A decade after the 2016 there comes a point when you really do believe you are numb to every shock imaginable
and nothing can surprise you. So in that sense I'm grateful to not just Graham
Platner but everyone who was willing to ignore all the red flags that started
from the beginning of his campaign and kept with him almost to the bitter end.
(We won't talk about the fanbase he still has because thinking about that sends
me into a black hole and I need to be cogent for this article.)
The real shock for me came after
the New York Times article the weekend before the Maine primaries revealing
that three different former girlfriends of Platner had accused him of
sexual assault. It didn't come so much from the fact that so many of the
progressives who'd endorsed him from Rho Khanna to Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth
Warren chose to stand by him even while the vast majority of the Democratic
Party and many critical groups were rescinding their endorsements left and
right. No, the real shock came when I saw a New Republic article published the
day before the primary.
By that point everyone from the
Times to the Washington Post to the Atlantic was tearing Platner down in big
fat letters in multiple columns. The New Republic stood by Platner – or
more to the point made it clear why they were standing by Platner.
They made it clear that
regardless of Platner being a flawed candidate (there's a euphemism) the real
issue was that Susan Collins could not be allowed to remain in the Senate. Now I've made it clear I never bought 'the
ends justify the means' argument when it was used for the War in Terror and
last I checked Susan Collins isn't a
member of Al-Qaeda.
Much of this followed the same
argument that is basically standard for any Republican senator or
representative for the last decade: they tacitly endorsed the agenda of Donald
Trump. First of all that's what party unity is called, something I don't expect
the writers who lived in a morality based universe long before Trump
came along when it came to politics on either side of the aisle. Second of all,
and more importantly, almost every Republican who has served in the House or
Senate during the last decade has done practically everything Susan Collins did
when it comes to supporting Trump's agenda – and as far as the voters in their
states are concerned, that's okay by them.
Everything that could be said
about Collins can just as easily be applied to Ted Cruz or Rick Scott or Marco
Rubio. They completely and totally supporting Trump's agenda, Democrats railed
against them for years and years, and the voters chose to reelect them, in some
cases multiple times. Endorsing Trump's agenda may be morally repugnant to all
good liberal people but it sure as hell hasn't hurt any of them politically. So
objectively saying that Collins has to lose because she's endorsed Trump's
agenda may not be the winning argument with voters that the left seems to
believe it should be.
The thesis behind that article –
the main justification for the need to endorse Platner – was that she had voted
for all three of Trump's Supreme Court appointees. The main one brought up,
with no sense of self-awareness, was Brett Kavanaugh.
Now I have to tell you arguing
that we need a sexual predator in the Senate to balance out the one Collins put
on the Supreme Court is an argument nearly as ludicrous as saying that
Platner's Nazi tattoo didn't matter because 'Trump has dinner with Nazis'. One almost wonders if the Democrats now want
to win back 'the deplorables' but instead of working class voters are now, as
the left often does, taking it to the most extreme level possible. It would be
funny if it wasn't being written in the New Republic and if it wasn't something
that so many Platner supporters seem to believe was a valid argument even after
the assault charges came out.
Hard as it is to look at this
objectively, need I remind you that Collins confirmed all of Trump's appointees
during his first term. She was up for reelection in 2020 against Sara Gideon.
That argument was waged long before Amy Comey Barrett's was nominated and
Gideon doubled down on it.. Collins defeated Gideon by eight points.
And for the record Collins wasn't
even the only Republican female Senator who did exactly the same thing.
Joni Ernst of Iowa and Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia. So did Deb Fischer
of Nebraska. All of them were women, all of them voted for Kavanaugh, all of
them won reelection. Ernst and Capito did so in 2020; Fischer was reelected in
2018 and again in 2024.
By contrast Heidi Heitkamp of
North Dakota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri voted against both Kavanaugh and
Neil Gorsuch's confirmation. They stood up for women – and the following
November the voters of their states turned them out for reelection by a
significant margin. McCaskill, it's worth noting, actually said the spectacle
around Kavanaugh's nomination was a factor in her losing reelection.
You might say they were profiles
in courage. I'd say we needed red state Democrats more than we need Susan
Collins out of Maine. Heitkamp was basically as much a centrist Democrat and
Collins was a moderate Republican. There are those who would've called Heitkamp
a DINO just as they did Kristyn Sinema and Joe Manchin during Biden's term. I'd
say if you're the kind of person who thinks a moderate Democrat is as bad as
any Republican, you're part of the reason the Democrats are having so much
trouble getting the majority back in the Senate. And since you're not having
any luck beating Republicans by shouting how evil they are for supporting Trump
then clearly you're AOC. (By the way if you ever try running for Senate, don't
expect to get many votes in Long Island or Upstate New York. That area isn't
friendly to the left.)
