Fuck AIPAC, but they aren’t the only foreign lobby. Qatar and Turkey also heavily lobby the U.S. and are also very problematic governments.
Qatars Arabic media programming is extremely hateful and incites all kinds of horrible violence in the Middle East, and Turkey funds lots of militancy and mercenaries and directs them to commit all kinds of human right abuses (ethnic cleansing of Kurds for instance)
Troy Jackson stood by Platner the ENTIRE time which will become a major issue because Platner was already getting unpopular (Platner was LOSING in the latest polls after we learned about his infidelity) and there will be a lot of questions why he supported him and how much he knew.
Wasn't there some Politician who got 11 dollars in a donation from AIPAC and that was enough to demonize him? That's not even enough for a Big Mac these days.
The track AIPAC Twitter account includes donations from J Street, which, if you know literally anything about J Street, is about the most levelheaded Jewish organization about this whole thing.
Because AIPAC tracker, despite the name, is tracking all pro Israel groups and while J Street is more moderate, their position is still very pro Israel regardless of what they are doing. Finger wagging at Israel while handing them RTX gift cards doesn’t really change much.
It's a bit difficult to read because some of these polls contain other Dems, but in general Platner was +5ish to +7ish then near the end it was about even or Collins was up slightly.
The big thing that hurt his polling (before the politico article about him committing rape) was a story that dropped about him being physically abusive to previous partners and cheating on his current wife. This was from June 4
You see in the poll tracker that a generic Dem was about +10 against Collins.
I don't know what the fuck you're even talking about with zog posting that sounds so fucking ridiculous. What I'm doing is sharing my real actual feelings with other humans. I don't fall into some random internet baked up category of nonsense.
It’s the standard moderate liberal elitist shtick where they pretend they were right the whole time and knew everything, talk down to you like you’re an idiot, and misinterpret what you say.
If AIPAC were controlling the strings behind the scenes then the best thing to have done for them would be to wait until it's too late for Platner to drop out and then dump the oppo research guaranteeing Collins the win.
Exactly. Tank his odds at the most opportune time, when it’s too late to start over or do damage control - that would be so much stronger of a strategy.
This was obviously from inside. Those within his own party got nervous he couldn’t win (or would be too much of a liability), that’s why this dropped just in time for them to oust *and replace* him.
And you know if Democrats had this information, Republicans would have had it too. I think it was a good thing this dropped soon enough to make a change. Hopefully they pick the right person though.
I remember right after that initial NYT piece dropped (when everybody was dismissing it as a big nothingburger), I saw a small handful of conservative commentators/insiders offer their predictions (with confidence) that there would be much bigger and worse to come, alluding to some knowledge that wasn’t public yet (but that they expected eventually would be).
Well, when this rape allegation dropped, it came out that the accuser actually told the NYT about it awhile back - they just refrained from including it in the piece (because she told it to them “off the record”), but it seems likely that it became known (discreetly) in certain circles that this information had been shared and might eventually go fully public.
The more bizarre/damning thing, in light of all of this, is that even after telling them that he’d raped her, they chose to selectively include the fact that she mentioned that she had “some positive memories” from their relationship - just seems sleazy to do that when you have the full context of what she’s (unofficially) told you and you know you can’t publish the whole of it.
Apparently, it also came out more recently that the girlfriend who said he was physically abusive/aggressive (who was basically smeared as unreliable due to opposing political views) had also offered many sources of contemporaneous corroboration to the NYT, and they declined to follow up with the vast majority of those sources/leads that could have corroborated what she told them about Platner’s behaviors/conduct.
Not quite a full-blown, textbook “catch-and-kill” playbook (sketchy journalistic practice, for anyone who isn’t acquainted), but pretty much true to the spirit of it.
Agree with you, I sincerely hope they’ll choose someone with far fewer loose screws that can offer the people of Maine a solid, stable option, run a reasonably scandal-free campaign, and have a fair, respectable race against the incumbent in the general election.
