From Newsgroup: alt.politics.usa

Graham Platner has finally become too big a liability for the
Democratic establishment.

Everyone and their brother is rushing to pull their endorsement and
distance themselves from the Platner campaign over the recent sexual
assault scandal that has come out against him.

Mind you, voters didnAt seem to care about PlatnerAs laundry list of
scandals until a few days ago, when he was accused of assault by Jenny Racicot. Platner faced assault allegations over a month ago from
Lyndsey Fifield, yet his lead in some polls only grew.

The trouble with the MeToo movement was never that it sought to shed
light on those unfit to hold public office.

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That said, in the unfortunate reality that few politicians are saints,
we must distinguish between what is unsavory and what is disqualifying.
If we barred anybody who ever made an inappropriate comment from
holding office, it would be impossible to keep a candidate for more
than 30 seconds. A serial abuser, however, should be excommunicated
from the public sphere forever.

The trouble, of course, was never with encouraging women to speak up
about instances of sexual assault. The trouble was with the attitude
defined by the movementAs slogan, oBelieve All Women.o Declaring
obelieve allo anything is going to incentivize certain malicious actors
to weaponize societyAs sympathy. And to absolutely no oneAs surprise,
the movement brought instances of baseless accusations designed for
political and personal gain.

When Joe Biden was accused of rape by Tara Reade during the 2020
presidential election, you werenAt supposed to believe all women
anymore. As with all good witch hunts, the hysteria died when the
accusers bit off more than they could chew. Though the accusations did
appear to have some merit, the party wasnAt going to drop its nominee
over them, so they dismissed the whole case as trivial.

Whether or not Biden was guilty, oBelieve All Womeno got a lot more
flexible when women started saying things the Democrats didnAt like. It
became clear that society could not baselessly accept every single
accusation, and so the pendulum swung in the other direction u being
awfully quick to dismiss even the serious cases.

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The simple explanation is a boy-who-cried-wolf dynamic. The MeToo
movement of the 2010s had thoroughly desensitized the public to claims
of sexual abuse. Or so it seemed until the Democratic establishment
finally abandoned Platner over RacicotAs accusations.

But the fact that the Democrats did eventually drop Platner reveals a
more concerning dynamic within the party.

What we have now is a situation even worse than the boy who cried wolf. Democratic voters still seem to understand sexual assault to be a disqualifying offense; they just have moved the goalpost of who gets to
decide when something is or isnAt over the line. Instead of the natural
public response that should come with plausible claims, the public
response is manufactured in accordance with the establishmentAs
response.

IAm old enough (and one neednAt be very old) to recall the sexual
assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The
New York Times furiously backed the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, in
dozens of articles, including a 2018 op-ed titled oSexual Abuse IsnAt Partisan.o I think I have a carton of 2018 milk that has aged better.

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Not a single witness could corroborate her story. Ford herself brought
forward three individuals, none of whom recalled ever having been to a
party anything like the one she described. Ford could not remember
whose house the party was at, how she got there, or how she got home. Kavanaugh had attended a Catholic all-boys school at the time, and not
a single person testified that he ever knew Ford.

Now letAs talk about the Platner case.

The Times massively watered down FifieldAs story. Unlike the case of
Ford, Fifield was actually in a documented relationship with Platner
and had provided the testimonies of friends she confided in during the
time of the assault. The article conveniently omitted them. ItAs also
worth mentioning that while Kavanaugh had a spotless character record
and reputation before his appointment in 2018, Platner had weathered
scandal after scandal on precisely the subject of sexual misconduct.

Since Racicot was a Democrat, the party could no longer claim the
accusation was politically motivated. At last, they were forced to act,
and the moment they did, it became acceptable to call out PlatnerAs
behavior.

The Bulwark, bastion of honest reporting that it is, published an
article on Platner over a week after FifieldAs accusations. The article heavily minimized the scandal and focused on his political talents and
appeal. There was no companion op-ed criticizing his behavior or
calling for him to drop out over the scandal. Only after Racicot came
forward and endorsements started dropping like flies did the Bulwark
publish a piece titled oGraham Platner Crossed the VotersA Red Line.o

Could someone please identify where exactly that red line is? IAm
having a hard time finding it.

The MeToo movement has, predictably, done enormous damage to the
credibility of victims of sexual assault. The double standard employed
by the Left hurts both those who are baselessly accused and those real
victims whose cases will be chalked up to political posturing.

Justice is blind and indiscriminate. When the core principles of
society are violated, the transgressors must be held accountable. The
Platner case demonstrated that it is not a matter of principle, but
political convenience that compels the Democratic Party to purge its
ranks.

The MeToo movement was supposed to end selective silence. Instead, it
simply changed who does the selecting.


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