I’m not in Maine so I’m not following closely but the polls I’m looking at have Platner over Collins. Obviously it’s far from Election Day but it still looks good for a blue win.
No, it looks like a Platner win. Fascist enabler or actual Nazi; either way is a loss.
Except it’s even worse than that, because this also endangers Democrats in every other race, because the Republicans are now going to paint Democrats as the Nazis.
What the hell is going on with the local Democratic party in Maine? Maine was probably our easiest seat to flip and the best the party could find in the state is a 78 year old former luke warm popular Governor and an Oyster farmer with a long history of homophobic, misogynist, online posts who has a Nazi tattoo.
I know the Maine has one of the largest % Independent voters in the country making it have one of the lowest % Democrats in a State that is democratically leaning. But, surely their bench of people available to run for the Senate has to be higher than this? Didn’t they have any state representatives or members of the House more qualified to run. (Or were they all scared of the Governor when she choose to run?)
Generally speaking, the party doesn’t “find” people to run; party leadership might encourage particular candidates, but it’s largely up to which people choose, on their own, whether to run or not.
And, generally, there also isn’t much that they can do to prevent an unpalatable candidate from running.
Good Interview with Platner on Jon Stewarts podcast. I’m going to believe what he says now, in his explanations of what he said 20 years ago. Pretty clear to me he is not the same person he was. I think Collins is done. YMMV ( edit to add that Bernie Sanders has endorsed him 100%, and he seems to be taking a similar anti oligarch stance.)
Never mind what he said twenty years ago… Has he explained what he said last year? Like, when he said that he wanted to kill all the Jews?
Because he was still wearing his Nazi tattoo last year. And that’s what wearing a Nazi tattoo means.
I don’t think former Maine governor Paul LePage has been mentioned in this thread yet:
LePage won twice, although he never got more than a plurality.
Do you think they control who is the candidate? Anyone can declare themselves a member of any party and run.
Right.
The formal executive organs of the Democratic Party as a whole do not, and legally cannot, appoint candidates, screen the party membership lists, or interfere in primaries. This is somewhat unique to the U.S. or at least to non-Westminster systems; in the U.K. party discipline is very important. The main reason is that allowing totally open membership and voting in parties (specifically the Democratic Party) was considered a necessity for desegregation in the era when the Democrats were the only game in town in the South.
That does not mean that people just randomly decide to run independent of supporters, factions, and goals. Platner obviously has been a creature of the DSA wing of the party from the beginning and is basically playing a character of an aw-shucks bartender/oysterman that people in that group went looking for. Part of the rancor over his past is the idea that people who object to Platner the real person are too stupid to play the game - it doesn’t matter that Actual Platner has a long record of far-right beliefs on everything from militarism to gay rights to Nazi sympathy, because Actual Platner isn’t the candidate, Constructed Platner as the avatar of what some DSA guys in Brooklyn think the “white working class” in Maine looks like is.
My bar has been seriously lowered. As long as he votes against MAGA I’ll have to be satisfied with that. After Trump I’ll be able to think about other stuff.
I listened to the whole Jon Stewart interview on his podcast yesterday. I haven’t posted, but I’ve been reading this thread with interest so I was very aware of the controversies with this guy going in, and I was not impressed. And I wasn’t impressed with Stewart either, which is disappointing as I’ve liked him since the early Bush years, and the most pressing concerns in Platner’s background were hardly addressed if at all. It was more acknowledged and swept under the rug like we shouldn’t take these things seriously.
Platner talks a good game, I’ll give him that. Call me cynical but his talking points are almost a little too on the nose and a little too perfect. Call it a hunch. I have never spent a single minute in Maine and I’m not knowledgeable about the political situation on the ground there or the local Democratic party, so take that for what it’s worth.
If he wins I think the best situation we have here is another Joe “I’m the most important person in the room and I’m not going to let you forget that” Manchin type. Worst case scenario is we have another Fetterman who, at this point, I regard as being little more than MAGA in a blue suit.
I think you mean blue sweatpants and hoodie.
That said, Fetterman votes with the other Democrats over 92% of the time and doesn’t have a Nazi tattoo, so I’m thinking Platner has the potential to be a whole lot worse.
Right.
Sadly, that is what is important now. Get rid of Collins is Job One.
Right, and Platner got rid of his SS tattoo. As long as he votes with the Dems, he is better than “my brow is furrowed, but I will vote MAGA anyway” Collins.
Y’all need to make a judgement call on the tattoo. I offer “fascist enabler or actual Nazi”, or young, dumb, drunk off his ass, in a group tattooing session with squadmates (what could go wrong?).
YMMV
Do we have any reason, at all, to believe he’ll do so?
I’ve come to the conclusion that the best move in the general is to vote for Collins, for the simple reason that she’s 73 years old, while Platner is young and fit.
Being young, dumb, and drunk could explain getting the tattoo. It can’t explain keeping the tattoo for a decade after that.
Nope. The guy scares me.
If it were just a photo from decades ago of a tattoo, and he’d had it altered say, when it prevented him from reenlisting in the Marines, and he didn’t have more recent Nazi friends, i would be happy to brush it off.
On the other hand, he says he has Jewish family, and Bernie Sanders apparently endorsed him.
But Collins is old and if she wins, we probably get another shot at the seat in my lifetime.
Exactly this.
It would take a truly staggering amount of either stupidity or evil to get and keep this tattoo for decades.
I don’t understand how we will happily cancel someone for saying something fucked up 10 years ago (and you know what, if it was fucked up enough, maybe they don’t deserve our business, or to run for office, even a decade later) but suddenly we are cool with someone keeping a Nazi symbol on their body for literally decades. Something doesn’t add up there.
“I have Jewish friends, like Bernie - he’s One Of The Good Ones ™” is not much of an excuse. Cadance Owens has Black family, but I wouldn’t dream of claiming that this is evidence that she isn’t racist.
Yeah, Collins looks like the safer bet, honestly. Despite her being horrible.
But it’s not that he claims to be okay with Bernie that is in his favor. That means nothing. It’s that Bernie claims to be okay that i give some credit for.
There’s also the question of precedent, and of the message that’s sent to the rest of the country.
If losing this race means the message that the Democratic party receives is “running a Boy With A Nazi Tattoo is always a losing move” and that my party never does this again, I’d consider one lost race to be a small price to pay.
Likewise, if winning this race means tarring the Democrats as “the party that lets Boys With Nazi Tattoos run for office” among voters across the country, that would be disastrous, and almost certainly more damaging than one seat would have been.