So, There Were Primary Elections Last Night In Maine And South Carolina
Hometown bias admittedly affects my coverage.
Years ago, my wife and I were returning home after a trip to Italy, and we had a layover in London. Once we’d boarded, the flight was delayed for apparent mechanical issues, which I’m always in favor of resolving before we’re actually in the air. When the very British flight attendant brought passengers a complimentary “please, just chill” drink, we inquired about the flight’s status, and he told us, perfectly deadpan, “They know what’s wrong. Now they’re just arguing over who to blame.”
That’s my way of revealing the hardly surprising news that Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate primary in Maine. It wasn’t particularly close, either. Despite recent scandals, Platner won with more than 70 percent of the vote against sitting Gov. Janet Mills. Maine has ranked-choice voting, but Platner’s margin was too overwhelming for that to matter.
Many Democrats who are horrified by this result want to blame everyone but Gov. Janet Mills, whose campaign was barely comatose, or Chuck Schumer, who somehow thought the party’s best bet was a 78-year-old sitting governor with cratering approval. Nor do they blame the many Democrats without offensive body art or sexting drama who preferred running for governor.
Instead, otherwise sensible Democratic pundits and strategists are blaming “podcast bros” and far-left consultants for somehow forcing an unsavory nominee onto the party. Neera Tanden, former senior adviser to President Joe Biden, even shared this this post from the right-wing Washington Beacon:
“Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”
The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday who revealed they paid ‘a whole chunk of money’ to vet Platner but managed to turn up neither his Nazi ink nor many of his Reddit posts.”
It’s certainly possible Moraff and Fan (if those are their real names) paid someone “a whole chunk of money” to vet Planter and yet didn’t turn up any red flags. When I was a kid, I paid a week’s allowance to see a mermaid at a traveling circus and that was also a waste of money.
Platner’s victory has devastated liberals who don’t live in Maine but who are convinced that Platner’s rise will cost the party the moral high ground against Donald Trump. Platner has a scuzzy past and perhaps an equally scuzzy present, but he’s nothing like Trump, who’s a comic book villain.
Some especially silly people online insist that Democrats supporting Platner — with his Nazi tattoo, offensive Reddit posts, and allegations of domestic violence — will ensure that James Talarico loses the Senate election in Texas, which is not a nickname for “Maine.” It’s an entirely different state. Yes, Talarico needs to win over more than a few Trump 2024 voters, but what will help him achieve that is his positive campaign plus Trump’s underwater approval rating in the state. Democrats might want to abandon the pretense that voters make decisions based solely on the personal morality of their candidates. At least they don’t tend to vote against a candidate just because they’re gross. Trump is the obvious Exhibit A (2016) and B (2024) in this case. They vote for the candidate they like who they believe can best improve their material conditions.
No matter what you think of Graham Platner, and like Don Draper, I try not to think about him much at all, the focus now should be on defeating Susan Collins, who might appear more respectable. However, Collins is only able to pull off her “very concerned moderate” scam thanks to a media bias towards normalcy that’s only extended to Republicans. Collins doesn’t share unhinged AI posts on social media like the current lunatic president. She’s very polite, but she’s also actively enabled Trump’s fascist regime. She was chair of the Appropriations Committee when the government sent people to a foreign gulag based on their race, which is arguably more Nazi than any tattoo. She voted to confirm Pam Bondi as attorney general and is likely to do so for Bondi’s even worse replacement, Todd Blanche. She voted to confirm crackpot HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., who’s the reason someone you love might die from measles or polio.
If a Democratic senator actively supported a radical far-left criminal presidential administration, no amount of appearances on Fox News would help them maintain a “moderate” reputation. “Look, the senator voted against President Comrade’s Seize the Means of Production bill when it was going to pass anyway. They’re totally a moderate!”
Democrats, still bearing scars from 2020 when Collins beat the polls and easily won re-election, have ascribed almost supernatural political powers to her that I think are unwarranted. Still, although Platner maintains a slight lead over Collins, nervous Democrats point out that a “generic Democrat” polls better than both Platner and Mills against Collins. Of course, that’s because imaginary people always perform better in polls and most bedroom scenarios. Besides, Collins has consistently beaten “generic, milquetoast Democrats.”
Collins survived the blue tsunami in 2008 when Democrats flipped eight seats, and her opponent was former House Rep. Tom Allen, who looked like a cover model for Milquetoast Democrat Monthly. Allen tried linking Collins to George W. Bush but she was able to perpetuate her scam on the public that she’s a moderate, “independent” Republican. Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman even endorsed her.
The 2014 election was a bloodbath for Senate Democrats, so Collins’s victory that year wasn’t really a show of unique strength. Her opponent was Shenna Bellows, Maine’s current Secretary of State who’s one of the 101 “normal” Democrats running for governor rather than Senate. They apparently all bought the hype about Collins and were too afraid to face her head on, preferring to wait until she retires. That kind of opportunistic cowardice doesn’t impress me when Democrats are flooding my in-box about Trump’s “existential threat to democracy” and how a Democratic House and Senate are necessary to provide at least a minor inconvenience to Trump’s reign of terror.
Sara Gideon was the former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. She seemed like a tailor-made candidate to defeat Collins, but 2020 was not a normal election. Democrats weren’t campaigning in person or canvassing door to door because of Covid-19, but Republicans did not similarly limit themselves. Gideon also got hammered by the “Defund the Police” backlash. Platner has surpassed Gideon’s raw vote total from the 2020 primary.
So, Platner could very well defeat Collins, an outcome that some Democrats might fear more than Collins serving another term. I know Democrats want to take the high ground against Republicans, but whenever we do, we’re somehow the ones who end up catching fire in flaming lava.
Meanwhile, my home state of South Carolina firmly and hilariously rejected Rep. Nancy Mace, who was running for governor. Early results had her at fifth place in the Republican primary, right below Rom Reddy, an actual politician. Trump had refused to endorse her, which might’ve been revenge for Jeffrey Epstein and a lot of other things.
Mace had to surrender her seat in Congress for this failed campaign, and not much attention has gone toward who’ll replace her. That’s probably because her district was redrawn to make it all but impossible for anyone but a Trump-humping Republican to win, and unfortunately, there are plenty of those to go around. Republicans Jenny Costa Honeycutt and Mark Smith will advance to the runoff. Either are capable of picking up Mace’s bigoted anti-trans campaign, particularly her grade school bullying of Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride, but let’s hope the winner finds something better to do with their lives.
Mace also fell behind Reddy in her own district, which you could say was because her constituents don’t want her to leave them but that would be an obvious lie. They are just as done with her as we all are.
"Besides, Collins has consistently beaten “generic, milquetoast Democrats.”
As I am sure you all know by now, I live in Maine, and I have watched this in real time over decades. Joe Brennan. Chellie Pingree. Tom Allen. Shenna Bellows. Sara Gideon. All respectable, well vetted candidates who had the right resumes and said all the right things and Collins not only beat them, she *ate their lunch* at election time. She would have eaten the lunch of Janet Mills, our retiring, not-so-popular-anymore governor. What *I* think in-tune political people REALLY don't like about this is that the voting populace is frustrated, angry and fed up and, for good or ill, wants to see that reflected in their candidates. They don't want fancy suits or position papers or moaning about democracy. They don't want to elect people who will just do the same things that got us where we are today. Platner's rise is a giant middle finger to the Dem establishment who are commencing the first stage of grief right now. To paraphrase my girl Bette Davis, fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy election summer!