The Porter-Platner Train Wrecks Tell A Story

Why You Might Want To Read This: there’s a very clear thread connecting the implosions of the Katie Porter and Graham Platner campaigns. It’s the immaturity and willingness within the progressive movement to cover ones ears and scream “La la la” to block out reality, and opt for the candidate who has checked all the boxes— except for proving competency and truthfulness boxes. For this post, the F. Scott Fitzgerald observation is quite relevant: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” [by the way, if you are a regular reader, are you a paid subscriber yet so you can get archived subscriber-only posts for the bargain price of ONLY $50 a YEAR?]

Star Trek V is not the best of the full-length movies (The Wrath of Khan ranks first, IMHO, as a life-long Trekkie) but there is this moment in the movie, which I’m slightly condensing here:

The U.S.S. Enterprise crew, partly against its will, is dragged along on a mission fueled by the hubris of Spock’s half-brother, and comes face-to-face with a powerful Being, which might, or might not be, God. The Being is entranced by the existence of the starship Enterprise and wonders aloud, in a kind voice, whether the starship could carry “my wisdom” far into the galaxy.

A bit of back-and-forth ensues, at which point Captain Kirk steps into the scene, clears his throat and politely raises his hand, with a couple of “excuse me” utterances, wanting to ask “God” a question: “What does God need with a starship?”. The Being ignores him, pleading to, “Bring the ship closer.”

Kirk insists: “I said... what does God need with a starship?” The Being asks, “Who is this creature?” To which Kirk responds, “Who am I? Don’t you know? Aren’t you God?”. The Being goes from cheery to a threatening, “You doubt me?”.

Kirk: “I seek proof”. To which the Being fires a bolt of energy from its eye and levels Kirk.

Today, there are Captain Kirks scattered all across the political landscape: folks who pipe up to ask questions, often quietly, about the flavor-of-the-moment candidate. Surrounding the candidate/Being is a pliant, accepting and, yes, devoted following that sometimes gives off the rancid odor of a cult. The cult dampens and shuts down rationale questioning, zapping thoughtful conversations aimed at plumbing the pluses and minuses of the candidacy.

I get it. We are desperate, rightly so, to answer the cry of a slew of voters who want to get people into office who won’t just do the bidding of corporate scum or pimp for genocidal wars. The theory popular among progressives is the moment is ripe for “real people”, non “establishment” folks who can take the reins of leadership and move the country in a sane direction.

That theory is not wrong. It has to be over for the leaders, often referred to generally as “The Establishment”, on economics, war and peace, corporate power. They’ve screwed this up so bad just for the sake of their own power and wealth—and some of us have made this argument going back to the chief m-fer (and likely rapist of Juanita Broaddrick) Bill Clinton who embraced NAFTA, the huge de-regulation of the media industry (which really is the anchor to what people correctly criticize today about media consolidation) and sold off the entire party to every corporate scum he could (and he and his Chappaqua housemate continue to do that with the corporate-washing Clinton Foundation).

Schumer, Jeffries, the whole lot of them. I thought this picture (below) I took exactly TEN YEARS AGO is emblematic and, karmically, appeared on my timeline this week—snapped at the Democratic Party 2016 party platform hearings in Florida when delegates sought to have the party take a stand against the Trans Pacific Partnership. We failed because the eventual nominee of the party made sure her delegates stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the corporate donors who were salivating for yet another NAFTA-style putrid trade deal.

And, so, now comes the F. Scott Fitzgerald-themed opposing idea we have to hold at the same: there is still a level of immaturity, lack of sophistication, absence of coordination, a heap of cutting corners and just dumb-ass-ery within what is broadly called “the progressive movement” that ends up in too many train wrecks.

Here, I just want to hone in on two factors in the fuck-ups: measuring candidates by competence and rigorous standards:

To wit, Katie Porter. I said, multiple times publicly, Porter was a really solid member of Congress, brandishing her white board and laser questions flung out at witnesses who were lying through their teeth. I would have cheered her on to continue as a member of the House…

AND…she was 1,000 percent not qualified to be governor of California, a $4.3 trillion economy, the 4th largest in the world. There was a lot of attention paid to her personnel management skills but the bigger point given way too little weight: She has never run anything! My union made the head-shaking decision to early endorse her without any effort, zero, to think that through. If she had won, I do not think, based on enough common-sense evidence, she would have the emotional intelligence to govern—unlike Zohran Mamdani who also had zero executive experience (a legit point to bring up during the campaign) but he also appeared, to an outside observer, to have the emotional intelligence to manage and choose A-level folks to help run a complex city.

