Now he tells us. In a recent podcast with Ezra Klein of The New York Times, former Graham Platner political strategist Morris Katz admits the obvious: that it shouldn’t have taken a credible accusation of rape to force Platner out of the race. Katz says:
In hindsight, knowing what we know now, the Reddit posts alone probably should have been enough — or should have been enough. The tattoo should have been enough. The initial New York Times story on troubling behavior should have been enough.
That being said, it appears that Maine Democrats have settled on a strong alternative in Troy Jackson, who is leading the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins, in some polls. (By the way: Another former Platner consultant, Daniel Moraff, also faces accusations of sexual assault, reports progressive independent journalist Marisa Kabas. What a train wreck.)
But I want to return to Katz. I listened to his entire interview with Klein, and I found him to be a thoughtful analyst of what’s wrong with the Democratic Party. And I was especially taken with this exchange over how the decline of local news has detracted from the ability of relatively unknown candidates to break through — not withstanding Platner’s success.
Katz: Twenty years ago, there were profound local media circuits that existed, that were actually in the weeds. If you had really strong feelings about a factory that was giving workers cancer in Iowa, you could go and do five interviews about that and show your knowledge of local issues and show your passion in a way that was going to make people’s lives better.
It’s not a particularly sexy pitch to national reporters to say: Hey, do you want to write four different articles about a factory giving workers cancer in Iowa and a candidate who’s incredibly angry about it?
Klein: One of the pathologies of a lot of Democratic candidates and the Democratic Party right now is it is a party of people who love institutions at a time when institutions are failing.
One of the places where I’m sympathetic to that is that institutions were actually one of the ways you got attention. I mean, there’s a huge amount of the Democratic Party just optimized for a period when you went to the newspaper editorial boards, and you had to win them over.
So it wasn’t just whether you could get attention, it was: Could you impress the editors? Could you get the endorsement of the local civic groups?
And now all these layers are weaker across much more of the country. There’s less union density. There are fewer civic groups that have real memberships. There are fewer local newspapers, and their editorial boards carry less weight.
So it means skills that were once really important are less important, and skills that once couldn’t get you anywhere — the newspaper would not cover someone who both did not have any support and was just making people mad by saying outlandish things. But now, you could be Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles and rocket forward, in attention at the very least, from being a candidate like that.
Now, I should add that editorial boards were convened for the purpose of deciding which candidates would win the newspaper’s endorsement. And as I wrote last week, endorsements are disappearing because corporate chain newspaper owners don’t like to alienate some of their readers and because nonprofit news organizations — an increasingly important part of the local news ecosystem — can’t endorse lest they sacrifice their tax-exempt status.
But endorsements or not, robust local news coverage creates a better political climate. And in far too many places, that no longer exists.
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He may need a little more name recognition. It’s Troy, not Taylor.
Oops! Now fixed. Thanks.