General Discussion

Maine Democratic voters who have been polled for months (in re the Democratic primary) are exhibiting a huge disconnect from the 'Never-Platner' types on DU. Mills is really looking like a likely big fail when it comes to stopping Platner from advancing to the general.

I have no doubt that Collins, the Rethugs, the MAGAts, and all sorts of AIPAC and AIPAC-adjacent (RW billionaire funded to huge degrees) pro-Israel-no-matter-what-they-do types will drop 100+ million USD taking giant shits on Platner in the general, if he wins the primary.

But that in no way means Mills (especially now with the way the Dems in Maine are expressing their preferences) would defeat Collins either. She too has a lot of baggage and/or problematic stances and/or other issues, they just are of different types than Platner has, but they absolutely are still real problems to winning both the primary and the general. A big one is her openly anti-union actual stances and her veto of collective bargaining rights.

US Senate races are different from state governship races. You can have a Dem state governor, but that in no ways auato-translates to US Senate wins. Examples: Kentucky, Kansas, and North Carolina. All have Dem governors, but none currently have a single Dem US Senator. Wisconsin has a Dem gov, but also has the shit MAGAt Ron 'Kremlim-licker' Johnson as a one of their 2 US Senators.

My main point for some time (in re the Maine 2026 US Senate race) has been the failure of both the national (Schumer and then Gillibrand were 'Mills and only Mills' from the jump) and also the Maine state Democratic parties to recruit a higher quality of US Senate Dem primary candidate. Same thing happened in 2020 as well (Collins again, in fact Collins got lucky in 2014 and 2008 as well, in terms of the quality of Dem opponents she faced).