For some, it feels like an unfair high bar a la “why isn’t the establishment held to the same standard?" because the last 50 years shows that so-called “business people” have massively screwed the pooch.

Well, that's not the standard we should measure up to. The Establishment rolls out disaster after disaster…so we should be as mediocre as well? How does that make any sense?

I wrote about this last July in the context of the NYC mayoral campaign. In part:

Truth: progressives give short shrift to the business of actually running governments. When you raise that shortcoming, people get either defensive or they think you have some secret business agenda because obviously to effectively administer a big organization means you must be a sell-out.

Progressives have been really bad at running organizations, whether municipal government or non-profits. There is a very high premium on electing or promoting leaders who have wonderful passion, vision and commitment—all important attributes!—but far too little scrutiny is afforded to whether the person can master the thousands of details to make it all gel, from reading a financial statement to managing people. A whole slew of progressive organizations get by on the generosity of rich people or foundations who don’t peer too closely at the internal operations and there’s rarely accountability.

Hey, it’s hard to run a city. Most people fail. To be clear, we could fill a book of all the “business” friendly or “moderates” who ran cities and states into the ground.

But, right now, progressives are, and will be, held to a higher standard, fairly or not. We are arguing for a very different vision of the economy, and radical transformation is perhaps an even bigger administrative challenge than just picking up the reins of a free-market economy from the prior person.

…So, there should be a multi-year project to train thousands of great progressives in the soup-to-nuts of being at the head of a big bureaucracy. “If “Run For Something” is the flavor of the day (it is“dedicated to recruiting and supporting young candidates running for down-ballot office”), I’d edit and shorten the meme slightly to read, in parallel: “Run Something”.

Why shouldn’t competence be important in evaluating a candidate?

We have to have space to rationally debate pros and cons without being labeled, for example, "pro-AIPAC" or "misogynist" or insufficiently progressive. I’ve given money to losing candidates. That's fine. We aren’t going to win every time and probably, in the short term, there will be more losses.

But, if you are representing the progressive movement, broadly defined, FFS, you can’t be an embarrassment. You have to be competent. Locally in my town, there was a progressive candidate who wanted to challenge a truly woeful Congressional incumbent—but the challenger struggled, frankly it was cringe-y, to answer, in a public forum, the most basic policy questions (e.g., what is your view on Glass-Steagall, or what is your view about NATO…all questions a potential member of Congress will need to address). Hello, sit down! You should not have the hubris to run if you haven’t done your own work to faithfully represent the movement.

Platner is a story of common sense. I smelled something off about Platner months ago. I wanted him to succeed, for all the reasons you'd imagine. I was prepared to throw him some cash.

So, I listened to each explanation he gave for the Nazi tattoo/the online racist-misogynist postings of the past/the early women abuse stories. To be sure, it’s a fair point to make about due process and that politics doesn't have much space for allowing people to answer charges hurled in the heat of a campaign.

BUT, c’mon, people, use your f-ing common sense or basic natural humanity gifted with a set of ears and eyes that asks, “does this ring true?”. Uh, not once, not twice but multiple times. It failed the test of truthiness. And if you still believe him after listening to that 11-minute disastrous self-indulgent withdrawal video...

Another way to judge the tolerance for Platner: would your reaction to a Nazi tattoo/the online racist-misogynist postings of the past/the early women abuse stories be the same if the candidate was, say, awash in AIPAC money or shilling openly for data centers on behalf of “tech bros”—not to mention, say, a Mitch McConnell acolyte. If the answer is “no”, then, cool, you’ve got your yardstick.

My most charitable explanation for the blind devotion to Platner among a slice of supporters (perhaps, mainly on-line, non-Mainers), and this repeats itself in other circumstances, is the main lesson to take away here: the desperation to anoint a hero, to win in a very dark time, entirely clouds the litmus test we use to judge people in normal life.

Here’s to more Captain Kirks holding the line and speaking out.