As I've argued before the far
left's takeover of the Democratic Party is greatly exaggerated. What isn't is
how the red state Democrats which existed because of moderates winning in
conservative states, dried up entirely after the 2024 election. Part of the
reason was because the left had done such a good job labeled Joe Manchin a DINO
that he did leave the party as did Krysten Sinema who became an Independent.
Both of them chose not to run again in 2024 and as result Jim Justice took
Manchin's seat in West Virginia and we lost Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod
Brown in Ohio. Manchin made it clear that the left wing of the party was
driving people like him out of it. To the left that's a plus.
The problem is – and Chuck
Schumer knows this better than anyone else in the Democrats – is that there
have been no Democrats taking their place in the Senate to take their place.
And since rational people know that they can't turn DC and Puerto Rico into
states unless they have a Democratic majority in the Senate the only way to
correct the balance is elect more Democrats in states that are unfriendly to
progressives but might be friendly to centrists.
Now the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth
Warren wing of the party knows full well it for the last decade it has not been
able to get a single AOC type Democrat elected to the Senate. Their
endorsements had been worthless for Sara Gideon and that was a state that
should have friendlier to them. And while Annie Andrews and Jamie Davis might
swell the hearts of left-wing voters in some places, their chances of winning
in South Carolina and Louisiana were slim to none. The DNC had been willing to
try and win with them and they hadn't. And as I've indicated they spent much of
2025 trying to recruit candidate in many states where it had been proven they
couldn't win.
They needed a win at any cost.
And they chose Platner. Some may want to blame Schumer for keeping other less
toxic progressive candidates out of the race in favor of Janet Mills but that's
based on the concept voters want progressive candidates in the first place,
something that multiple election cycles – starting with Sanders' primary defeat
in 2016 – have been making it increasingly abundantly clear to anyone who
isn't a progressive.
The left wing of the party believed solely
because of Platner's early polling numbers and appearances before crowds that
this would be their guy. It was entirely based on crowds for Democratic
primaries. It was done by the typical progressive campaign ideologue who had
never been to Maine but naturally assumed the basic ideas that the progressive
way was the one size fits all matter. An 'authentic progressive' would win,
which makes you wonder was the reason Sanders lost the Democratic primaries for
President twice was because the voters didn't think he was authentic enough?
He didn't do a sufficient vetting process,
saying America doesn't want candidates in a vat and when recently interviewed
by the Times makes it very clear that they his appeal at rallies before he'd
even won the primary was the end of the discussion. Even his half-hearted
apology is based on the failures of the Democrats saying the conventional
approach is failing. He conveniently omits that the progressive approach isn't
exactly working either.
This is the belief system of the
typical progressive who believes what works in a Democratic primary will de
facto work in the general election. The Justice Democrats first election cycle
alone proved that didn't work at a Congressional level in all but four
districts. The only times they managed to get that far was when in 2018 Ben
Jealous and Christine Halquist in Maryland and Vermont, respectively won the
Democratic primary for governor and both lost to Republican incumbents in
landslides. Bernie easily won reelection in 2018 but Halquist couldn't get
forty percent of the vote against Phil Scott.
If in Vermont the voters made it
clear they didn't want someone with Bernie's 2016 platform as their governor,
it should have told him at least how little the rest of America wanted it. The
fact Bernie's own state had rejected his candidate should have been the
official notice to anyone with eyes how little influence he had at any level.
Instead he and the left wing of the Democrats continue to insist the people
want what the left is selling.
That's the difference between
leadership like Schumer and the left wing that Sanders and Warren represent.
Schumer has to look at things like the results of general elections, margins of
defeat and which parts of the primary campaign didn't work in the general.
Sanders and Warren will argue based on nebulous things that have to do with
their belief that what is morally right is politically sound.
That this logic has failed every
time they use that to campaign against MAGA – and hasn't worked to defeat Susan
Collins six years ago – has never stopped them from arguing: "If it were
the right kind of progressive, we'd win." This is the same tone
they use when they say that Venezuela and Cuba aren't 'really socialist
countries'. Only people who already believe you will listen. Clearly the voters
in general elections don't – and if they thought Platner was 'the right kind of
progressive', I'd really hate to see
what they think the wrong kind was.
