Every once in a while, the calendar falls just right and the biggest story of the week breaks after most of the news cycle has already wrapped up. That’s what happened Saturday afternoon, when the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times published reports about Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner. The basic allegation is straightforward: before becoming a candidate, Platner’s wife discovered that he had been sexting other women during their marriage. A former campaign manager has now confirmed key details on the record. The scandal itself is serious, but what stands out to me is that we still don’t know where the story ends.
The first problem is that nobody seems to agree on the scale of it. Reports say Platner was communicating with around twelve women. The campaign says the number was no more than six. That is, uh, a bit more than a minor discrepancy. Politically, the danger is that when the number is unknown, the public assumes there could always be more. There is no natural endpoint. The Tiger Woods scandal became a media feeding frenzy for exactly this reason: once a pattern of behavior is established, every new allegation becomes plausible. If Platner is a serial philanderer, there is no obvious cap on how many people might come forward.
