Graham Platner is once again the political story of the week, this time for defeat rather than victory.

A month ago, I wrote about his victory, and this video that I watched at the time has stuck with me:

I said, none of this will or should stop him from becoming a US Senator. … I think, if what the voters wanted were people who were grown in vats and had never done or said anything that they would regret their entire lives, we’d have a very different country. Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in vats. They want people who are real human beings, and they want people who do not look and sound like the vat-grown people who’ve been leading this country off a cliff.

That’s Daniel Moraff, one of the political strategists who recruited Platner and launched his campaign.

Leave aside the irony of complaining about contrived, “vat-grown” candidates while reinterpreting Pygmalion for the Maine Senate race. Moraff’s argument is a neat political maneuver, turning virtue into vice and vice into virtue. To have lived a decent life without hateful speech and sexual violence is to be vat-grown and inauthentic; to have made mistakes that you will regret (or maybe not) your entire life is to be real. The flaws are not a liability; they are precisely what place the candidate outside the establishment. They are the reason people should vote for him.

Plainly, it worked. Platner won more than 70% of the vote in the primary, despite the stack of scandals that had already piled up prior to the primary. He might have made it to the Senate if not for one more allegation that tipped everything against him.

But the success of the strategy doesn’t mitigate its breathtaking cynicism. There are enormous challenges facing America today. Expanding the economy, rebuilding alliances, taking on autocracy, building systems to sustainably care for all Americans, advancing science and discovery, restoring the rule of law, and on and on. A senator is one of only a few hundred people in the nation charged with leading us through this time. Platner looked the part and can energize a crowd, but is there anything in his background that suggests he has the capability and character to do the job? The article above takes Moraff to task for the rushed vetting that didn’t turn up the worst of Platner’s political liabilities, but vetting for scandals should be secondary to the more basic question of competence. That doesn’t seem to have been part of the calculus at all.

To be clear, this is not to say that every leader has to have lived a picture-perfect life, or come from wealth, or have an Ivy League degree. Far from it. The criterion for office should not be membership in an elite, however that’s defined, but a life that demonstrates competence, compassion, and courage. This morning, I was talking with my kids about movies we might watch this weekend, and one we thought of is Ratatouille, which brings to mind this wonderful line: “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” Americans from any background can be great leaders — I have no difficulty imagining a veteran and oysterman as an outstanding senator — but we have to choose them for the right qualities. A nation that confuses excellence and elitism is in trouble.

The broader problem that extends beyond Maine is what Platner’s victory in the primary says about the Democratic electorate. For ten years, we’ve watched Republicans vote for Trump and wondered how they can stomach him. In the beginning, before he’d had a chance to ransack the American idea, we focused on his unfitness for the job: his corruption, his coarseness, his lack of belief in anything but himself. We watched them forgive each scandal, and even revel in them. There are some who want Democrats to counter MAGA with a parallel approach from the left, and others (like me) who want us to fight not only for the policies we want but for a politics with integrity. Platner is out now, but his big win in the primary suggests that Trump has not only taken over the Republican party but may also be reshaping Democrats in his image.

We can’t allow it. Writing about President Obama’s victory in 2008, I said:

I don’t expect anything superhuman, just the common honesty, decency, and capability that one can find everywhere but politics, and especially the presidency. Over the next four years, there will be mistakes and false starts and bad ideas, and likely a scandal or two. But this time the American people have chosen someone who embodies the values that every parent hopes their children will learn, and who will meet those challenges with dignity.

That is the standard we should expect in every office. We have to win, but victory is about more than the final tally.