Cory Booker’s “concerns” are that Graham Platner is on our side in a class war

By James J. Devine

The Democratic Party has a purity problem. It can forgive a president who is an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, and a serial fraudster. It can accommodate Wall Street billionaires, AIPAC cash, and the complete collapse of labor protections. It can look away while the executive branch deploys troops to American cities and shreds the rule of law.

But a man in Maine who sent regrettable text messages to women other than his wife? That is where the party of moral clarity draws the line.

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey went on national television Sunday and announced that he had “concerns” about Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine. Booker married Alexis Lewis only six months ago, so he knows less than most about mature adult relationships and love… despite his frequent use of the word during his soaring oratory.

Plenty of pictures make Cory and Alexis look more like actors in a Viagra commercial than a married couple, which explains why they have been described as ‘the beard and groom’ among other things, usually snickered rather than said.

Platner, a combat veteran and progressive firebrand leading in the polls against five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins, has admitted to exchanging sexually explicit messages with women outside his marriage.

His wife, Amy Gertner, discovered the texts in the spring of 2025, the couple entered marriage counseling, and Gertner has since publicly defended her husband and their marriage. She called the leaks from a former campaign staffer a betrayal of a private confidence.

Booker, asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether he worried Platner’s personal history could hurt Democrats’ chances of winning a critical Senate seat, said: “Yeah, I have concerns. That guy has questions to answer. And that’s what campaigns are for.”

Let us pause and admire the geometry of that statement.

Booker, who has raised money from at least 45 billionaires, who voted to confirm Scott Bessent, a hedge fund billionaire, as treasury secretary, who voted to confirm Charles Kushner, a convicted tax evader and witness tamperer pardoned by Donald Trump, as ambassador to France, who has taken nearly $1 million from AIPAC while refusing to condition military aid to a government under examination for genocide by the International Court of Justice, who sided with Trump in opposing New York’s congestion pricing because it inconvenienced well-heeled New Jersey commuters, who has spent more than a decade in the Senate watching Trump win nearly every major policy fight while offering elegant speeches and 25-hour floor performances that changed exactly nothing — this man has concerns about another man’s text messages.

The hypocrisy is not subtle. It is not buried in fine print. It is standing on the tarmac at Reagan National Airport, waving at the cameras.

Platner’s record is not spotless. He has acknowledged making inflammatory statements online. He had a tattoo that has drawn comparisons to Nazi symbolism, which he has explained and disavowed in terms that satisfy some and do not satisfy others.

Platner is also an Army combat veteran who has spoken openly about struggling with post-traumatic stress, who has built a grassroots movement in a state Trump lost by seven points in 2024, and who has drawn the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders.

He is running against Susan Collins, a Republican who has spent two decades perfecting the art of concerned disappointment while voting with her party on virtually every consequential matter.

Booker’s real “concerns” about Platner are not policy differences, because Platner wants single-payer health care, a wealth tax, debt-free college, labor rights expanded, military spending audited and redirected to human needs, and a foreign policy that does not treat the rest of the world as a theater for American impunity—things Booker says he wants too.

So the concern is that Platner actually means it.

Here is the distinction that political reporters rarely make and that Booker’s donors understand perfectly.

A performative progressive who compromises before the negotiation begins is safe, but one who uses the leverage of a contested seat to demand structural change is dangerous.

Booker has mastered the art of the harmless radicalism—the soaring speech that does not threaten anyone’s bottom line, the floor performance that consumes hours but not power, the moral outrage that never makes it into the final bill.

Platner, for all his acknowledged personal flaws, has not learned that lesson. He is running as an open socialist. He is backed by Bernie Sanders. He is ahead in the polls not because he is polished but because Maine voters are tired of Susan Collins’s concerned centrism and want someone who will fight.

The people funding Booker’s campaigns—the billionaires, the hedge fund managers, the defense contractors, the real estate developers, the AIPAC donors who want no conditions on military aid—did not write those checks so a Democratic Senate could pass a wealth tax. They wrote those checks to ensure that the opposition to Trump remains safely within the boundaries of what their portfolios can tolerate.

A Platner victory threatens those boundaries. If Platner wins in Maine, he becomes a template for a dozen other races. Platner in the Senate becomes a voting bloc that cannot be counted on to fold when Wall Street calls. That is Booker’s concern.

Not the text messages. Not the tattoo. Not the Reddit posts. The concern is that Graham Platner is on the wrong side of the class war that Cory Booker’s contributors have been waging against everyone in America who works.

Booker, whether he knows it or not, just outed himself as a foot soldier for the other side.

Maine Republicans, naturally, are thrilled with Booker’s intervention. State Senator Trey Stewart told Fox News that Democrats supporting Platner are “selling their soul.” That is what Republicans always say about anyone to the left of Calvin Coolidge. The difference this time is that a prominent Democrat handed them the talking points.

Lisa McCormick, a progressive Democrat from New Jersey who has been brutally critical of Booker’s record, put it this way: Booker has no problem embracing the worst of New Jersey’s corrupt political establishment, Wall Street’s greediest stockbrokers and more than four dozen billionaires who have funded his campaigns, but he lacks the couth to mind his own business when it comes to the private and personal affairs between a man and his wife.

She asked a question that no one on Sunday morning television seemed willing to ask: How can the National Republican Senatorial Committee complain about Platner’s texts without acknowledging that the leader of their party is a man whom a jury found liable for sexual assault, whom a jury convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star, and whom multiple courts have found liable for fraud?

The answer, of course, is that consistency is not the currency of American politics. Performative outrage is. And no one performs better than Cory Booker.

Here is what is actually at stake. The Senate is evenly divided or within a seat or two of it. Susan Collins is a reliable Republican vote. Platner, whatever his personal flaws, would be a Democratic vote. On judicial confirmations, on Supreme Court vacancies, on legislation that affects health care, child care, wages, climate, immigration, voting rights, the basic architecture of American life — a single Senate seat is the difference between a check on an out-of-control executive branch and a rubber stamp.

Booker knows this. He said so on the same program where he expressed his concerns. “So much is riding on Democrats’ taking control of the Senate,” he said. The country needs a check on an “out-of-control president” who is driving up costs of health care, child care and gas.

But apparently, the need for that check is not urgent enough to refrain from publicly undermining the Democratic nominee in a competitive race over behavior that his own wife has forgiven, that occurred before the campaign began, and that has precisely nothing to do with whether he would vote to confirm the next Supreme Court justice or to raise the minimum wage or to protect the Affordable Care Act.

There is a name for this. It is not principle. It is not integrity. It is the politics of the perpetual primary, the endless audition for a base that mistakes personal purity for political effectiveness. It is the luxury of a senator who has never had to run a truly competitive race in New Jersey, who has never had to answer for his own donor list, who has built a career on moral posturing while delivering legislative results so meager they could fit in a fortune cookie.

The country is not in a normal place. Troops have been deployed to American cities. The FBI has raided a reporter’s home. The FCC has threatened to revoke television licenses over a joke about the first lady. The president is a convicted felon who has openly discussed using the justice system against his political enemies. And Cory Booker is worried about a Senate candidate’s text messages.

It would be funny if it were not so sad.

The people who will pay for this performance are not Booker’s billionaire donors. They are not the AIPAC lobbyists. They are not the hedge fund managers who sleep soundly knowing their treasury secretary was confirmed with bipartisan support. The people who will pay are the voters in Maine who want a Democrat in that seat, the organizers who have spent months building a movement, the working families who need a Senate that will actually fight for something.

Booker had a choice. He could have said nothing. He could have said, “I don’t comment on personal matters in other people’s marriages.” He could have said, “I’m focused on beating Susan Collins.” He could have said, “The Republican Party’s nominee is a man who has been found liable for rape, so let’s talk about that.”

Instead, he chose to echo the Republican line. He chose to give the National Republican Senatorial Committee a clean sound bite. He chose to remind everyone that for all his talk of justice, he serves at the pleasure of the very forces that are dismantling American democracy.

The bucket, as the old economist said, is empty. The water is gone. And the man who could have carried some of it is too busy polishing his own halo to notice.