Is the Platner Juice Worth the Squeeze?

A friend asked me an uncomfortable question this week. With Graham Platner’s decisive victory in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary, should Democrats simply accept his past controversies and rally behind him in the interest of winning a Senate seat?

It is a fair question. It is also a much bigger question than it first appears.

In business, there is an expression I have always liked: Is the juice worth the squeeze? The phrase sounds almost comically simple, yet buried inside it is one of life’s most difficult calculations. Are the benefits of a decision worth the costs? Most of us perform this calculation every day, weighing risks against rewards, costs against benefits, principles against practical realities.

Politics is no different.

For many Democrats, the answer seems obvious. Control of the Senate matters. Judicial appointments matter. Tax policy matters. Foreign policy matters. The ability to block or advance a president’s agenda matters. If Graham Platner gives Democrats a better chance of winning a critical Senate seat, why dwell on old controversies? Why allow the past to stand in the way of a larger goal?

I understand that argument. In fact, there is something refreshingly honest about it. At least it acknowledges the tradeoff. Every political bargain has a cost. The question is not whether there is a squeeze. The question is whether the juice is worth it.

That question becomes especially complicated when the controversy involves not merely policy disagreements but character, judgment, trust, and the possibility of redemption. Can people change? Can people be forgiven?

I certainly hope so.

Just last week, I wrote about the values within Judaism that are worth preserving and passing on to the next generation. One of those values is teshuvah, the belief that human beings are capable of acknowledging mistakes, changing course, and becoming better than they once were. It is one of Judaism’s most hopeful ideas. A person should not be forever defined by the worst thing they have ever done. People can grow. People can learn. People can change.

But Judaism does not stop there. Teshuvah is not amnesia. It is not the absence of accountability. And it is not a demand that trust be automatically restored. Forgiveness and trust are not the same thing.

That is what makes cases like Platner’s so difficult.

If this were merely a question of policy, the answer would be easy. If it were merely a question of electability, the answer would also be easy. Instead, voters are being asked to weigh character, judgment, forgiveness, redemption, and political necessity all at the same time.

For many Jewish voters, the discomfort begins with a tattoo from Platner’s past and the explanations that followed. More recently, additional controversies have raised fresh questions about judgment and temperament. I do not intend to relitigate every detail here. The facts are widely known. Maine Democrats considered them and nevertheless handed Platner a decisive primary victory.

That result deserves respect. But it also deserves reflection.

A vote for Platner is not necessarily a declaration that the controversies never mattered. It may instead be a declaration that other things matter more. Control of the Senate. Judicial appointments. Legislation. The ability to shape the direction of the country for years to come. Those are not trivial considerations. In fact, they are powerful arguments, which is why I find this case so much more challenging than many political controversies.

Listening to Platner’s victory speech, one line in particular stayed with me.

“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change. And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it.”

It is a powerful argument.

And at first glance, it feels deeply compatible with a Jewish worldview.

Judaism does not believe that human beings are frozen in place. It does not teach that a person should be forever defined by the worst thing they have ever done. The concept of teshuvah rests on the belief that people can acknowledge mistakes, alter their behavior, and become something better than they once were.

In that sense, I find myself agreeing with Platner. People can change. The harder question is how we know when they have. What does redemption require? Is it enough to acknowledge mistakes? Is it enough to apologize? Is it enough to demonstrate years of changed behavior?

Reasonable people will answer those questions differently. And perhaps that is precisely what happened in Maine. Democratic voters looked at the same facts and reached the same conclusion. Whatever doubts they may have had, they believed Platner had earned a second chance.

Or perhaps they answered a different question altogether. Perhaps they decided that even if doubts remain, the juice is worth the squeeze.

Maine has long been associated with the phrase, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” The saying has not always been literally true, but it endures because it captures an important idea. Sometimes a local election reveals something larger about the country.

I wonder if that is what happened this week. Because the Platner story is not really about Maine. And it is not really about Graham Platner.

It is about us.

It is about the standards we apply to our leaders. It is about forgiveness, redemption, trust, and perhaps most importantly, the tradeoffs we are willing to make in pursuit of goals we consider important.

Every political movement eventually confronts this dilemma. A candidate emerges with flaws, baggage, troubling statements, questionable associations, or past behavior that would ordinarily give supporters pause. Then comes the familiar argument: yes, but the stakes are too high; yes, but the other side is worse; yes, but we need this seat; yes, but think about the judges; yes, but think about what happens if we lose.

Sometimes those arguments are persuasive. Sometimes they are even correct. The problem is that once we begin making exceptions, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain where the exceptions should end.

Standards rarely disappear overnight. They erode gradually. One exception becomes two. Two become ten. Each individual compromise feels reasonable in isolation because the circumstances are always unique, the election is always consequential, and the stakes are always unusually high. Until one day we discover that what once felt exceptional has become routine.

That is the danger. Not Graham Platner. Not this election. The danger is the gradual lowering of standards in the belief that our goals are important enough to justify it. History suggests that every political movement eventually confronts this temptation. Some resist it. Others embrace it. Most drift into it one rationalization at a time. That temptation is not uniquely Democratic. Nor is it uniquely Republican. It is human.

Republicans have spent the better part of a decade wrestling with that question in their own way. Many concluded that Donald Trump’s flaws, however significant, were outweighed by the policies he would pursue, the judges he would appoint, and the outcomes he would deliver. Others simply came to view the Democratic alternative as worse. In either case, the calculation was similar: the costs were acknowledged, but the perceived benefits were judged to be greater.

Democrats, like myself, often viewed that calculation with disbelief. Now, in a very different context and on a much smaller scale, they find themselves confronting a version of the same dilemma.

Not the same facts. Not the same personalities. Not the same stakes. But a remarkably similar moral calculation. How much discomfort are we willing to tolerate in pursuit of victory? How much compromise is acceptable? How much is too much?

There are no easy answers. Nor should there be. If politics were merely a contest between saints and villains, voting would be simple. Human beings are more complicated than that.

Which brings me back to what I believe may be the most important lesson here. Teshuvah asks us to believe that people can change. Politics asks us to decide whether we trust that they have. Those are not the same thing.

And perhaps that is why the Platner story has stayed with me. Not because I know the answer, but because I am no longer entirely certain what the right question is. Perhaps the real test of our principles is not how we apply them to our opponents.

It is how we apply them to our allies.

Be safe out there, and when making decisions, ask yourself if the juice is worth the squeeze.

Brad out.