One lesson of the Democratic Senate primary in Maine is that no one should underestimate the white-hot fury of the party’s voters.

In October, Graham Platner’s insurgent campaign appeared doomed. Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, had just entered the Senate primary race, reportedly at the urging of Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader. Then a barrage of devastating opposition research against Platner dropped. Journalists reported on old Reddit posts where he wrote that all cops are bastards, spoke about fighting fascism with guns and seemed to blame rape victims for their own assaults. His political director resigned. Hoping to get ahead of an even more damaging story, Platner revealed that a skull tattoo he’d gotten while he was in the Marines, when he was drunk with his friends on leave in Croatia, looked like a Nazi Totenkopf symbol. His public image abruptly transformed from working-class hero to guy with a Nazi tattoo. Many declared his candidacy dead.

But Maine Democrats, many of whom saw Platner in person as he tirelessly barnstormed across the state, seemed ready to look past the negative stories. On Thursday, Mike Hurley, the former mayor of Belfast, Maine, told me he “loves” Mills, but had been backing Platner because he wanted a brawler. While Republicans are playing “hardball,” he said, Democrats in Washington seem like they’re playing “T-ball.” Hurley was impressed, he said, by how Platner soldiered on after his disastrous October: “A lot of people would crumble under the kind of pressure he’s been under, and he’s not crumbling.” He felt as though he understood him. “Platner is a very recognizable kind of person in small towns,” said Hurley. “He’s a thoughtful loudmouth.”

…Plenty of Democrats, particularly outside of Maine, worry about Platner’s electability. Primary voters were poised to forgive his tattoo and his hotheaded Reddit posts, but a general electorate might not be so understanding. And while Platner is leading Collins in the polls, Collins has beat expectations before. In 2020, most polls showed her trailing the Democrat Sara Gideon, who outspent Collins by millions, but Collins ended up winning by nine points.

For many Maine progressives, though, Gideon’s defeat only emphasizes the peril of playing it safe. “The Sara Gideon campaign was a disaster, I think, because they made her follow a script, and she came off as totally fake because of it,” said Andy O’Brien, a former Maine legislator who now works at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. By “they,” he means Democrats from Washington. Now, he said, Maine voters have lost all faith in the ability of the party’s establishment to pick winners. “They sold us these candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala as the most electable candidates, and they weren’t,” he said.

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