Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee who was contesting the US Senate race in Maine, was a problematic candidate from the very start, yet his blatant shortcomings were willfully dismissed or ignored by the powers that be in his party.

As the news site Axios noted in a prescient observation, he was “a walking time bomb.”

Platner, a progressive cool to Israel, garnered the endorsement of the left-wing faction of the Democratic Party. Progressives and democratic socialists were impressed by his down-to-earth image and swayed by his pledge to challenge the party’s stodgy establishment.

Platner, billed as an oyster farmer, won the party’s nomination by a landslide in the June 9 primary. Running unopposed after Governor Janet Mills – a moderate backed by party leaders – suspended her Senate campaign in late April, he won 72 percent of the vote.

In accordance with his left-of-center views, he was critical of Israel, calling for an arms embargo and the severance of US military aid to it. And he accused Israel of having committed “genocide” during its military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Hamas.

Platner’s candidacy was supported by, among others, three prominent US senators – Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)