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And since she dropped out, we're not going to do that episode, but I still wanted to talk to you about some of the contours of the race that I thought were really interesting, especially what I heard from voters about Graham Plattner and what they think about him. So I want to start, though, just because this is important. Janet Mills was Chuck Schumer's sort of handpicked candidate. She is a popular governor in the state of Maine. Um, like wasn't a crazy thing to think that Janet Mills, um, would be a good get to run, uh, in the Senate, uh, as a Democrat against Susan Collins, but Democratic voters in Maine basically revolted. Um, and, uh, I, I think that look, she's 78. Um, she's been in statewide office since 2009. She's been governor since 2019. And so even though these voters liked her, they had real concerns about her age. The Democrats feel like they've been burned on age issues in the recent past. And so that was a problem for them. And then if it wasn't just her age, it was also sort of her status as a legacy politician, too tied to the Democratic Party establishment that they're losing faith in. Let's listen to how these voters talked about Janet Mills. The thing about Janet Mills is like he just said her age for one thing. But the thing that gets me with her is, I mean, she's been it. She started off, I thought, fantastic. She was sticking to her goals, her promises, her blah, blah, blah. But I mean, since she's had 10 years. She was pushed into this by Chuck Schumer, who I absolutely despise. I think he's been the weakest, most ineffective Democratic leader. And if there was somebody, you know, Mitch McConnell has ran rings around him. And I think it was just absolutely ludicrous for her to run for the Senate at age 79, frankly. My thought is that we have, we have so many folks who are over 65 as our political leaders, who are 40 years older than me and most of my friends And that just doesn reflect a lot of the people who are in the workforce who are trying to build lives and careers right now And I want more politicians who are closer to my stage in life who can actually reflect the concerns that I have right now OK, so that is sort of the age question. The she's more of an establishment politician. A lot of this is across Democratic focus groups, a lot of frustration with sort of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. There's just this this sense from the Democratic voters that they feel like the party is not fighting back hard enough. And this is to me part of what's interesting is online or in a lot of the discourse. You hear people sort of having an argument over whether the Democratic Party should be more moderate or more progressive. The voters kind of don't care about that. They just want the party to be more aggressive. And so as a matter of policies, you know, it's it's more like in a place like Virginia, more purplish state. They wanted somebody who was more moderate, but they also saw somebody like Abigail Spanberger, somebody who was going to fight, who was going to do the big redistricting, you know, jump into the redistricting fight. And so it's less about whether or not people are going to be whether or not candidates are moderate or progressive. They want them to be more aggressive. And I think this redounded to Graham Plattner's benefit, even though he is, I think, policy-wise, the more progressive candidate. He also was just the one who was, people felt like was going to go fight harder, both to win the election against Susan Collins and then, if elected to the office, against Trump and against Republicans. But here's the thing about Plattner, right? Plattner has a ton of baggage. He has a Totenkampf, which is like a Nazi tattoo, which he claims he didn't know was a Nazi tattoo at the time. He has posted hateful and misogynistic content on Reddit. He's, you know, dabbles in sort of talking about himself as a communist. And so these are all the kinds of things that I think in a different world, the pre-Trump world, it would have been hard for them to win a main Democratic primary. But he's like he was crushing Janet Mills by 30 points in the Democratic primary. So we wanted to ask these voters how they were processing this Nazi tattoo, which has become like a big national issue. The Reddit post, the misogyny, all of it, because Janet Mills tried to really make hay out of this in the primary and it just didn't land. This ad is brought to you by Orr Frames. Orr Frames is a great upgrade from your typical Mother's Day flowers. Trust me, I know this. I got an Aura Frame from my mother-in-law last Mother Day. She loved it. 