There are so many fashion trends to keep track of, you may or may not have heard that the Democratic senate candidate in Maine, Graham Platner, has a tattoo of a Nazi SS totenkopf. He was young and indiscriminate when he got it almost twenty years ago, which is why he decided to cover it with another tattoo—three months after declaring his candidacy last fall.
You would think with almost 300 million adults in the U.S., and over a million of them in Maine, we could avoid politicians with Nazi affiliations. But it turns out not all Nazis are created equal, and if they support universal healthcare then the Democratic party can overlook a little fascism. I’m not saying that Platner is a Nazi. I’m just saying that for nearly twenty years he was okay with people thinking he was.
Words (and totenkopfs) seem to have lost some of their meaning in our polarized times. What matters most is what team you’re playing for, and just about everything else can be disregarded. When faced with dubious behavior, it’s hard to tell if voters are going on autopilot or summoning their inner Tammy Wynette.
The President is both the primary symptom and source of this trend, but he’s not the only one benefiting from it. There aren’t many things one can expect from a mayor, but showing up for work on the day of a disaster would seem to be one of them. Mayor Karen Bass isn’t responsible for the fires that destroyed more than 12,000 homes, but with so many residents continuing to suffer, one would think it might be an impediment to reelection.
However, until a couple days ago, Bass was anticipating a cakewalk, with only a second-rate reality show celebrity and a second-term councilmember standing in her way, and the latter only dared to throw her hat into the electoral ring at the last possible moment. Every other person with the experience and credentials to run for mayor of Los Angeles chose to show deference to Bass.
That is incomprehensible, but not as incomprehensible as the number of people who supported—and voted for—Spencer Pratt. He is the author of a recent memoir in which he brags about lying, cheating and conning his way through life. His sole motivation to be mayor seems to be his anger toward the current officeholder and a limited ability to find gainful employment. His lack of skill, experience and basic decency are his primary qualifications.
I understand the preference for a devil you know over a devil you don’t, but it seems to have mutated into a preference for any devil whatsoever. It’s as if Superman is M.I.A., so the populace has decided to experiment with putting Lex Luther in charge. We can see how well that’s worked out in our demolition zone of a White House. Trump may not be Lex Luther, but he gives Goldfinger a run for the money.
Fortunately for us, in L.A. there’s a limit to Pratt’s appeal, and we now know it’s numerically lower than the threshold necessary for the November run-off. This means that Nithya Raman, the South Asian democratic socialist who dreams of being the West Coast Mamdani, has a shot at validating her ballsy ambition, and the rest of us get ringside seats for what could be a compelling competition or entertaining foodfight.
Raman needs to convince progressives that she’s not a moderate in socialist’s clothing, while she simultaneously convinces moderates that she’s not the reverse. She also needs to make inroads with Bass’s base, persuading them to abandon the party-endorsed incumbent, who happens to be the city’s first black female mayor.
Poll after poll shows voters want change, but voters are also team players. It’s worth noting the little-watched county primary in which Robert S. Draper, an 84-year old Superior Court judge, was accused of multiple ethical violations in addition to being deemed incapable of performing his duties for the past three years. He didn’t win his primary (as of pub date), but he was the choice of more than 43% of voters.
It seems that goose-stepping isn’t only for Nazis.
Devan Sipher can be reached at Devan@smdp.com.