Tag: democrat civil war

The Brave New Age of Trust-Fund Socialism

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Democrats are in the midst of a fun and terrifying transformation. Hating Trump is no longer sufficient to win elections in blue states. Democratic primary voters—specifically the party’s core constituency of college-educated white professionals—are demanding candidates who also hate Israel and capitalism. The 2028 presidential race is going to be an absolute clown show. The least surprising aspect of the Democratic Party’s lurch toward left-wing radicalism is the pampered, privileged backgrounds of the politicians, donors, and operatives leading the charge.

Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City

Mamdani, 34, attended an elite public high school in New York before graduating from Bowdoin College (annual tuition: $74,000) with a degree in Africana studies and launching his short-lived rap career. He has never worked a real job. His father is a Harvard-educated Columbia professor who specializes in “post-colonialism.” His mother is a Harvard-educated filmmaker. The anticapitalist, anti-anti-terrorist mayor married his wife, a Hamas-adjacent activist who also makes art, at his family’s ritzy private compound on Lake Victoria in Uganda.

Graham Platner 

Widely hailed as an avatar of working-class anxiety, Platner is the grandson of a renowned architect best known for designing a $20,000 easy chair. His father, a real estate lawyer who served as an assistant district attorney in Maine, loaned him $200,000 to buy a house. Though technically unemployed and living off disability benefits, Platner runs an oyster farm that primarily supplies his mother’s restaurant. He briefly attended the Hotchkiss School (annual tuition:  $79,350). Before a credible rape allegation derailed Platner’s campaign, a New York Times poll showed him trailing Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) among working-class voters by 30 points.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.)

The shamelessly ambitious congressman has been at the forefront of his party’s left-wing transformation. “Free advice to the Israelis: It’s not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates,” he told the New York Times after an overseas publicity stunt to distract from his enthusiastic support for an accused rapist. Earlier this year, he cosponsored a “wealth tax” bill with Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.). Khanna, whose Silicon Valley district is one of the country’s wealthiest, is married to the daughter of a Cleveland auto parts magnate who utilizes an array of financial strategies the congressman has denounced as “wealth hoarding.” Khanna’s two children, who are still in elementary school, own stakes in three private golf courses, among other investments. His wife, who does not work, once bought a Range Rover that cost more than her husband’s annual salary. The Khannas own a $6 million, 8,000-square-foot mansion in Washington, D.C., which they are selling in order to move closer to their children’s elite private school in Northern Virginia. A Washington Free Beacon financial analysis found that the family’s net worth could exceed $340 million.

Morris Katz

The widely celebrated Mamdani adviser is also credited with launching Platner’s candidacy. Katz, 27, is heir to a garment-industry fortune. His grandfather, Harry Jay Katz, was a notorious womanizer once described as a “playboy prince of darkness” with a “multi-million dollar trust fund.” His father is a playwright, and his mother is the celebrated author of left-wing picture books for toddlers.

Daniel Moraff

Moraff, 34, has degrees from Brown and Yale. His grandfather, Seymour Ginsburg, founded the predecessor to Toys “R” Us and served as the toy chain’s first president. Moraff helped Katz recruit Platner, whom the pair of trust-fund wunderkinds regarded as a “historic figure” destined to lead a socialist “revolution.” Like the former candidate, Moraff has also faced allegations of sexual misconduct. His fiancée’s engagement ring “opens up to a tiny comb” she uses to brush his beard.

Will Neff

Neff, 36, cohosts a podcast with anti-American influencer Hasan Piker. Last year, he accompanied Piker on a trip to China, where the “swagged out white boys” repeatedly praised Mao Zedong. Neff, a former BuzzFeed producer and son of a corporate executive who worked for the Rockefeller family, captained the squash team at the prestigious Blair Academy (annual tuition: $81,950).

Democratic donors

Inherited wealth is a key source of funding for left-wing politicians and affiliated activist groups. MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, have donated billions in support of left-wing causes such as “racial equity,” “climate justice,” and whatever it’s called when prosecutors repeatedly decline to punish criminals.

