Ah, the Irony: Report Says 'Progressive' Pushed Graham Platner as Alternative to AOC for President Because He Was Male
On Thursday, one of the people who had the most to do with foisting Graham Platner upon Maine Democrats and the American body politic finally issued a mea culpa for believing so heavily in the accused rapist.
“Like so many of his supporters, I’m deeply disappointed,” Morris Katz said on X Thursday evening.
“As soon as the team became aware of the rape allegations against Graham Platner we advised he suspend his candidacy, and in the following days worked to wind down the campaign.”
As soon as the team became aware of the rape allegations against Graham Platner we advised he suspend his candidacy, and in the following days worked to wind down the campaign.
Like so many of his supporters, I’m deeply disappointed.
— Morris Katz (@katz_morris) July 9, 2026
The accuracy of this will probably be determined in a bunch of Now The Truth Can Be Told™ post-mortems about how dysfunctional an operation has to be to go into one of the most competitive seats in the nation before the 2026 midterms, elevate a hobbyist oysterman who claimed online to be a socialist or communist, not do a thorough background check on him, still believe in him after numerous incidents proved that background check definitely needed to happen, and finally abandon him not after a credible allegation of partner abuse, but of partner abuse lodged by a Democrat.
(Because yeah, there were other allegations, but the woman who was dating him at that time had the misfortune of being a Republican.)
However, Morris Katz isn’t just some rando nut job who wandered his way into the biggest political story so far in the 2026 campaign process. He’s a hyper-connected New York-based progressive political fixer best known for guiding Zohran Mamdani into Gracie Mansion in 2025.
And according to a New York Post report published Thursday evening, he had way more ambitious goals for Platner than just the Senate: He wanted him to be president in 2032 and thought he was more electable than the other potential progressive standard-bearer, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, because he’s a dude.
Some progressives these progressives are: Don’t respect nonbinary pronouns and your career is as good as dead, buster, but they also don’t think a woman can run the country.
From the New York Post:
Morris Katz hyped up Platner as a Bernie Sanders successor who could captivate the progressive base of the Democratic Party — much better than Squad darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who he saw as a losing nominee, two Democratic sources revealed.
One reason Katz favored Platner’s chances over AOC was that he’s a man, sources said. …
“‘The guy is so f***ing talented,’” Katz boasted around the time of Platner’s campaign launch in August 2025, the source noted, suggesting that the sky was the limit given the slick ads he expected to produce and fundraising he would be able to bring in as a result.
A source said that Katz remained adamant that Platner was “his presidential ticket” even after the rape allegations, unbelievably.
“You make this guy senator, and then you make this guy president because, in large part, Morris and like this whole sector of the left do not believe that AOC can win because she’s a woman,” the source told the New York Post.
Katz, 27, is apparently tradder than trad because he believes a woman’s place is in the lower chamber, I guess. Find me a paleoconservative Republican power broker this sexist and I’ll buy you an oyster farm. (Provided your mom is willing to subsidize you by buying up all your product, that is.)
And there are advantages to being a woman who doesn’t have a documented history of alcohol abuse and a casual approach to what consent might look like. To date, it’s worth noting that AOC has zero rape or abuse allegations against her, for all her faults. She also seemed to know exactly who she was dealing with when asked to endorse Platner, basically ghosting him when asked her opinion by reporters:
Q: Should Democrats abandon Graham Platner?
AOC: “Um you know, I haven’t waded into that primary…” pic.twitter.com/Ou8sgvR1XP
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 4, 2026
So yeah, here’s a first in the pages of The Western Journal: Props, AOC. No rape allegations, no abuse allegations, still perhaps on track for a presidential nomination in 2028 or 2032 or whenever. Also, no Nazi tattoos, and one more congressional seat than Graham Platner will ever have. AOC 5, Platner 0.
Aside from the obvious irony inherent in picking some obscure oysterman with serious mental health issues because he had a Y chromosome, this is perfectly indicative of the low expectations progressive Democrats have, both of their candidates and of the American voter.
The only man responsible for Graham Platner’s actions is Graham Platner, but he’s not the only one responsible for the fact that he’s not just some back-page story in the local Maine media about a random veteran oysterman getting charged with sexual abuse of a former partner.
He was an unvetted guy with clear mental health issues who remained unvetted despite scandal after scandal, including a Nazi tattoo, and got as far as securing the Democratic nomination, in large part because of Morris Katz.
And Katz, including being a sexist, is also either as credulous as heck or thought other campaign operatives were, too.
According to a New York Times report, which had Katz promoting Platner for a presidential run as soon as 2028, he responded to June reports of partner abuse by saying “he had asked Mr. Platner directly and repeatedly whether anyone had made sexual assault allegations against him and the candidate had said no, according to two people familiar with the discussion who described it on the condition of anonymity.”
How many times had Graham Platner apparently repeatedly assured everyone behind the scenes that there was nothing more coming down the pike? A lot. And how many times did something else come down the pike? Not just a lot, but on exactly as many occasions as he’d assured everyone behind the scenes that this would never happen again, oysterman’s honor.
“This should have been over when the guy had a Nazi tattoo. It wasn’t,” a Democratic source told the New York Post.
“Then it should have been over when multiple women came out, and there were Reddit posts excusing all of this horrible behavior, not when the guy was, like, 20 years old but when he was 30.”
But it wasn’t, in part because apparently this is what progressives think men are, and what men will vote for. This is, to use a phrase popularized by former President George W. Bush, “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in action.
In this way, perhaps Katz isn’t a misogynist after all, but simply a misanthrope: His opinion of men is low — perhaps even lower — than his opinion of women. If that’s the best you can say about a guy, though, the last place he belongs is in the public sphere.
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