Democratic political consultant James Carville wants Maine voters to back Graham Platner despite the candidate’s flaws — and partly because of some of them. Platner is currently the likely Democratic nominee in Maine’s U.S. Senate race. If Platner wins the primary, he will face Republican Senator Susan Collins, who was first elected in 1996.
“I understand he’s f—— up,” said Carville on his Politicon podcast. “Yeah, maybe we need a combat veteran right on that Senate floor, who is f—— up.”
Carville berated Senator Collins by calling her “the most pliable member in the history of the United States Senate.”
He warned that he believes the country is “in imminent peril — I mean, imminent peril,” and asked: “Who is most likely to slow this criminal in charge?”
“I think it’s Graham Platner.”
“I ask all of you to understand his flaws, and understand the peril that this nation is in, and maybe he might be the right guy at the right time,” said Carville.
“Graham Platner grew up, I think, pretty privileged,” Carville said, sharing some of the likely Democratic nominee’s backstory. “He went to some kind of fancy fancy boarding school. He graduated, he joined the United States Marine Corps. He was in for eight years. He had three combat deployments. He gets out of the Marine Corps, and he goes to GW.”
Then Platner “joined the Maryland National Guard. Oh, you know what happened? He gets deployed a fourth time.”
“He’s f—— up,” said Carville. “He’s been shot at. He’s a veteran. All right? He’s got a little bit weird. He’s an oysterman. I know what oystermen do. I live in Louisiana. I think that oyster harvesting is the same the world over, it’s hard a—— work.”
Carville acknowledged that he has concerns, but said that maybe senators “need to look at this guy before they start sending young people off to fight wars, and see what the consequence of it is. Maybe he ought to run and say, ‘You don’t know, I’m gonna be on a veterans affairs committee, and I wanna be on a mental health subcommittee, ’cause I know something about… Yeah, I might be five degrees off dead center. So f—— what?’ They need that.”
He said he doesn’t agree with Platner’s economic stances, that they are “to the left of anything I’d say I’m for.”
“But you know what? He recognizes this horrific inequality in this country. And it actually would do some good to have somebody in there.”
Carville called Platner’s tattoo “very troubling.”
He said, “what I have to consider first, is this country is about to lose it. The whole goddamn thing.”
“Okay, we gotta win this,” Carville concluded. “And if we got a person who’s understandably got issues, yeah, good. And maybe people ought to see it, and maybe we ought to just be reminded of what these stupid wars have brought about in the consequence of said stupid wars. It’s [what] stupid Susan Collin's been for all her political life.”