WATCH: Early Graham Platner critic unloads on 'unapologetic' Senate candidate in scathing rebuke

Madeleine Dean isn't exactly a profile in courage for opposing a guy with a Nazi-linked tattoo and multiple abuse allegations trailing him before a rape claim even surfaced. That's not a tough call. That's the bare minimum. The fact that this counts as news, that a sitting Democrat unloading on Platner is treated as some kind of scathing act of political bravery, tells you everything about how low the bar has fallen in that party's Senate primary fights.

What's actually notable here isn't Dean's rebuke. It's that Platner got this far in the first place. Democratic activists and donors were willing to overlook a swastika-adjacent tattoo and abuse allegations because he fit some progressive populist mold they wanted for Maine. Dean speaking up now, after the rape allegation broke, isn't leadership. It's catching up to a scandal everyone should have flagged from the start.

We'd take this more seriously as a moment of party accountability if it had happened before the tattoo story broke wide, before donors cut checks, before he became a viable frontrunner. Instead we get after-the-fact outrage dressed up as an early warning. Voters in Maine deserve better than a party that only finds its spine once the cameras are already rolling.

If Democrats want credit for standing up to bad candidates, they need to do it before the story becomes impossible to ignore, not after. Being right too late isn't the same as being right..