cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/46331
The Democratic Party’s pick for Maine senator suspended her candidacy on Thursday. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who entered the race as the establishment pick and assumed favorite, announced her campaign did not have the financial resources to continue.
Mills’s exit less than six weeks before the June primary clears the path for populist candidate Graham Platner, now the presumed nominee, to face off against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the November general election after the party worked to subdue Platner’s campaign. The Democratic Party’s decision to wade into the primary at all had reignited a criticism that the Democratic establishment would stop at nothing to keep progressives out of Congress.
“The Democratic establishment — and especially calcified Senate leadership — is learning in real time that they are wildly out of touch with what Democratic primary voters want,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young progressive candidates for office. “The establishment simply doesn’t have the juice (or the trust) anymore.”
By the time Mills, 78, ended her campaign on Thursday, party leaders had changed their tune on Platner. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who backed Mills early in the race, released a statement with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the chair of Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, saying that Collins “has never been more vulnerable” and that they would work with Platner to beat her. The DSCC had financially backed Mills’s campaign, forming a joint fundraising committee with her in October. And they stuck by Mills even as her campaign appeared to languish.
Platner, once considered a long-shot candidate marred by controversy, has surged this year in fundraising and polling. In a statement in January, Gillibrand said she was “very optimistic” about Mills’s race. In February, when polling numbers came out showing Platner beating Mills with 64 percent support to her 26, Schumer remained in her corner.
The upset marks “a massive embarrassment for Chuck Schumer and DSCC operatives,” a Democratic strategist told The Intercept, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal. “This was their star recruit and she couldn’t even make it to the election. No longer can they be the gatekeepers.”
Platner has faced a slew of controversies since launching his campaign last year, including revelations that he had a Nazi tattoo and had posted a series of regrettable comments on Reddit. Those pitfalls led many of Platner’s critics to compare him to another populist Democratic darling who took a hard turn to the right after entering Congress: Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.
[
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The Left Put Its Faith in Graham Platner. Will He Break Its Heart?](https://theintercept.com/2025/10/25/graham-platner-tattoo-fetterman-democrats/)
On Thursday, Fetterman made clear that he would not welcome the comparison. While other members of his party prepared to embrace Platner, Fetterman told reporters: “Democrats really, really like Platner in Maine, but the Republicans fucking love him. If Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him.”
In a statement on Thursday, Platner said he looked forward to working with Mills to defeat Collins in November. “This race has never been about me or about any one person. It’s about a movement of working Mainers who are fed up with being robbed by billionaires and the politicians they own, and who are taking back their power.”
The day before she dropped out of the race, The Associated Press published an article about Mills campaigning as an underdog in the race despite having the resume for the job. On Thursday, Mills’s campaign was over.
The post Democratic Leaders Wanted to Control the Maine Senate Race. Their Pick Just Dropped Out. appeared first on The Intercept.
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Typical Dems getting out of the way to let Nazis take power
accidentally tattooing lemon party onto my chest
The Dem leadership is more of a threat to the left than the Republicans are.
Every “centrist” piece of shit and every corporate/zionist money-grubbing DNC scumbag is an active and overt enemy of the left, and they need to go - every single one of them.
The neoliberal have been running on fumes for a while and they might finally be out of that too.
My feelings about him aside, it’s a big club and he ain’t in it. For the umpteenth time, Democrats proving whos’s side they are on. Shock me shock me.
The thing is, he is in the club. Multiple generations of petty bourgeois precede him and he spent his entire career directly engaged in the most heinous crimes of the empire. Now he gets a comfy pension, health insurance, and like $5k a month in veteran disability pay while he also runs his businesses. The median salary in Maine is less than his disability payment.
The only effort the party put into stopping him was initially backing an unpopular septegenarian who ran one attack ad and gave up. They’re not afraid of him because he is one of them, and he’ll happily start acting like it if he wins office.
Yeah, if he was a real threat, money would be pumping in from other states to fund his opposition, and theyd probably be floating a few candidates to boot
Just like with Bernie, it’s a great opportunity for Dems to burn him and directly communicate to their base in Maine (a small state with more political mobility outside of the party establishment) “look elsewhere to find what you want”
Yes “nazi-tattoo troop” and all that, but that’s not the point
This is part of the process of a political Reformation in the United States, and the only way a break from the two-party system.becomes plausible. Few in the US are going to read theory and build a vanguard party, although that’s a growing number right now, it isn’t enough to matter. Even fewer are in dire enough circumstances where militant action makes sense, although there is a relatively small window of opportunity where that could change. It’s gonna be lib as hell and there will always be a helping of Planters, but I think Mamdani represents the future of the American left wing.
This analysis is not a statement as to whether I think it is ideal or not, I just think it is the most likely progression. The question is whether the Democrats will spit socdems out of the party or co-opt them. If they are spit out, it’ll be a third party movement beginning in places like Maine (Bernie Sanders being the template), and spreading across the rest of the country.
The fact that the party didn’t actually ensure “their pick” got any financial support is telling. They are not concerned about Platner.
Oh great, so the guy who fantasized about murdering people in a bunch of Amerikkkka’s imperialist and colonialist wars is going to be a Senator for the Party of Genocide.
death to nazis
Id take the chud over fetterman anyday
People said that about fetterman until the heel turn.
Seriously. All the Nazi and troop shit about him is bad but honestly the most damning thing is the willingness of the Democratic establishment to welcome him in with open arms even at the downfall of a loyal party member. He must be a true scumbag.