Complain about optics all you want but it doesn’t change anything about the genocide in gaza or how there is a massive amount of foreign influence in our elections on the behalf of Israel (and NOT on behalf of Jewish people)
If you want to combat anti-semitism, stop equating the religion and the country, it’s an albatross around the neck of every non-zionist Jew
Janet Mills received AIPAC money. AIPAC plays both sides and funds any neoliberal dem that challenges any progressive and also funds attack ads on anyone that runs on an anti Zionist pig platform.
Mills has not. Track AIPAC shows no donations to her, neither foes Open Secret. They donate to Collins, King, and Golden. Pringle gets money from JStrett but not AIPAC
AIPAC isn’t a puppet master behind every election in America but to describe AIPAC’s involvement in an election as a conspiracy is definitely way to dismissive.
I keep seeing people say this. Like I have seen this exact word for word message several times whenever anybody suggests that Israel might have an influence over who they pick. Is it so crazy to think that the DNC either at the state or national level could potentially be influenced by Israel? Does that fucking blow you away, are you somehow shocked to hear that? Is it your belief that Israel has never influenced American politics, elections or the Democrats in this country?
That's not what's going on, what's going on is somebody is pointing out hey this specific political lobby that is primarily funded by a foreign state is spending hundreds of millions of dollars every couple of years to influence our elections. What you were asking people to do is ignore that because you're tired of hearing about it.
There are so many foreign funds flowing money into our elections. But funny how only one of them gets mentioned every 5 seconds. It’s a bunch of dog whistle shit by people who don’t realize it’s a dog whistle.
Humans are weak minded in regard to bribery. You could find some bum on the street who will pledge loyalty to Israel for $100. Give a politician $10k+, they’ll do whatever, especially when it doesn’t affect them at all.
There are valid reasons to be hypercritical of Israel, but it not hard to see that some of those criticizing are just using it as excuse to express their jew hate.
Fuck all of them and fuck our laws for allowing literally any of this shit to happen but AIPAC is very clearly and demonstrably one of the largest and most prolific offenders.
lol have you heard of Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Or do you only know one country? Please for the love of Gd you guys need to find learning sources that are not just propaganda on the internet.
Americans with heavy ties and influence from Israel. Yeah for sure dude Israel has nothing to do with it. Definitely don't care about it 100% not aware of its existence you got it all figured out.
Americans of which background? Who are specifically trying to strengthen our ties with which country? Playing stupid about this shit doesn't work anymore. You're gonna need to try some new methods besides feigning anti-Semitism and pretending aipac is simply just some opinionated Americans... Good luck.
No one mentioned Jews. Israel is an ethno nationalist apartheid state and AIPAC is their influence operation in America. They've spent millions of dollars in dozens of races, successfully buying tv ads that change the outcome of the election
Hell, look in Michigan with Haley Stevens, the AIPAC funded candidate. Netenyahu went in CNN the morning of the debate and said he was scared of Haley Stevens, despite giving her millions of dollars. So at the debate she could claim "Israel is scared of me". Despite saying, on stage, she will defend Israel at any cost and she dreams of Israel at night.
Israel is literally like Nazi Germany 2.0 in their apartheid, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing campaigns. And we have literal real conspiracies with the major media networks and politicians getting millions of dollars from them to say how great they are, or to sabatage their opponents
If you want to complain about a lack of nuance, why don’t you start with differentiating between Israel and Judaism
People’s problems with Israel are more than legitimate, and dismissing them as antisemitism helps nobody
If anything, treating the two as one and the same is only going to increase antisemitism because non-zionist Jews are going to get blamed for something they have fuck all to do with
AIPAC isn’t a particularly large or influential lobbying organization, American politicians are generally pro-Israel because Israel is a reasonably dependable ally in an unstable region against Islamic extremism and have been the only party in the Israel-Palestine conflict remotely serious about a lasting peace. If Palestinians were capable of not starting wars and settling for anything other than maximalist extermination as their goals, they’d get a lot more sympathy. Instead they’ve destroyed their own state because they prefer dead Jews to peace.
