With Janet Mills out of the Maine Senate race, the competition is likely between incumbent Susan Collins and Democrat Graham Platner. Dan Foster, on today’s edition of The Editors, points out that “this is a Groundhog’s Day thing with the Maine ladies. They’re always facing the most dangerous challenge of their political career.
“Their position has just gotten more and more tenuous and untenable as the American electorate has changed and the states have changed,” Dan says, and because of that, “Platner is a real threat to her.
“As for what it says about the national Democrats that he’s their guy,” says Dan, “I think it’s weirdly similar to the Hasan Piker thing. . . . They initially, with that New York Times profile, tried to elevate Piker as an answer to the bro, manosphere, alt-right podcast world, and Platner is an earthy lumberjack guy with tattoos.”
Platner, however, comes with his own baggage, and Dan says “it doesn’t say anything good about the Democrats that they were willing to overlook this stuff. Someone also made a great, if obvious, point — I forget who, so I can’t credit them — on social media. The point being that all the oppo that we know about Platner is, of course, Democratic primary oppo. So the Republicans haven’t even really gotten into what there is out there on him. So things could still get interesting before November, but there’s no doubt that Collins, for a variety of reasons, is in trouble.
“It’s going to be a bad overall year for Republicans. The only question is how bad.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.