Alex Soros, the 40-year-old son of billionaire financier George Soros, is constantly taking selfies with prominent Democrats at his penthouse in Manhattan. “So proud to be a New Yorker!” he wrote after Mamdani won the mayoral election. “The American Dream continues!”

Leah Hunt-Hendrix, the “anti-elite” granddaughter of billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, helped Mamdani raise $4 million to fund his mayoral transition. An early supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Hunt-Hendrix summered in the West Bank while completing her Ph.D. from Princeton under Professor Cornel West. She owns a Maltipoo named after Malcom X. Pierce Delahunt (they/them) uses his share of the family outlet mall fortune to fight “intersectional oppression” by funding “anticapitalist” organizations. The self-described “Social Emotional Leftist Educator” earned his master’s degree from the Institute for Humane Education.

Fergie Chambers is the great-grandson of James M. Cox, the former Ohio governor and Democratic presidential nominee who founded what is now Cox Enterprises. After selling his share of the company for hundreds of millions of dollars, Chambers started a Marxist commune in Massachusetts that lasted a few years before going defunct. He fled the United States in 2024 amid a criminal investigation into his funding of violent anti-Israel protests.

Source: The Brave New Age of Trust-Fund Socialism

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
John 7:38

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Platner leaves Democrats with egg on their faces

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Democrats have a number of Graham Platner-related problems even after his exit from the Maine Senate race amid a rape allegation he denies. But high on that list is the sheer amount of egg some of them now have on their faces. Amid his drip, drip, drip of controversies, Platner repeatedly put the party in the position of deciding whether to vouch for a guy who was the odds-on favorite to win its nomination — but who also seemed to have stocked his closet with a remarkable number of skeletons. And some Democrats regularly obliged, despite the revelations. They did so after the tattoo with Nazi imagery, after the ugly Reddit posts, after the sexually explicit texts to women who weren’t his wife, and even in some cases after a New York Times report last month about allegations of unsettling behavior toward women. (The national party, which had initially recruited Gov. Janet Mills, got behind him after she dropped out and he became the presumptive nominee.)

Each time, these Democrats seemed to convince themselves they could stand by him one more time, ignoring that it was very unlikely to be just one more time. The result is that the party sunk plenty of credibility into a guy who did not reward it. And all of it appears to be a sunk cost now — in what’s likely a must-win state for Democrats if they’re to flip the Senate in November. (Platner announced Wednesday evening he’s suspending his campaign, clearing the way for a replacement on the ballot.) At the top of the list of defenses of Platner that have aged poorly is one from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse last month. The Rhode Island Democrat told NOTUS that he was “not impressed” by the detailed Times account of Platner’s allegedly unsettling behavior toward women. (The report didn’t include allegations of sexual abuse but did include allegations of physical intimidation and other toxic behavior toward the women.)

The senator also echoed some on the left in pointing to how the most serious allegations came from a former Platner girlfriend who has worked in conservative politics. “Seems like a lot of nothing,” Whitehouse said. “I mean, the only one who had anything to say that seemed unsettling was a woman who works for right-wing political operations.” It turns out that kind of suggestion spurred another former Platner girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, to come forward with her rape allegation. Racicot, who said she largely shared Platner’s politics, told Politico she did so in part because of the political attacks on the woman who spoke to the Times, Lyndsey Fifield. Others at the time echoed the argument that the allegations in the early June Times story were politically motivated. The head of the Maine AFL-CIO said they were “not surprised that attacks are coming from various corners.” And Maine state Rep. Valli Geiger said the report “makes me support him more because it just feels like dirty politics to me.” (Geiger starred in an ad with Platner in which she praised his support for, of all things, rape kit legislation.)

