May 6, 2026

BACK AND TO THE LEFT. BACK AND TO THE LEFT: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Isn’t Radical Enough for Graham Platner and the ‘New’ Democratic Party.

The Democrats are doubling down on crazy, and they show no sign of moderating their radical social and cultural agenda any time soon.

Last week, 78-year-old Maine Gov. Janet Mills bowed out of the primary contest for senator. Mills used traditional Democratic fundraising conduits to raise an impressive $5.4 million in two quarters. This isn’t a big haul for a large state, but it is pretty good for Maine.

Meanwhile, the infamous oyster farmer, Graham Platner, the man with the Nazi tattoo, raised $12.5 million. Mills woke up last week and realized there was no way she could compete with a juggernaut like that. Besides, Platner had awoken something in the usually staid and sensible Maine Democrats. He was leading by 30 points in some polls.

Sen. George Mitchell served three terms as a Democratic Senator from Maine. He was the Majority Leader of the Senate from 1989 to his retirement in 1995. Mitchell was the last elected Democrat to serve in the Senate (Angus King is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats).

Mitchell was a poster boy for Democratic Party moderates. He was a consummate Senate insider who put getting things done ahead of partisan bickering. His kind is gone now. They’ve been shoved aside by hysterical radicals whose grasping for power presages a dark period in U.S. political history.

How dark? This dark: Antisemitism Is The Litmus Test for Democrats in 2026.

Antisemitism is a mental disease, in the way that Trump Derangement Syndrome is.

Neither is based primarily on political or ideological affiliations, although each correlates highly with partisan affiliations and ideological commitments.

That correlation does have a causal relationship, but the opposite of what is generally assumed. The antisemitism comes first, then the ideology and the partisanship. First, the antisemitism, and only then the political decisions. That’s why you see the “right” coded antisemites flocking to the Democrats, as I wrote yesterday, and the Democrats gaining a “strange new respect” for former Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and right-coded Nick Fuentes.

That same sorting is happening with current and former Democrats, who are so appalled by the antisemitic outbreak in their party that they are flirting with becoming Republicans, or at least praising their clear-sightedness on this issue.

We’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which former(?) self-admitted communist Van Jones is a voice of sanity:

Tweet continues, “It just shows you how nutty things have gotten that someone who wants to stick up for Israel and doesn’t want an open border now has to be a Republican.”

Finally, America’s Newspaper of Record is once again doing straight-up reportage:

(Though as Frank J. Fleming wryly noted, “Leftists: ‘If Graham Platner is a Nazi, then why does he hate Israel so much?’”)

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll