Washington Examiner columnist Guy Benson slammed the Democratic Party’s vetting and recruitment of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, arguing the fallout from a bombshell report alleging sexual assault has left them badly embarrassed as the situation spirals into a political frenzy. Responding to reports showing the Democratic Party’s working-class base being displaced by affluent, college-educated voters set to inherit family wealth, Benson said, “I think those people, specifically, were the ones who helped recruit and vet, if you can call it that, Graham Platner.” “Now there’s egg all over their faces, and they were into him because he was their caricature version of a working-class person and a masculine man,” Benson said on Fox News’s Hannity on Tuesday.

Platner was recruited by political consultant Daniel Moraff and his fiancée, Leanne Fan. Moraff, a consultant at Dark Forest, and Fan, a City University of New York Ph.D. sociology student, met while working on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) 2020 presidential campaign.

The pair discovered Platner after combing through records and noticing his past donations to Sanders’ campaign.“It’s their version of it. It’s a terrible cartoon, and it turns out to be a wretched human being, and a lot of them clung to this person for a long time until they threw him overboard. Why? Because he’s a socialist like they are. He called himself a communist in writing at one point.” Benson said. DEMOCRATS FAILED TO VET GRAHAM PLATNER BEFORE SENATE NOMINATION: NAOMI LIMDespite the past allegations of misconduct and a sexting scandal, prominent Democratic lawmakers, including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), had thrown support behind Platner, endorsing him as the Democratic nominee in Maine’s U.S. Senate race. Since then, they’ve rescinded their support in light of a sexual assault allegation published by Politico on Monday. “They’d rather go with an untested, apparent predator than even the sitting governor, a pretty far-left Democrat of that state, and the voters, the Democratic base, went with them, and now they’re a mess,” Benson said.