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That's A-U-R-A frames.com promo code bulwark takes support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions do apply these things used to be deal breakers for the voters but they're not so much anymore let's listen how they talked about it the controversies about the nazi symbols and the reddit posts seem very in line with someone from down east who's lived in a small town their whole life, went to the military, never really got exposed to a lot of outside, larger world thinking. So kind of like Teresa said, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was a mistake. And I really appreciate that he has been upfront about it and said, yeah, I did this. It was a mistake. With regard to the tattoo, again, like I'll take him for his word and just chalk it up to something that he truly wasn't aware of. And, you know, when people are younger, sometimes they do things that they they like might be like not necessarily regret later in life, but, you know, just realize that, oh, well, that was like an uninformed decision. You know, I've done stupid things when I was very young. He was in the military. He did four tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. A lot of trauma there. I wasn't aware. I even heard that he has like Jewish in-laws now. I think, you know, he's explained that that was a mistake. I think it was genuine about that. We all make mistakes. It actually might be good that he's going to bring in people that who don't believe in political correctness. So not bothered by the tattoo generally. And this has been consistent. We've done a couple of Dem groups in Maine. People are much more. And look, I think there's a few things going on here. One, I think after 10 years of Donald Trump and his baggage, his foibles, I just don't think Democrats like they're throwing out the old rule book the same way that they think Republicans have. That's part of it. Part of it's just a, you know, a sense that people do make youthful mistakes. I think there's a, we've been moving. I hear voters doing a thing where they're more forgiving now that the internet has sort of takes people down on a pretty regular basis because it's been around long enough that people who are in their, you know, 30s and 40s now have stuff that they posted when they were teenagers and you can go back and look and, you know, everybody's sort of like, I don't know, when I was a teenager, I said idiotic things. And people seem to have a kind of deference for this idea that, well, he was in the military and, you know, they kind of did stupid things in the military and got this bad tattoo. And so just a lot of forgiveness for the idea that somebody might have made mistakes and is now, you know, on a better path which is what they see They sort of take him they sort of buy his narrative that he grown and he was in a dark place before The voters take that as a mark of authenticity which you know I do think that we talk a lot about authenticity And one of the ways that I see that manifest in voters is they sort of see the warts and all as a sign of authenticity. Like part of what Donald Trump was doing that made voters think that he was authentic is didn't necessarily apologize for the parts of him that people saw as really pretty awful. They're like, no, that's why he's authentic. He kind of owns the parts of him that are bad as opposed to the artifice of the perfect candidate. And so there's almost a thing that's happening where people's vices or their mistakes become these markers of authenticity, that they are a real person. They're not some carefully curated politician, which is the kind of thing that voters are now kind of rejecting. Then there's one last caveat, though. I will say this because this was interesting. The one concern people had for Plattner, not the tattoo, not really the old Reddit posts. it was they were a little worried that he reminded them of another Democrat that they have felt burned by after he did kind of his everyman schtick, his populist schtick, and then they felt duped. Who could that be? Let's listen. I sometimes think of him as John Fetterman. When John Fetterman got elected senator in Pennsylvania, I thought, oh, I like this guy. He's wearing a hoodie. You know, he's he's not going to be like the rest of them. And last I know, he might as well become a member of the Republican Party. He's been all over the place. Disappointed. I wanted somebody different like that. And Graham Plattner fits that bill for me. But John Fetterman kind of soured me on being that much different, I guess. I'm going to give Teresa from Maine the last word on Plattner. I just hope he's not going to bring the past into today. But I mean, he's got a lot of good stuff going for him. I mean, a Vietnam veteran, I do see about the tattoo myself. I mean, my late husband was a Vietnam veteran and some of the tattoos he had, he wished he'd never gotten. They were stupid. So will Plattner be the next John Fetterman? Who knows? but if he were going to be the next John Fetterman, he'd first have to win the United States Senate seat there in Maine and unseat the fully unseatable or unbeatable after so many cycles, Susan Collins. But this could be the year. I mean, that blue wave, it is building. There's no doubt about that. I think the question remains, even though these Democratic voters seem to be forgiving him for his past foibles, they don't mind the Totenkampff tattoo. I think the question is, is will swingy, more moderate, independent voters buy that story as well? Or will they go for the old standby with Susan Collins, even if they're mad at Trump? This cycle, I put my money on Plattner. Honestly, that just seems to be the mood people are in, but never count Susan Collins out. She's a tough one to beat. All right, thanks for listening, guys. We'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.
