Rep. Jake Auchincloss did something rare for a sitting Democrat: he said out loud that a Nazi tattoo should disqualify a candidate from public office. His own party made him pay for it.
The Massachusetts congressman appeared on CNN's "The Arena" on Monday and declared that Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Maine's U.S. Senate seat, is unfit to serve because of a tattoo resembling the SS Totenkopf, a skull symbol used by Nazi death camp guards. Within hours, progressive operatives, pollsters, and former campaign staffers piled on Auchincloss, accusing him of effectively endorsing Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins.
The episode tells you everything you need to know about the modern Democratic Party's priorities. A congressman calls a Nazi insignia disqualifying, and his colleagues treat him like the problem.
Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine veteran, has a chest tattoo that bears a resemblance to the Totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones insignia of the SS, the paramilitary organization responsible for running Nazi concentration camps. He has claimed he got the ink in Croatia in 2007 while inebriated and has insisted he had no idea about its Nazi ties, the New York Post reported. He later covered the tattoo with Celtic knot and dog imagery.
That explanation has never sat comfortably with the facts. CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski spoke with a source acquainted with Platner over a decade ago who said Platner had talked about the tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol. The "I was drunk and didn't know" defense looks thinner when someone who knew you a decade ago remembers you acknowledging exactly what it was.
The tattoo is not the only red flag in Platner's background. Before launching his campaign, he deleted Reddit posts that included mocking a Purple Heart soldier, making lewd comments about graffiti, defending soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters, calling war "enjoyable," and, perhaps most revealingly, arguing that white Americans "actually are" racist. Newsmax reported that Platner also made posts calling himself a "communist" and police officers "b******s."
This is the man Democrats are rallying behind for one of the most competitive Senate seats in the country.
Auchincloss was direct on CNN. He told viewers:
"I've been clear about Graham Platner. I find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying. I hope Maine voters agree with me."
He went further, arguing that Platner's candidacy represents a strategic dead end for his party:
"I think it would be a mistake for the Democratic Party to think that Graham Platner's brand of the Democratic Party is what wins us durable majorities throughout this country."
That is a reasonable position. It is, in fact, a position that any voter of any party should be able to hold without controversy. A candidate who carried a Nazi death-camp symbol on his body, and whose explanation for it has been contradicted by at least one person who knew him, should face hard questions. Auchincloss raised them.
The congressman had flagged the issue months earlier. He vented to Politico Playbook last year that "Democrats would be united in condemning a Republican candidate who had this episode, and we should be consistent." That standard, apply the same rules regardless of party, used to be a bipartisan baseline. Apparently it no longer is.
The response from the left was swift and coordinated. Saikat Chakrabarti, a California congressional hopeful and former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, posted on X:
"Jake Auchincloss is essentially endorsing Susan Collins in Maine. Absolutely no excuse for a Democrat in the House to back a Republican for Senate in a crucial swing seat."
Chakrabarti added that "Auchincloss should be primaried," noting that his September 1 primary is in a "safe, D+11 seat." The message was clear: fall in line, or face consequences.
Democratic pollster Adam Carlson framed the situation as a gift to the Trump administration, writing that "a smart reporter would ask Jake Auchincloss, the chairman of Majority Democrats, why he wants Trump to have a Republican Senate majority for his final two years in office." Rob Flaherty, former deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris, called it "kind of odd to be the Chairman of an org called 'Majority Democrats' and then endorse against both Democrats and a Majority."
Ryan Grim, a journalist at the progressive outlet DropSite, noted the double standard more candidly than his allies probably appreciated. He wrote that when "a Democrat endorses from the left against another Democrat in a primary, all h*** comes down on them," but wondered whether party leadership was "quietly ok with Collins." A self-identified progressive user named Sean was blunter: "Jake Auchincloss just endorsed Susan Collins. He needs to be kicked out of the Democratic Party."
Not one of these critics addressed the substance of Auchincloss's objection, the Nazi tattoo itself. Every response reframed the issue as a question of party loyalty. The tattoo vanished from the conversation. Only the heresy of criticizing a fellow Democrat remained.
Auchincloss responded on X, rejecting the characterization that he had endorsed Collins. He called the Republican senator "a rubber stamp for the worst admin in history" and stated plainly:
"Claims that I would endorse her, implicitly or otherwise, ignore my track record supporting Democrats to take back both chambers. As I said months ago, I find Platner's Nazi tattoo and his commentary about it personally disqualifying."
He added: "If it were me I'd vote for someone else in the Maine Democratic primary." Maine's primary is scheduled for June 9. Auchincloss also said he would keep working to help Democrats retake the Senate "regardless of what happens in Maine."
This is not a man endorsing Susan Collins. This is a man saying his party can do better than a candidate who carried a Nazi insignia and whose deleted internet history includes attacks on military heroes and self-described communist sympathies. The distinction should not be difficult to grasp.
Democrats view the Maine Senate seat as one of their top pickup opportunities in the 2026 midterms, alongside North Carolina. Platner currently holds a 7.5-percentage-point polling edge over Collins in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate. But Maine polls have fooled Democrats before. Collins won her 2020 reelection by about 8.6 percentage points despite trailing Democrat Sara Gideon in nearly every survey.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, dropped out of the Senate race last month, leaving Platner as the presumptive nominee heading into the June 9 primary. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both backed Platner. Sanders stumped with him on Monday, the same day Auchincloss made his CNN appearance.
The fact that Warren and Sanders are comfortable campaigning alongside a candidate with a Nazi tattoo and a trail of deleted extremist posts tells its own story. Platner has avoided primary debates since Mills's departure, limiting voters' ability to press him on these issues in a public forum.
Auchincloss founded two Majority Democrats PACs last year with the stated goal of elevating centrist-leaning Democrats. That project now looks like an exercise in futility. The congressman tried to hold a simple line, Nazi symbols are disqualifying, and his party's activist class treated it as an act of betrayal.
The pattern is familiar. Democrats who break from progressive orthodoxy face immediate retaliation from the party's institutional left. Sen. John Fetterman has publicly warned about the direction of the Maine race, and he has faced his own share of intra-party hostility for departing from the progressive line on other issues.
The Washington Examiner noted Auchincloss's refusal to endorse Platner, underscoring the widening rift between centrist and progressive factions within the party. The fight is not really about one tattoo. It is about whether the Democratic Party has any standards left that supersede the demand for partisan conformity.
Auchincloss asked a straightforward question: Would Democrats tolerate a Republican candidate with a Nazi tattoo and a history of extremist online posts? Everyone knows the answer. The outrage would be wall-to-wall, and no one would accuse a Democrat of disloyalty for saying so.
The growing number of internal Democratic fractures suggests the party's leadership either cannot or will not enforce basic standards when doing so threatens a competitive seat. Winning matters more than principle. The seat matters more than the symbol.
Maine voters will have their say on June 9. They deserve to know that when one Democrat had the nerve to call a Nazi tattoo what it is, his own party's first instinct was to make him the villain.
When condemning a death-camp insignia gets you attacked and the man who wore it gets a Senate endorsement from Bernie Sanders, the problem is not Jake Auchincloss.
