I'm honored to have written the New York Times obituary for Denise Oliver-Velez, a trailblazing activist whose work offers lessons for us all. I'm especially grateful to her godchildren, who were very generous with their help during this time of mourning. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/u...

Hasan Piker is toxic to the Democratic Party brand and the more Democrats push him, the more voters they will lose. Piker does not believe in fighting Republicans; to him, Democrats are the greater evil. Make no mistake - he will be a Republican by 2040.

Good luck to Troy Jackson, the new Democratic Senate nominee in Maine. He's gonna need it when Republicans place this photo (and others like it) on every single ad for the next three months.

Executive: Why did Odysseus kill everybody? Homer:

Sis Dee *loved* playing Warcraft, and loved D&D, and I remember the time she told me how much she loved reading romance novels. She really was magical.

The foundations of StollerThought are 1)chicks suck and 2)it's good when Republicans win elections to own the libs. Platner staying in the race and losing by 12 points would be the exacta

This piece is just Rebecca Traister working through the fact that she fell for Graham Platner and projecting her failure of judgment onto the Democratic Party at large.

This is a sad day for Canada, and therefore, the world.

I hope Steven Thrasher feels good about his decision to attack Democrats all throughout 2024 and say he didn't care if Trump won. He got to move out of the country while the rest of us clean up the mess he helped create. dailynorthwestern.com/2026/07/15/t...

While raised with a more conservative upbringing, interacting with Black students enrolled at the nearby Tougaloo College influenced him and motivated Ed King, who was white, to become more involved in local civil rights during the 1960s. www.mississippifreepress.org/person-of-th...

If you think Graham Platner and Lindsey Graham are unprecedented, today I wrote about the last time Senate candidates resigned and died mid-election cycle, Bob Torricelli and Paul Wellstone in 2002. www.jfassler.com/p/senate-can...

This is Joan Sebastian Guerrero and his little girl. She won’t get to see him again because of #ICE brutality.

"Heckuva job, Brownie."

Being angry at Democrats posting farewells to Lindsey Graham is just not worth it. Not everything a politician does demands a reaction. There’s way bigger stuff to worry about anyway.

repost for the coining of the "The Platner Class" alone, and the article is also good!

yes Democrats need to seem normal and generally "nice" in a nondescript way to the crazy people who somehow can swing between parties their job is to win elections, not make content for political obsessives

Before you post your Lindsey Graham jokes ask yourself one question: Can I see Bill Maher making this same joke? If the answer is yes, don’t post it.

You're going to get left behind if you don't use Al." Leave me then. Leave me with my critical thinking skills, my ability to read and write long- form, and books without needing Al summaries.

Must be said, Bluesky was way more correct about Platner

I ranked Shenna Bellows first for governor and think she'd be a great senator. While I respect Troy Jackson and was leaning toward him earlier, I've decided that Shenna has a longer and deeper record of effective and progressive policy making. She's also very good at coalition building. #mepolitics

I think it's really pathetic that Rebecca Traister, who believed Tara Reade and called Biden's decision to choose of a female VP a "poison chalice" would swoon over Graham Platner despite all the red flags even before the first abuse accusations came in last June.

catching up with stuff and i’ll just say that if this report is to be believed then this campaign was more grift than actual effort to win a senate seat

I want to remind people Adam Cochran is a Canadian crypto investor callously meddling in US politics while he resides in Waterloo, Ontario.

The media in general and the GOP in particular will conflate Platner with Dems, when Platner was the product of leftists who hate Dems. So make sure you're clear in your circles because Americans are lazy. 1/ www.ms.now/opinion/grah...

Maine wire & the other conservative sites are dunking on Bellows & the others who’ve done any events with Graham as deserved but despite my reservations about her chances, I’d like to simply point out that when she ran against Collins in 2014 Graham voted for Collins.

New interview, and for me, this first exchange was so satisfying, so precise, so rich in truth that I felt no need to continue.

Morris Katz is now the red flag of all red flags after Maine & his involvement, and that other progressive strategist couple Dan Moraff & Leanne Fan that were involved too After Maine all 3 should be persona non grata

Hey BlueSky, pat yourselves on the back - we all had Platner's number on here from day one and took a lot of crap from Twitter Bros about it. Savor this victory!

Are headline writers just not going to use "Graham Platner pulls out?" The joke writes itself!

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that [snaps fingers] - he's gone."

For all the gibberish they spout about "the movement we built" and "something hopeful" the fact remains he wasn't drawing the working class voters his message was supposed to connect with. His "movement" was confined to college educated voters while Collins is running away with everyone else.

I have said it before and I will say it again. This is not about policy differences or even politics. This is a guy with more red flags than a bullfight. Who is still using slurs. Who has zero experience. The Senate should not be used as an entry level position. I am truly baffled.

I think the Platner thing hit me so hard bc it was one of the most protracted, widespread acts of misogynist gaslighting from my own side that I've seen. We were presented with an obvious violent scumbag who was constantly lying (badly, might I add) and told we were crazy for not loving him

Yes, there is a lot more on Platner. You can discern this from the fact he is alleged to have committed domestic violence between 2013-2016. He then is alleged to have raped a woman in 2021. That points to a profile of a man who serially abuses women. NBC story also noted multiple victims.

I believe we are dealing with is a Schrödinger's McConnell situation

If basic accountability because you have no substance, you stand for nothing but hate disguised as an Omnicause, & you have no concept of a red line that isn’t pompous faux morality, then good riddance to all of you. Nothing of value is being lost. The Democratic Party needs to be better than this.

BREAKING NEWS: Man who is famously wrong about everything refuses to admit he was wrong.

there is a cohort of men who resent the responsibilities and obligations of adulthood — of the fact that you owe things to other people. it is a fundamentally childish impulse that they have reconfigured as the height of masculinity, and i think it informs the parasocial attraction to platner.

Andy O’Brien, the comms director for the Maine AFL-CIO, has used his social media accounts to threaten and harass women who criticized Graham Platner. The AFL-CIO needs to fire him. This behavior is unacceptable.

This Was Only Going to End One Way #mepolitics open.substack.com/pub/jfassler...

The entirety of Bluesky every time this happens.

ELIZABETH WARREN calls on Platner to drop out: “There can be no tolerance for sexual assault… With so much at stake, the best path forward is for Graham Platner to step aside as the Democratic nominee and address these serious allegations outside this Senate race.”

I’m not posting Cenk’s bullshit take but if you agree with the guy whose repeatedly said he would legalize beastiality you need to reevaluate your life for too many reasons for me to count anyway & I don’t want you to waste a second of my time.

let this be a lesson to deal with your feelings of gender anxiety and masculine inadequacy with a hobby or therapy or something and not a high stakes senate election

Graham Platner was never a real person. He was always a character designed by consultants to represent the kind of candidate they thought could win elections. Now the character is dead and all that’s left is a broken shell of a man. www.jfassler.com/p/this-was-o...

The people who foisted Graham Platner on the Democratic Party should never work in politics again.

I didn’t need to know an SA allegation would derail Graham Platner’s senate campaign. All I needed to know was that when you put an untested, fragile piece of equipment in a hostile environment, something is going to derail it. My thoughts here: www.jfassler.com/p/this-was-o...

Bullying? 🤣 Yeah, I was at the convention and only one candidate’s followers were bullying the McMorrow camp, calling her & her supporters genocidal baby killers with blood on their hands & spewing antisemitic crap at Ray. Remind me whose campaign that was. It certainly wasn’t the Stevens camp.

I will never understand why older male journalists fall for Olivia Nuzzi.