That's why, even if Platner had
not been as flawed a candidate as he was, I still believe he would have lost
against Susan Collins. The strategy behind his campaign was very much a
left-wing one: far more interested in mobilizing progressive supporters in the
primary on the belief they'd all turn out in the general. Given that Platner
had already made it pretty clear that he would not move towards the center and
that many of his supporters were perfectly fine if more centrist Democrats
rejected him, this would have given more of the center to Collins who has been
winning them for twenty years.
And that's the real reason I want
her to win. All of my previous entries have been endorsing centrist Democrats
as well as Dan Osborn who's trying to build a collation as an independent. I
will endorse at least one Republican this cycle, maybe two and the ones I do
will follow this centrist ideology.
The Republican party is very low
on centrists, to say the least. I believe its conceivable there are more of
them that can be expected but the only two that identify that way as Collins
and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski. Both have incurred the wrath of this administration
more than a few times by bucking his agenda. Murkowski has done so more
frequently but earlier this month Collins voted in favor of the War Powers Act
in a gesture against the conflict in Iran. Cynics will say she did this
symbolically to help win reelection. I'd remind them everything involving this
act is pure symbolism as Trump has made it clear he'd veto it if it
landed on his desk.
To put it very mildly we need
centrists in both parties. The last decade has caused many of them to retire in
the GOP while many of the Democrats have essentially been pushed out. Both
sides are very clear they view centrists as betrayers of the cause, essentially
arguing that bipartisanship is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I didn't
agree with it in when McConnell did it when he took over the Senate leadership
and said their goal was to make Obama a one-term President; I sure as hell
don't agree with it when my party has turned on John Fetterman because he has
acknowledged that Trump won the 2024 election.
More to the point if there were
Republicans I think deserve to lose reelection Collins would be at the bottom
of the list. I was fine trying to defeat Cruz and Scott and Josh Hawley because
I find them more despicable as politicians. And I've no doubt there are far
more Republican Senators who deserve to lose more. The reason the left chooses
Collins for their punching bag is because she's in a state that has been voting
Democratic for decades and by their logic, no Democrat should be allowed to
hold in such an office. (That there are increasingly fewer 'safe states' for
Democrats at any level is another in a long line of realities progressives
ignore at their peril – but that Democrats can't.)
All of their arguments against
Collins's being an enemy of the people are just straw men arguments because she
reminds them that yes Republicans do live and vote in blue states and
can in fact be elected if they embrace t center. Progressives don't like being
reminded of their weaknesses – which is odd because electorally they don't
really have any benefits that I've seen in the last ten years.
And now I have to end this piece
with my fellow beleaguered Democrats. The ones who cling to hope against all
evidence to the contrary. Who still believe with Platner gone from the ticker
the Democrats still might be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat
despite this very public implosion.
To which I can only say: no. Even
if by some miracle those fanatics who somehow believe Platner was framed by the
establishment decide to vote in this election anyway Collins will still win
easily. And the reason I know that is because Troy Jackson is now the nominee.
I will acknowledge that Jackson
has some pluses but they won't help him with the right people. He first ran for
office as a Republican, was elected to the Maine state senate in 2002 and
became a Democrat in 2004. You know there isn't a progressive in the world who
wouldn't find that as suspect even before Platner.
He also has a pretty lousy track
record running for national office. In 2014 he ran in the Democratic primary in
the 2nd District and lost by 51 percent of the vote. He was a
Sanders superdelegate at the 2016 convention and left in 2024. In March of 2025
he announced he was running for governor as a Democrat. He claimed he was
running on behalf of the working class Mainers who 'feel under attack from
billionaires, special interests and their friends." He was endorsed by
Bernie and Rho Khanna for the governor's race, like Platner was in the Senate.
In fact the two of them endorsed each other.
Platner's endorsement for the
record wasn't worth much. Jackson finished third in the primary with 29 percent
of the vote.
So to recap the Democrats are
endorsing a candidate who had the support of the same people as Platner, but
who's already been rejected by the voters of Maine less than a month ago. He
has the exact same positions as Platner on everything included calling Gaza a
genocide, called for the abolition of ICE and only chose to distance himself
from Platner after the rape charges came out. And just to drive the point home Katz
considered going to him as a candidate before thinking the man with the Nazi
tattoo was a better choice.
And the Maine Democrats just
blessed him with their nomination.
Leave it to the progressives.
Only they could make the same mistake twice in the same state in the same
election cycle.
Susan Collins should be scared.
For five minutes.
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