Will Graham Platner's bad decisions become an albatross for the party and cost us the election?

I am a fan of Graham Platner's ideas and think he is talented at expressing them.

However, I am afraid as a person he is too big of a liability for Democrats in both the short and long term due to his poor decision making and think he is simply not fit for elected office, especially if the accusations of abusive behavior turn out to be true.

In the short term, I think he has made a winnable race in Maine much harder than necessary. He only holds a slight lead to a dead heat vs. Collins now, and that can deteriorate fast if more scandals come out. He should have been blowing her out, but his unfavorability has doubled since January, up to 49% of Maine voters.

We seriously risk losing the general and not winning back the Senate here, and thus our chance to hold Trump and his cronies fully accountable. This would be a total disaster.

We still have a primary this week and a month of eligibility leeway to replace Platner on the general ballot, but enough primary voters love his stances and will not abandon him unless something really, really bad comes out. If Republicans have even more scandalous opposition research they are going to wait until after that eligibility date to drop it on the public.

Long term, even if Platner ekes out a victory in Maine, it may be a pyrrhic victory. Every Republican on every talk show will forever use the "well you are the party who elected a Nazi" as a retort to any criticisms of Republicans' fascism and racism. They will say it shows Democrats are the real racist party. It's an instant defense mechanism we are gifting them on a silver platter, and it undermines our efforts to educate people about the growing threat of real fascism in America. It also undermines our criticisms of Israel.

I know he has apologized for the Totenkopf and erased it. Wrote it off as a youthful mistake while in the military as a knucklehead 20 year old overseas. I'm afraid he is too well read in history to have much plausible deniability here, and whether the anecdotes from his ex bragging about "my Totenkopf" are true on not, it almost doesn't even matter because his own bad decision set up that line of attack in the first place. It doesn't matter that he is not a Nazi and they can't find any quotes of him expressing his alleged Nazism. It is still a propaganda gift that undermines our credibility.

And too many Platner supporters are using tu quoque fallacies like "well Trump is worse" to deflect criticisms by MAGA and Democratic critics of Platner - it is what you do when you have no real defense to the allegations. The thing is Platner is running against Susan Collins, who does not have a Nazi tattoo or abuse or affair allegations. She is the devil Maine knows and a very skilled politician even though she is wrong on most things, and I worry we haven't even scratched the surface of Platner's problems. This can get worse, unfortunately.

Should Platner drop out, or otherwise, how do we handle the short-term and long-term problems he has created?