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Political Landscape In Maine · Newsradio WGAN

• 0:09
  I want to answer the second part of the question we got before
• 0:12
  the break and the question was asked about Shaw and what what
• 0:15
  the opinion of Maine people will be about him and COVID.
• 0:18
  And do you really want to remind yourself of that etcetera.
• 0:21
  If he's the nominee, is that going to work?
• 0:23
  Is he are they going to be able to make something happen there?
• 0:26
  Well, look, here's the thing. Here's the thing about Shaw,
• 0:30
  He's a snake charmer. He's a snake charmer.
• 0:33
  And there is a divergent of opinion about COVID and the
• 0:38
  response from The Maine state government inside this state.
• 0:42
  Certain people in the state think that he did a good job,
• 0:48
  that they did what's necessary, that they may have made
• 0:50
  mistakes, but they were excusable mistakes because, you
• 0:53
  know, we didn't, it was a novel coronavirus.
• 0:55
  We didn't know what it was. We, you know, had to try to keep
• 0:57
  people safe. So, you know, even imperfect as
• 1:00
  he may be, he tried his best and he's a good guy.
• 1:02
  He likes that Diet Coke stuff. I like that guy.
• 1:05
  So there's that group. And then the other group is
• 1:08
  these people were dictators. They were authoritarian nut
• 1:11
  jobs. There was nothing based in
• 1:12
  science that they were doing. And they were winging it.
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  And they were winging in a way that made everyone's lives
• 1:18
  materially worse. They harmed kids, they harmed
• 1:20
  businesses, they harmed the economy.
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  They harmed people, made us poor, made us basically
• 1:26
  prisoners in our own homes. And I have no intention to ever
• 1:31
  go back to that world ever again.
• 1:33
  So go away. And I don't know what the total
• 1:37
  number of people in each camp is.
• 1:40
  I would love to say that the latter camp has more, but I
• 1:43
  think the former camp is at least as big as it, to be honest
• 1:47
  with you, because generally speaking, and this is going to
• 1:50
  sound insulting to the voters, I apologize, but I think most
• 1:52
  people are generally sheep. They, they want to be told what
• 1:55
  to do. They want to be told where to
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  go. They want to be told what to
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  think because it's easier. It's simple.
• 1:59
  They don't have to do the work. The work of being critical, of
• 2:04
  being thoughtful in any kind of public policy environment in
• 2:08
  politics is hard. There's a reason why nobody does
• 2:11
  it because they don't want to. If you're trying to analyze, I
• 2:17
  mean, like, OK, so. So Maine has a crappy education
• 2:20
  system, Right. OK Why?
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  What do you do about it? What are some steps you can
• 2:24
  take? What do you do differently?
• 2:27
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 2:27
  Believe me, I know that some some people can help that rattle
• 2:30
  off a couple things that, you know, might be somewhat common
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  sense that would help and would do do good things or whatever.
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  But most people just kind of stop there.
• 2:40
  They like instinctually answer the question with some things
• 2:44
  that they maybe have thought of and then they move on.
• 2:45
  Right. There's there's not a deep
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  analysis of truly what's wrong and what strategies we can't
• 2:53
  employ to actually do something about it.
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  And what kind of leaders and what kind of people and how,
• 2:59
  how, how open do they have to be in order to make a positive
• 3:02
  change? Most people just want to be,
• 3:04
  they want to feel things when they participate in politics.
• 3:09
  They want to feel things. That explains the Platner
• 3:11
  phenomenon. They want to feel.
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  They don't want to think. So I'm cynical.
• 3:15
  I think that that that he is not at all going to be treated as
• 3:19
  some sort of a pariah that we can never let back in the state
• 3:23
  government. I think that he will have a
• 3:24
  reasonable shot at it, frankly, if he's the nominee.
• 3:26
  That's the best shot the Democrats have.
• 3:28
  I think Shanna might be a gift to the Republicans, possibly.
• 3:32
  We'll see. I guess.
• 3:34
  By the way, I don't think the shot wins at this point.
• 3:36
  With that little triumvirate that has emerged of Pingree,
• 3:42
  Bellows and Jackson sort of all backing each other up for the
• 3:45
  second choice stuff in the in the rank choice voting, it's
• 3:48
  very clear that the progressive alliance inside the Democratic
• 3:51
  Party is going to insist that it wins.
• 3:54
  It does not have any interest in losing.
• 3:56
  And it's funny because I wouldn't consider Shawn not a
• 3:58
  progressive. It's not with the most of the
• 4:01
  things he wants to do, but he is the one out of all of them, out
• 4:05
  of all the credible ones, at least Angus King, the third, is
• 4:08
  not going to win. So I don't really consider him
• 4:09
  truly credible. But out of the other four, he's
• 4:12
  the one that's the least most open to something else.
• 4:14
  Every once in a while he said some things on education, for
• 4:17
  instance, which are like, OK, that's not that bad.
• 4:20
  Do I think that he's going to do anything good?
• 4:21
  No, but I mean, at least he's saying something that's not bad.
• 4:24
  That's better than the three of them.
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  But they're going to make sure that he doesn't win.
• 4:27
  So I don't think that he wins. He's going to be the winner in
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  the first round. And the if he does win, he's
• 4:32
  going to have such a lead that they can't over, you know, they
• 4:34
  can't overcome it. So I suppose in that respect he
• 4:38
  could still win, but I just don't see, I don't, I don't see
• 4:40
  it.