ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS from around the country have been trying to talk our current governor Janet Mills, who is 77 years old and was long our Attorney General before she became governor into running for the Senate seat held by the piece of slime who is Susan Collins. Lots of Democrats in Maine, however much they might like Mills who was a welcomed relief after the worst governor in Maine History (and we've had loads of them) Paul LePage, are supporting a non-politician, military veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner or some other candidate.
I will say that I like Janet Mills even as we definitely have some serious disagreements on some issues, I have liked having her as governor especially after the disasters of LePage and Jock Mackernan who before LePage was widely considered to have been among if not the worst governor we had till then. I will point out that both of them were reelected due to the idiocy of our 1970s era idiotic ease of getting on the ballot enabling Republican-fascist spoilers, Greens and others, not to mention an abundance of stupid voters on the alleged left who have enabled that. I don't count on Maine voters having any more of an attention span than voters nationally. Or being any more engaged in issues and politics outside of a presidential election year.
I will also admit that these days I'm entirely skeptical of lawyers as president. After the two disappointing presidencies of two governors, I became skeptical of governors with no Washington experience in the Congress as president. After the presidencies of one of those, the lawyer Clinton and the lawyer with almost no DC experience, Obama and, especially, how Obama blew the best chance a Democrat has been given to make real change after 1964, his lawyerlyness totally blew his chance to make a real change. Joe Biden was a lawyer but had been in the Congress for a lifetime and he was the most effective Democratic president since LBJ but his biggest mistake was in the lawyers he let run the Department of Justice. My opinion of even good lawyers is at its lowest point in my lifetime.
Anyone who runs will have a hard time. Despite the widespread perception of Maine as a liberal state, it has that major problem for Democrats running an effective 100% Republican, now Republican-fascist electronic media, including the supposed public broadcaster which is, actually, a lot more influential in Maine than public broadcasting is in many largely rural states. Anyone who thinks someone with the groundswell of support that Platner has gotten is going to have an easy time overcoming both the propaganda of the Maine media and the high number of low-info Republican voters in the state is fooling themselves. Susan Collins has been the beneficiary of a lot of that and, also, her gender. Maine has a long history of giving Republican Women the benefit of any doubt. Though, I'm old enough to remember when the legendary Margaret Chase Smith too her easy re-election too much for granted *and got knocked off by William Hathaway, Mainers should remember that Smith had a primary challenger, the ever perennial, thankfully never elected to high office, Robert Monk. Though like Collins, she became too much a DC insider who neglected her state - SUSAN COLLINS HAS NOT CONDUCTED A TOWN HALL IN MAINE FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES, and she won't face anything but a filtered crowd now, 1972 was a different world when we actually did have some media in the state that had an effect, there were still actually influential papers back then.
All that said, I don't think Janet Mills will win the election. Republicans will throw everything they've got - MONEY, MONEY, MONEY AND THE MAINE MEDIA - at her and the kind of voters who would vote for her aren't going to be enough. It hasn't been enough even in the last election when lots of those who fell for the lie that "Susan's different" than her stinking, corrupt party had started to have doubts about her. I think it will take a real outsider to get anyone else excited enough to defeat her. I, frankly, will support and vote for whoever wins the primary but I think it's an uphill battle and unless there is a groundswell of support it won't be enough. I don't think Janet Mills has it in her to set anyone on fire like that.
I haven't written very much about my home state, the state I've always lived in, maybe I should.
* While I've never been that impressed with the New York Times, back in 1972 they were actually employing some excellent reporters to cover even the smaller states. The article asking if Smith was out of touch reads like a different world than we live in now. As someone who really, really disliked Robert Monks (just about all Republicans, even back then, really) who died last April, I'm going to indulge myself by posting this paragraph.
UNEXCITING, perhaps, but the Smith style has proven highly successful in the past. In her first campaign for the Senate she polled 71.3 per cent of the vote, and she has never faced any primary opponent since 1954. In 1960, when Richard Nixon came to Maine during his first try for the Presidency, he told voters in Bangor: “You've heard of people riding in on a candidate's coattails. Well, here in Maine we're hanging on as hard as we can to Margaret's skirts.” Nixon hung on and won in Maine, but Margaret ran well ahead of him, drawing more votes than any candidate in state history, and the highest percentage of any GOP senatorial candidate in the country that year. In her last campaign, in 1966, she swamped her Democratic opponent 59 per cent to 41 per cent. In view of this record, few political observers gave Monks much of a chance when he declared his candidacy last January. Virtually unknown, he was running against the most popular public figures in the state. Older Republicans resented this “carpetbagger from Boston,” trying to unseat their beloved Margaret. They asked, “Why doesn't he start out in the State Legislature first?” (To those familiar with Monks, and his ego, the thought of his spending a few years in the Augusta Legislature is hilarious.) Monks argued that his brief residency in Maine and his lack of political experience were less important than “the capacity to understand problems, and the capability to institute solutions,” which his friends claimed he possessed in abundance.
From what I've seen of Graham Platner he may have a lack of experience but he doesn't have the revolting arrogance and sense of entitlement that I think even Maine's Republicans could identify in Monks back then. He was a prep-school, Harvard Law grad. Though I will point out that the grandchildren of those Republicans who saw through Monks are largely Trumpzis now, buying the biggest con job to have become president in anyone's lifetime. I think that the rise of fascism in the United States is directly related to the death of the depression-WWII generation - which was something I was warning about more than two decades ago. And I don't think the Democrats of my and succeeding generations are unaffected by that same problem. I think even among the politicians there are too many lawyers who think like lawyers among them.
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