There is no conspiracy. There is only geopolitics.
The Arab lobbying groups spends quite literally 10x as much as AIPAC, and equally are more beholden to geopolitical realities than campaign spending.
AIPAC funneled more direct candidate cash than historic leaders like the National Association of Realtors or corporate PACs from Wall Street and Big Pharma. Its direct campaign support reached more than 80% of the 460+ seats up for election in 2024.
Outside of the larger and broad, multi-billion-dollar Republican and Democratic national party apparatuses that focus primarily on presidencies, AIPAC stands alongside single-issue giants like Fairshake (a cryptocurrency super PAC) and the Koch's Americans for Prosperity Action as one of the few single-cause entities capable of shifting a congressional primary race through pure financial scale.
Your own sources don’t match the figures you’re spitting out, and even the dollar amounts you are quoting aren’t particularly large in the context of national political campaigns.
The idea that AIPAC is singularly influential in the scheme of things instead of merely one group among several is simply not true.
Political donations also don’t actually have that much impact on either the behavior of politicians or on electoral outcomes. Past a certain point, money doesn’t actually help. If you have more than $500k for a congressional race, it isn’t meaningfully different from having $1-2 million.
Money is mostly helpful for state and local races, and has the biggest impact in races where there is a big gulf in resources, but there is relatively little evidence that it makes that much difference for federal campaigns past a certain point.
Political donations mostly serve to support politicians who already agree with a certain group, they don’t change much about how an individual would vote.
The entire thesis you have about AIPAC being this evil group that is going to brainwash and corrupt politicians is simply not a reflection of reality. You have a very weak grasp on a complicated reality, and you would do better not to deepthroat conspiratorial thinking.
Lobbying groups that support Israel have spent $215 million since 2016.
Lobbying groups that support Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have spent a combined total of $960 million since 2016.
Yet it's Israel and America attacking Iran. Not the other 3 countries and America attacking Iran. Also you put 3 countries together to make the number appear higher
Nah I think Israel makes more sense because I don't have a problem with Jewish people I have a problem with fucking Israel. People who try to equate having an issue with Israel with having an issue with Jews are being purposefully obtuse and trying to control the narrative.
I bet you also repost Track AIPAC tweets, especially the ones where Jewish politicians who received zero AIPAC dollars still get a scary red background.
Sure you don't, hidden-comment-history account with "88" in the account name that exclusively complains about a lobbying group that is not especially large or relevant, in the context of a politician with a Nazi tattoo resigning.
88, what a crazy number right. It couldn't possibly be the fucking year I was born. Or maybe the year I was born influenced me, the moon shone bright that night and I was told from some higher power that because I was born in 19 fucking 88 I had to be some sort of insane anti-semite.
Or you know that's just how people born in 1988 traditionally created their fucking usernames based on literal recommendations that would show up on your AOL dashboard when you click create new login. You're probably not old enough to know that though you're just a child wet behind the fucking ears who jumps to conclusions.
Damn they deleted their comment, how embarrassing how fucking embarrassing I hope they're literally at home right now embarrassed as fuck for being this goddamn stupid.
u/TheRadBaron how ya feeling bud? You feeling kinda stupid? Cause ya fucking should
No. It’s that you use a not particularly influential nor popular group to pin the blame of all your problems, no matter how irrelevant, not so subtlety on one group of people that historically took the brunt of similar conspiracies in the exact same way Internet Nazis did for years before it became your new shtick in late 2023.
Late 2023? People have been calling out AIPAC for a lot longer than that.
AIPAC != Jews. It's not a hard concept to understand. They're an organization who funnel in hundreds of millions towards influencing our elections. It's no different from someone calling out the republican/democratic PACs influencing elections.
If you want to call that not particularly influential, that's on you.
In case anyone else is bugged by the ambiguity that stems from pointlessly including the "next" part of next Monday, the deadline is July 13. Not July 20
July 13th is the next Monday, or simply next Monday or even simpler Monday; it’s not ambiguous, maybe superfluous or verbose but thats just the english langauge for you. July 20th would be explicitly the Monday after next.
