Has Graham Platner Changed Enough?

People can change. I have seen it, and I have lived it. Just when change happens can generally be grasped only in retrospect. In the case of Senate hopeful Graham Platner of Maine, many Democrats are understandably eager to see evidence that he is no longer the man implicated by the drumbeat of damning revelations. Platner’s campaign promise has long been that he’s just an ordinary guy who has learned from his many mistakes—that he is no longer the man who picked fights online, belittled women, and otherwise drank and swore and argued too much. But on the eve of Maine’s primary elections next week, and in light of yet more reports of “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior, in the words of one ex-girlfriend, many voters may be wondering if this aspiring representative of the people has in fact changed enough.Platner, a gruff 41-year-old Marine Corps veteran, is trying to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins with a platform of economic populism, universal health care, labor protections, and anti-interventionism. Although he was raised on the shores of coastal Maine by well-heeled parents who shipped him off to prep school, he has presented himself as a rugged man of the people: a military veteran (he served in Iraq and Afghanistan), an oyster farmer, and a family man. He launched his grassroots Senate campaign last year.Democrats moved quickly to embrace Platner as the man the party needs to better speak to the working class—and particularly white men. But revelations keep emerging that are testing the party’s faith that he points a way forward.While on military leave in Croatia in 2007, Platner drunkenly got a massive tattoo of a skull-and-crossbones design associated with Nazis. Platner has said that he was not aware of the meaning of the symbol, which he overlaid with a different design last year. But a new report in The New York Times has undermined this dubious claim. Among the various ex-girlfriends interviewed, one recalled that Platner had referred to the tat