BOSTON — Graham Platner is out. The Bernie Sanders–endorsed Marine running for U.S. Senate in Maine ended his campaign Wednesday, telling Mainers that "that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine" — a lovely sentiment from a man whose own party spent six weeks deciding his sins didn't count, until suddenly they did.

Watch how the Massachusetts Democrats who backed him got here, because it is a master class in the difference between having standards and having double ones.

They stayed with him after the Totenkopf — the skull-and-crossbones insignia worn by the Nazi SS, which Platner had tattooed on his chest. Platner says he got it alongside fellow Marines in Croatia in 2007, didn't know its meaning, and covered it once the criticism started. Fine. But when Rep. Jake Auchincloss called the tattoo and Platner's handling of it "personally disqualifying" back in May, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Ed Markey did not agree. Rep. Seth Moulton went on CNN and defended him outright: "Graham clearly made a mistake. What I appreciated about him is he owned that mistake. He took responsibility for it." Disqualifying, Moulton said, it was not.

They stayed after the New York Times reported that three women who had dated Platner described his behavior as "unsettling," "demeaning," and in one case "physically threatening." They stayed after the Wall Street Journal reported he'd traded sexually explicit messages with multiple women near the start of his marriage, which his campaign confirmed.

They stayed after his deleted Reddit history surfaced under the handle "P-Hustle," including posts mocking Teddy Daniels — an Army combat veteran shot multiple times surviving a Taliban ambush — as someone who "didn't deserve to live," chalking his survival up to "poor marksmanship on the Taliban's part." They stayed after another post called the Army "awful" and "full of fat, lazy trash." They stayed after the same trove turned up posts belittling sexual assault victims, including in the military.

An SS insignia. Mocking a wounded veteran's survival. Insulting the troops. Belittling assault victims. For six weeks, the response from Warren, Markey and Moulton ranged from silence to an active defense — because Platner had the right letter after his name, a Bernie endorsement, and a shot at flipping a seat.

Then, on Monday, Politico published an account from Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old Maine woman who alleges Platner — drunk and uninvited — entered her home in 2021 and forced himself on her while she told him to stop. Platner denies it, calling the accusation "categorically false" and his exit "not an admission of guilt."

And that — not the Nazi insignia, not the mocked veteran, not two prior rounds of misconduct reporting — is the line that finally moved them. Within 48 hours the wagons circled. Markey rescinded his endorsement: "I cannot support his candidacy." Warren joined Sanders, who "recommended that he step aside." Rep. Ro Khanna suddenly discovered that "sexual assault or violence against women is a red line." They all found their voices in the same week, the instant the political math turned.

Here is the thing about a red line: it is supposed to be a line you won't cross — not the last one left after you've already stepped over every other one. If a Nazi insignia and a mocked combat veteran weren't disqualifying, then the "standards" these politicians are now invoking were never standards. They were a scoreboard, and they only glanced at it when the seat looked unwinnable.

One of their own colleagues managed it. Rep. Jake Auchincloss said in May what the rest wouldn't say until July — and headed off the partisan dodge by noting he has no use for Republican Sen. Susan Collins either, calling her "a rubber stamp for the worst admin in history."

Gov. Maura Healey never formally endorsed Platner. But she pledged to back him against Collins in November and spent months declining to call him out — even as her own Republican rival, gubernatorial candidate Brian Shortsleeve, demanded on July 6 that she "immediately withdraw her support" over "months of disturbing reports and red flags." A day later, once Politico published the assault allegation, Healey found the line.

“He should have already,” she posted — an admission from a governor who had spent weeks saying she would help send him to Washington.

They didn't grow a conscience this week. They did the math. If Massachusetts liberals didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all — and Graham Platner's endorsement list is the receipt.