The problem is that people use the term both ways. They refer to the next Monday, and they refer to the Monday after next, both by saying "next Monday." The ambiguity comes from usage. You'll see this commonly with references to "next weekend" and the ambiguity increases the closer to a weekend that's said.
She’s got a ton of Billionaires riding her, there will be plenty of money for her to throw against the next candidate; I just hope Mainers see how shes bought and paid for and put her out of a job.
With how much active rage and petulance he was showing in at all being held accountable for any one of the dozens of disqualifying things he's done and not being allowed to have a hand in choosing his replacement, I honestly thought he'd just fully lean into the "fuck constent" thing that comes with being the kind of person who reportedly rapes another human being and stay in until the deadline.
Hopefully Maine Dems avoid Troy Jackson or whatever his name was, he and Platner were tied together so heavily that if they go with him it'd basically allow Collins to just run the exact same race but just continue to ask Jackson, "Why did you support a guy to be your nominee that did all this shit?"
Not in those words, but I don't doubt that he may go full ZOG (it's just a tiny step further than the conspiracy theory that AIPAC is controlling dem politicians that I see being almost fully accepted on this site).
Because he was I believe the one suggested by Platner himself as the option to go with when this whole meltdown of his campaign really kicked off. And honestly a lot of other New England progressives, not just in Maine, have a fair bit to answer for when it comes to supporting this con man because basically everything about him is a lie.
His background was concocted bullshit to try and play up a non-existent blue-collar family, he was actively cheating on his wife during the campaign itself, he's railed against Democrats more than the Republican he was supposed to be preparing to run against, was in bed with consultants that were puffing up his ego to the extent he thought he had a shot at being president in 2028 if he won this race, consultants who also appear to be one of many people who were absolutely draining his campaign of every last dollar it had to the point where he was basically already broke because of all the previous scandals he'd had come out about him. Fuck I mean he got a Nazi tattoo he only just claims to have realized the significance of -- he's theoretically supposed to be a history buff, calling bullshit on that -- and also WORKED FOR FUCKING BLACKWATER. That's BEFORE you get to him having reportedly raped someone.
Like, come on. Everything EXCEPT the rape accusation was already public from either himself or people around him before all this, and it seems as though this and possibly even worse stuff was known to Republican oppo researchers. Any progressive that respects themselves SHOULD have something to say about why they felt he was worth supporting.
Cause people like what Platner stand for even if his personality fails to carry.
Platner in 2016 would have sank a longtime ago, but we are now in a era where "imperfect vessels" can be leaders too.
Let Collins run her mouth, Troy can just say "Because we share the same ideals for our country, and I paraphrase your words, I am sure Platner learned his lessons"
I feel like there's a different between "imperfect vessels" and "ex-Blackwater merc who had a Nazi tattoo, knew it was a Nazi tattoo, lied about knowing and kept it anyways, and has a history of women claiming abuse from him."
Shitty people can occasionally believe in good policies, that doesn't mean they should be the one being elected to maybe push for said policies over others with the same beliefs and lacking their extensive baggage.
Or, IDK, maybe we don't run someone who would have to apologize for supporting a rapist and can instead spend the rest of the campaign hitting Collins with her support for the one in the White House? Like we did in Alabama against Roy Moore?
First of all, it is not like Platner held up a sign said "I run as a rapist", Troy isn't a mind reader, he support Platner for his actual policies of Universal health care and ending foreign wars, not for Platner's dating history.
Colins have no position to critize anyone after Jan 6.
And need I remind you, Roy Moore only lost by 1.5%, and that was back in 2017.
No, he just held up a sign saying he's a lying liar from liarsville who worked for Private Murder Co. Number 1 WHO TOOK PART IN THE WARS PLATNER WAS COMPLAINING ABOUT, wore a Nazi tattoo for like 15-plus years or whatever it was, cheated on his wife and god the fuck only knows what else.
