My meditation on the qualities that I wished were evident in the Maine Democratic Party’s handling of the Platner tragedy.

The Party’s representatives responded to Platner’s announcement as a “betrayal.” That is completely tone-deaf. Platner is clear that he and his wife both understood the hazards that they would confront in entering the political fray. The allegations that brought him down are best characterized as a confused situation involving two people who were involved in separate, soul-crushing tragedies.

The Party seems not to be capable of understanding their responsibility for creating the conditions under which Platner resolved, none-the-less, to enter the political fray. The issues that Platner raised in his message are diagnostic. American men should not be sent overseas as cannon-fodder in wars picked by militarized theocracies. The mentally and physically disabled should not find a jail cell to be the only reliable source of a roof and three squares. The nation’s budgetary priorities should be the well-being and fulfilment of its citizens, not pie-in-the-sky moon bases, military hardware, and high technology.

If Platner betrayed the Party, it is because the Party first failed him AND the woman who brought the allegations against him.