Bernie-backed Maine Senate candidate melts down

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Maine oyster farmer Graham Platner's Senate campaign is in crisis after reports of offensive online messages over many years.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made Platner's bid central to his mission to remake the Democratic Party as more progressive and economically focused.

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CNN first reported Thursday on comments from "around 2021" where Platner called "all" cops bastards and described himself as a communist on Reddit. Platner also said rural white people were "actually" racist and stupid.

Other media reports followed detailing posts from 2013, in which he asked, "Why don't black people tip?" and said in a thread on underwear created to stop sexual assaults that people should "take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f–ked up they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to?"

In another post from 2018, he wrote that if people "expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history."

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In a 5-minute direct-to-camera video Friday on the social media site X, Platner painted his past posts as the product of a young man who had returned home from his service overseas deeply disturbed.

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Sanders took the extraordinary step last week of publicly discouraging Maine Gov. Janet Mills from entering the race, even though she is the preferred candidate of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and much of the Democratic establishment.

Mills launched her bid anyway on Tuesday.

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