"Republican Hit Jobs and How To Beat Them"

Rick Wilson.

"The GOP’s entire theory of Democratic candidates rests on one assumption: that the left will be so delicate, so morally fastidious, so desperate to be seen as clean that the faintest smudge on the campaign escutcheon becomes a death sentence. They repurposed Alinsky against Democrats decades ago: make the enemy live up to their own book of rules, because you know they can’t, and you know they’ll flinch first.

Now, Platner is a flawed man who has done stupid shit.

Let me be precise about what I mean, because the word has gone soft from overuse. I don’t mean he’s a saint with an asterisk. I mean he is a man who has lived enough life to have a past with weight to it, and who, when the past arrived in 30-point type, did not hide behind a crisis-comms firm and a statement built entirely written in the passive voice. He stood in the daylight and said: that was me, here’s who I am now, judge the distance. He called out the lies, owned the truths, and showed us the man he is today.

Last night, Mainers decided that Platner may be an asshole, but he’s their asshole."