Other Democrats didn’t go so far in dismissing the Times report or the other controversies swirling around Platner but did suggest they shouldn’t define him. “I see this as: He has taken responsibility. He has described where he was, where he is now,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told WCVB-TV late last month. In a social media post shortly after the Times story, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont didn’t directly address the report but called Platner the “one candidate” who could address what he said were the key issues in the race. California Rep. Ro Khanna called the behavior described in the Times report “wrong and toxic” but said Platner had “sought redemption.” And he pressed forward with a rally with Platner shortly afterward. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii was set to keep a fundraiser for him even after the Times report. Nearly all of those mentioned above have urged Platner to drop out this week after the rape allegation.

But their decision to vouch for him, or at least to downplay the significance of the Times’ June reporting, came even as other Democrats adopted a much more cautious posture. On the night Platner won his primary last month, for example, some top Democratic organizations responded by conspicuously saying little or nothing about him and instead emphasized the importance of defeating GOP Sen. Susan Collins. And some left-wing pundits this week expressed regret for their roles in vouching for Platner. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, for example, said she regretted that Platner’s “charisma” led her to write that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.” And author Naomi Klein said she “should have been more cautious” in conducting due diligence. But others seemed to have more foresight. After the Times story broke last month, Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan told MS NOW that she was “sick of” spending her time “answering every single week a question about bad behavior by another dude.”

And Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts appeared on CNN in late May, shortly before the Times story broke, and said even just Platner’s tattoo was bad enough for him. “I find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying,” Auchincloss said. “I hope Maine voters agree with me.” A lot of Democrats will be wishing they had taken a similar tack.

Source: Analysis: Platner leaves Democrats with egg on their faces | CNN Politics

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Why Graham Platner Had to Return to Maine Quickly Last Night

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Graham Platner looked as if he was about to walk into a scene from Intervention, as new scandals emerge about the Maine Democrat who is trying to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Instead, we heard the tired ‘we’re going to win Maine’ pep rally lines from Senate Democrats in Washington after they met with Platner. He did not take questions.  Advertisement Platner, an oyster farmer who mostly earns his income from disability benefits and sports SS tattoos, was supposed to stay in the capital a bit longer and had scheduled events in New York. Instead, he absconded back to Maine after it was reported that his family was being questioned by the media. 

Source: Why Graham Platner Had to Return to Maine Quickly Last Night

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Dems cut ties with scandal-plagued Graham Platner, warn of ‘civil war’ in party

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Top Democratic officials and lawmakers are breaking with Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner as his past blunders and online history stack up.  Platner’s ascendency to the top of the ticket in Vacationland broke with the Democratic establishment in Washington, D.C., and since Maine Gov. Janet Mills exited from the race, questions about whether he is the right choice to take on Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, have exploded.  Much of that is fueled by scandals that have cropped up seemingly week after week, be it a tattoo on his chest of a Nazi symbol or inflammatory posts online. Some in the Democratic Party warn that it’s spurring a “civil war” between the moderate and left wings of the party.

Melissa DeRosa, former New York Mayor Andrew Cuomo’s chief of staff, told Fox News’ Bret Baier that Platner’s rise and ensuing questions of his fitness as a candidate are demonstrative of the bubbling conflict within the Democratic Party.  “The main race really demonstrates the civil war that’s happening within the Democratic Party, and there are a lot of Democrats, moderate Democrats like myself, who will not cry tears should we lose Maine,” DeRosa said. “I mean, that would be a pickup to begin with.”  Senate Democrats view Maine as one of the most viable pickup opportunities in the 2026 midterm cycle in their quest to regain control of the upper chamber. Platner is not the candidate that party bosses wanted, but since jumping into the race last year, he has built a growing national profile that reached new heights earlier this month when he landed on the cover of Time magazine. Still, his unearthed Reddit posts — ranging from bashing a soldier shot by the Taliban to masturbating in portable toilets — have unleashed fresh scrutiny from both the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and Democrats alike. 

Source: Dems cut ties with scandal-plagued Graham Platner, warn of ‘civil war’ in party

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