fondness for ‘gay’ and ‘gayest’ as put-downs, in his not-so-distant past. It’s a lot to overlook. But if I lived in Maine, I’d vote for him in November.”

Bruni is a thoughtful man of the left, prepared to overlook Platner’s many, let’s call them … uh, shortcomings. Before we get to why he is prepared to overlook so much, let’s lay out just what Bruni is willing to accept, reluctantly or otherwise.

Platner has said he is a communist. He said cops are bastards. He called people who post online “retarded.” He said war was “the most enjoyable experience of my life.” Working as a bartender, he wondered “Why don’t black people tip?” And speaking about women who are concerned about sexual assault, he wrote that “Rape is a real thing. If you’re so worried about it … you might not get blacked out f—–d up around people you aren’t comfortable with.”

Yes, Frank Bruni, that really is, as you put it, “a lot to overlook” — even though Platner has acknowledged that the posts were wrong, that they came during a dark time in his life, and he has since deleted them.

Maybe he is sincere, or maybe that’s just what you say when you have political aspirations. Whichever it is, why would an intelligent man like Bruni vote for Platner over Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate Republican who, after Trump’s second impeachment, voted to convict him?

The reason, Bruni writes, is that Platner is “a Democrat running against a Republican and I haven’t been kidding around when I’ve said that President Trump has no respect for democracy, no regard for the truth.” Trump, as Bruni sees it, is an “extreme danger” to the U.S.

To vote for Collins, Bruni believes, “would be irresponsible, nonsensical and perilous.”

It’s a compelling case that Bruni lays out, even seductive. There’s just one problem that may have escaped his attention. Republicans feel pretty much the same way about Democrats — and it’s why they voted for Trump over Kamala Harris.

I know a lot of Republicans who thought Trump is a narcissist, vulgar, dishonest, childish and vengeful. They voted for him anyway — because they thought that with all his faults, Trump was a better choice than Harris. Trump even said that if Harris were elected, “It will be the end of our country.” Isn’t that what Democrats are saying about Trump?

Let us acknowledge that we have choices — and that voting for the lesser of two evils doesn’t have to be one of them. We can reject both Trump and Planter if we think neither has the character we want in someone holding high office in our government. We can cast a symbolic vote for a candidate we know doesn’t stand a chance of winning.

Or we can sit out the election. I mean, if you’ve spent years railing against Trump as a fascist, why vote for a candidate who chose to put a Nazi tattoo on his chest — and kept it there for nearly two decades?

Staying home on Election Day — if it matters, that’s what I did all three times Trump ran — is also a way of making a statement that doesn’t compromise one’s principles.

Let me end with a few lines from another New York Times opinion piece — this one from David French, who, for the record, loathes Trump as much as his colleague Frank Bruni does.

“If a person with an identical profile [as Platner] applied to be your manager at work, would you be comfortable hiring him? And if you’d have qualms putting such a man in charge of your team at work, why is it appropriate to put him in the U.S. Senate?”

Good question. And if the answer is because he’s a Democrat who presumably would not support Trump, that doesn’t strike me as a good answer. Not a good enough answer, anyway.