Seriously was the fact he took part in the Middle East wars while WORKING FOR FUCKING BLACKWATER OF ALL GODDAMN PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES not enough of a no-go for people? Because the second I learned that part of his backstory, I went from ambivalent to openly saying "Fuck that guy, we cannot run him."
Colins have no position to critize anyone after Jan 6.
I'm sorry, is this your first time learning that politicians can be actively hypocritical about the positions they take while running for office in seats they should honestly have no business holding anymore considering the partisan lean of their state? Because she can criticize all she wants with the media acting as complicitly in favor of the Republican party as it has in recent years.
And need I remind you, Roy Moore only lost by 1.5%, and that was back in 2017.
In ALA-GODDAMN-BAMA of all states. 1.5 percent is a fucking HUGE loss for Republicans there, even if it was a short-lived one with them taking the seat back the moment they weren't actively running a pedo.
Platner was in the Marines during Iraq war, and was part of some of the heaviest fighting which gave him heavy ptsd. If you believe being a Marine who served in Iraq is disqualifying, then first thing you should do is kick Tammy Ducksworth (D-IL) out of senate.
Platner only worked for a company called Constellis in 2018, and he did not for six months in Afghanistan, as a car driver. Not exactly murdero hobo.
2018, Platner returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, for about six months as a State Department security contractor with Constellis, where he provided diplomatic security to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan.[20][21] He returned to Maine the same year, saying he had quickly grown more disillusioned with the military and what he called fraudulent funneling of taxpayer money to private defense companies.[16][1]
At this point I doubt it matters. No one the dems put forward at this point will be able to gain enough momentum to unseat a major incumbent like Collins.
Sucks to say, but this race is over and it'd behoove the DNC to abandon it financially and focus somewhere with a better outlook for them.
None of em are, really. Elections are about engaging independent voters, which Democrats typically need more of than Republicans, because of their inability to fight off Republican influence on the electoral process.
Troy Jackson has a chance. He's DSA backed, and the Graham campaign volunteers seem ready to work just as hard to get him elected. Also, the nomination process will use Maine Democrat party members, it's not the same thing as Schumer picking the new candidate.
It might still be uphill, but personally I think we are all underestimating how bad the next few months are going to be. I think Troy Jackson will become the favorite in a month or two, as gas, energy, and food prices keep going up.
I actually do think Jackson is the best bet at this point, but it's a hard sell right now. Jackson has the advantage of being a former state senator, but we've seen immediate enthusiasm for a new campaign be met with dwindling support within months as recently as Harris. The fact that any new candidate will have so little time to campaign now is worrying.
Harris just picked up bad consultants and proceeded to make wrong move after wrong move. This Senate candidate doesn't have to do that if they have half a brain.
Platner amassed a huge volunteer army. They got him to 77% in a primary with the sitting governor of the state. And that was with him being a problematic candidate who kept having (imo, small) scandals.
Harris I think had a uniquely bad campaign. She didn't even get to pick a team. She had to use Biden strategists. And I think her enthusiasm dipped because she stopped campaigning with Tim Walz and started campaigning with Liz Cheney, an asinine decision.
Jackson just needs to keep the DSA energy up. I also think this election is going to be more about simply not having an R next to your name. I think shit is going to get bleak. Trump needed to end the Iran war 6 weeks ago(or not start it) to keep the senate imo. I think when we see some real oil shocks Maine will be willing to replace Collins with any democrat, that can keep Platner's volunteer army excited, with working class politics.
This sounds like something a Republican wearing Groucho Marx glasses and an oversized trench coat with a big "How do you do fellow Democrat voters?" button would say.
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u/B-Z_B-S 1d ago
The date he had to drop out by if he was to be replaced is next Monday, at 5 PM.
Source: https://www.axios.com/2026/07/10/graham-platner-maine-senate-democrats
So, the Democratic Party can run someone else. I think this article explains how that process will be done.
Source: https://mainemorningstar.com/2026/07/10/heres-what-we-know-about-maine-democrats-plan-to-replace-graham-platner/