Graham Platner had a Nazi tattoo, a domestic abuse history, and a sexual assault allegation. Bernie Sanders attended his campaign events anyway, vowed to do “everything I can” to get him elected, and kept advocating for him on social media after every new scandal broke.
That’s not poor judgment. That’s a pattern. And it’s time to call it what it is.
Platner is the most spectacular example — so far — of what happens when the Sanders political machine decides a candidate serves the revolution. But he’s far from the only one. The roster of Bernie-endorsed catastrophes in the 2026 cycle reads like a greatest hits of progressive dysfunction.
In Utah, Sanders backed Nate Blouin — whom he called “a fighter” — for a House seat. When Blouin’s old Reddit posts surfaced featuring jokes about filming pornography with an underage sister, repeated slurs, and a “skull f**k” threat toward Mormons, Salt Lake City’s mayor called on him to drop out. Blouin stayed in and got crushed, taking 24% to Ben McAdams’ 60%. Sound familiar? It’s Platner in miniature: warning signs visible from orbit, ignored by Sanders, followed by a wipeout that damaged everyone around him.
In New Jersey, Sanders-adjacent candidate Adam Hamawy — who has documented ties to one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing masterminds — actually won his primary. He’s now the Democratic nominee for a congressional seat. The party that calls everyone else a national security threat just nominated a man with al-Qaeda-linked connections.
Then there’s Randy Villegas, who racked up $14 million in abuse settlements as a school board member. Melat Kiros, who claimed 9/11 was inevitable. Peter Chatzky, whose old Facebook posts about paying Melania Trump for sex and sleeping with hypothetical interns ended his campaign. And Tom Steyer — the billionaire Sanders endorsed after spending decades railing against billionaires buying elections — who poured $215 million of his own money into the California governor’s race and finished third.
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.), to his credit, said what every honest Sanders observer already knows: “I don’t know why you want to keep pushing these kinds of people. Maybe he should consider sitting a few out and stop pushing these kinds of communists.”
Fetterman is right that Sanders should stop. He’s wrong to think Sanders will. Because this isn’t an accident. Bernie Sanders is not stumbling across bad candidates by mistake. He is deliberately building a political movement whose hostility toward America, capitalism, traditional values, and basic standards of human decency keeps producing exactly these results. The candidates aren’t bugs in the Sanders machine. They’re features.
The Democratic Party has a choice: continue letting Sanders remake it in his image, or fight back before the image becomes permanent.
Based on everything we’ve seen so far, they’re going to keep letting him do it.
Conservatives should take careful notes — and make sure every voter in America sees the list.
