A detailed sexual assault allegation against a U.S. Senate candidate is more than enough for a political party to conclude he can no longer represent it. Democrats were right to force him off the ballot. Political parties aren’t courts of law, and they don’t owe candidates the presumption of innocence that criminal defendants receive. They owe voters sound judgment, and in this case, they exercised it.What interested me most wasn’t Platner’s downfall. It was how familiar (and pathetic) his response sounded.
As a psychotherapist, I’ve spent several years watching the language of therapy migrate far beyond the consulting room. Words such as trauma, healing, authenticity, emotional safety, and lived experience were meant to help people understand themselves. Today, they’ve become staples of politics, corporate communications, and celebrity crisis management. Platner’s 11-minute video sounded less like an unusual response to scandal than the latest performance in a script we’ve all heard before.He denied the allegation against him, but much of his statement focused on something else entirely. He described the political establishment, the forces he believed wanted him gone, the allies who abandoned him, and the personal toll the controversy had taken. The allegation itself became only one part of a much larger story, one in which Platner wasn’t just the accused. He was also the aggrieved.That shift is the real story.The old crisis-management playbook emphasized facts: address the accusation. Clarify what happened. Admit what you must. Deny what isn’t true. Protect yourself legally. Today’s playbook is different. Its purpose is more than answering the allegation. It’s to redirect the audience’s sympathy.The objective is subtle but powerful. If the public starts asking whether the accused has been treated fairly instead of asking what he actually did, the conversation has already changed. The accused is no longer viewed only as someone under investigation. He’s competing for the status of victim.We’ve seen this play out repeatedly. Politicians, celebrities, CEOs, university leaders, and media personalities now respond to scandal in remarkably similar ways. The names change, but the script barely does. There is almost always a story about betrayal, misunderstanding, unfairness, isolation, or personal devastation. Public disgrace is reframed as something happening to the accused rather than something he may have brought upon himself.Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at an anti-war rally in Portland, Maine, on January 3, 2026. (Troy R. Bennett/ZUMA Press Wire via Newscom)
