A week ago Jazz wrote about a teenage Democrat named Aaron Coleman who had defeated a Democratic incumbent in a state race in Kansas City. Coleman is just 19 years old so you’d think there couldn’t be much in his background that could impact the race. But it turned out he had a history of seriously bad behavior in middle school which included bullying (to the point that one teen girl tried to kill herself) and revenge porn. Yesterday, Coleman announced he was withdrawing from the race.

https://twitter.com/Aaron4KS37/status/1297616490166915072

After his announcement, Coleman said he got lots of calls asking him to stay in the race:

https://twitter.com/Aaron4KS37/status/1297660337223761925

Coleman is also getting some threats and is comparing himself favorably to the people making them:

https://twitter.com/Aaron4KS37/status/1297773081264566272

But one of Coleman’s victims is glad he dropped out:

Kati Hampton, now 20, of Kansas City, Kan., said Mr. Coleman distributed a nude photo of her when she was 13 after she refused to send him more. She said on Sunday that she was “happy he dropped out.”

“I don’t think somebody who’s done what he’s done needs to be in any position of power,” she said.

The middle school stuff wasn’t the only controversy Coleman had created in the race:

Mr. Coleman, who had campaigned on a progressive platform of creating a single-payer health care system, fighting climate change and legalizing cannabis, also made controversial comments during his campaign, including that he would “giggle” if a former Republican legislator died of the coronavirus. Democratic leaders feared his behavior would hurt the party’s chances in other competitive elections.

Because Coleman is a leftists who had defeated a moderate Democratic incumbent, some on the left have been arguing that he’s being treated unfairly. Here’s Glenn Greenwald:

19-year-old leftist dishwasher wins his primary challenge against long-time establishment Dem for the Kansas House.

The State Party is mounting a write-in campaign for the incumbent, citing bad *middle school* bullying, which he admits & apologized for:https://t.co/uWPu9NaA7v

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 20, 2020

And Ryan Grim of the Intercept:

Has he reformed and apologized and changed? I really don’t know, haven’t followed this

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) August 20, 2020

That led to a backlash from Jessica Valenti who argued that Coleman hadn’t offered much in the way of an apology to his victims.

Other than his official apology — an apology that was only made once his abusive history came to light — Coleman has only once addressed his actions, writing to a victim’s relative to more or less tell her to get over it. “I’ve moved on,” he said. “They call the past the past for a reason, because that’s where you are supposed to leave things. At this point you shouldn’t move on for me, you should move on for yourself.”…

When asked by Greenwald how people might believe that he’s changed in the last five years, for example, Coleman didn’t talk about sexism, the irreparable damage he did to his young victims, or steps he’s taken to reckon with his behavior — instead he just pivoted to his “compassionate platform.”

And when Coleman announced via tweet that he’d be dropping out of his race, he didn’t attribute it to the lingering power of his own actions or the idea that he might still have some growing up to do: Instead, he wrote that “feminism hasn’t got a chance” because of “Donatism” (a religious sect that demands a person be faultless) and the “progressive circular firing squad.”

The responses from his defenders were equally insufferable. Branko Marcetic — a writer at the far-left magazine Jacobin — tweeted that his resignation was setting a precedent for candidates whose histories will be “scoured” for what he diminishingly characterized as “childhood scandal.” A leftist podcaster also tweeted that the reporting around Coleman’s past was a “harassment campaign” that overruled Kansas voters. And Greenwald, among others, implied that the criticisms of Coleman were now responsible for helping his anti-abortion opponent.

Valenti says that men on the left should be ashamed for taking up arguments that were used to defend Brett Kavanaugh. Of course the problem with this comparison is that unlike Aaron Coleman, Brett Kavanaugh didn’t admit his guilt. On the contrary, he claimed the allegations against him were false. And no one was able to back up accusations made by Christine Blasey Ford. In Coleman’s case, we know the allegations are true.

Should someone be held accountable for behavior when they were in middle school? In most cases, probably not. I’ve argued in defense of people who were attacked because of an inappropriate tweet they sent when they were a teen. But in this case the behavior goes well beyond inappropriate comments online. Coleman not only made threats of bad behavior, he followed through on them. And some of the behavior he has admitted to are crimes: Harassment, sexual harassment, extortion, revenge porn, maybe even distributing child pornography.

It’s fair to say that people grow out of who they are in middle school but in Coleman’s case that was only about seven years ago. So he hasn’t really had decades to grow up since the behavior in question. And the fact that he doesn’t seem very apologetic now makes it fair to ask just how much he has changed.

As for the people defending him, it’s not a coincidence that many of his defenders are leftists. Here’s the platform Coleman was running on:

I agree, his community is expecting him to deliver on his campaign platform for:

✅Medicare for All
✅Sustainable Energy
✅Public education
✅Rational gun policy
✅Stabilize the budget
✅Legalize cannabis
✅LGBTQ+ protections
✅Abortion rights, and
✅Voting Rights.

— 🌹Integrity please…🧶🌎 (@CrumbsForAll) August 24, 2020

At the moment it’s not clear what will happen in this race. There is no Republican challenger in the race so whoever Democrats pick to replace Coleman will get the seat.