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Lindsey Graham Platner (Hardly Knew... 'Em?) · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_00: The apex of Democrats' odds of taking the Senate
0:04
SPEAKER_00: and therefore saving American democracy came while the war with Iran was raging hot
0:11
SPEAKER_00: and was spiking the price of energy.
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SPEAKER_00: So Lindsey Graham,
0:14
SPEAKER_00: by incepting a more hawkish approach into the Trump administration,
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SPEAKER_00: did more than anybody to safeguard American democracy.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
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SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: A lot's happened since I left for vacation,
0:34
SPEAKER_01: but fortunately Matt's been on the scene for most of the consequential stuff,
0:38
SPEAKER_01: which is happening in Maine.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Graham Plattner's campaign imploded,
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Democrats are racing against time to replace him with a new Senate nominee,
0:46
SPEAKER_01: and now an ICE murder in Biddeford has refocused coverage on the stakes rather than
0:52
SPEAKER_01: the odds of the election.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Then, Lindsey Graham is dead and Mitch McConnell is alive.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: Supposedly.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: But a thinning Senate margin may leave Republicans short on votes
1:03
SPEAKER_01: to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General and thus may force Donald Trump
1:08
SPEAKER_01: to attempt more desperate measures to avoid a wipeout in the November midterms.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear the whole conversation,
1:15
SPEAKER_01: you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: I want to say it's good to be back.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: And if the truth is,
1:30
SPEAKER_01: if all I had to do is this podcast once a week,
1:34
SPEAKER_01: and then I could spend the rest of my time reading books by a pool or the beach,
1:39
SPEAKER_01: it wouldn't be so bad.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: But I have to like be immersed in the whole nasty business.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you just sort of brought your mic on vacation.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: Thanks to your guests for filling in for me.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was, well,
1:56
SPEAKER_00: to the subject of today's episode,
1:58
SPEAKER_00: shortly before Graham Plattner's Latest and final scandal broke.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: We had Alex Seitzwald on,
2:06
SPEAKER_00: and we did a deep dive on various personalities in the politics of Maine,
2:10
SPEAKER_00: which turns out to be relevant because we spent a lot
2:14
SPEAKER_00: of time discussing various people who lost in the governor's primary,
2:18
SPEAKER_00: and they're all back now because they're running for Senate.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we get to sort of rehash that.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: But in case you missed it because,
2:27
SPEAKER_00: you know,
2:27
SPEAKER_00: you were in Italy or something,
2:28
SPEAKER_00: you I think it's relevant that Plattner's polling against Susan Collins had been on
2:36
SPEAKER_00: a downward trajectory before the sexual assault allegations.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: It's like really between the New York Times expose that didn't quite get all the-
2:47
SPEAKER_01: The gnarly facts out and the Politico piece, which finally sunk him.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: People were like,
2:52
SPEAKER_01: this guy is-
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Before the Politico piece,
2:55
SPEAKER_00: main Democrats were truly in the bad place,
2:59
SPEAKER_00: which is that there were these couple of scandals,
3:02
SPEAKER_00: the sexting and this like- Questionable treatment of one ex-girlfriend that appeared
3:11
SPEAKER_00: to have damaged Plattner meaningfully in the polls,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: but did not shake the faith of his core supporters.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: An interesting fact,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
3:24
SPEAKER_00: as a journalist,
3:25
SPEAKER_00: I am glad that these political betting markets exist,
3:28
SPEAKER_00: even though as a policy matter, I have some questions about them.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Because when the Politico story came out,
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Maine Democrats' odds of winning the Senate race went
3:39
SPEAKER_01: off rather
3:40
SPEAKER_00: than down,
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SPEAKER_00: which is just an interesting thing.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: It became the worse,
3:47
SPEAKER_00: the better type of situation where it seemed like,
3:49
SPEAKER_00: okay, damaged goods are going to get off the ticket.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: And there was a Yeah.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Which in turn has made the scrum to be the replacement candidate
4:26
SPEAKER_00: a little bit more vicious than you normally see in these situations.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that what you're seeing now is sort of in rapid,
4:39
SPEAKER_01: like even more rapid fire,
4:42
SPEAKER_01: like in a more rapid process than we would have seen if Democrats had done something
4:47
SPEAKER_01: in 2024 after Biden dropped out,
4:50
SPEAKER_01: that A lightning primary is going to be really, really, really, really tense.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: But the upshot is that on the other side of it,
5:01
SPEAKER_01: it sort of denies or weakens Susan Collins' claim to be able to say,
5:06
SPEAKER_01: like, Who's this person that I'm running against?
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SPEAKER_01: Democrats just threw out democracy and are like running some stranger.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's sort of the trade off.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: Right.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: Like like the process of replacing Biden went extremely smooth.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: But like there was a big like really kind of question surrounding it.
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SPEAKER_01: And this is like this is the alternative model.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, and the difference here is that,
5:32
SPEAKER_00: you know, I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: people will say that like the Democrats did X,
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Y, or Z, you know, in the case of the Biden-Harris swap.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: But like,
5:45
SPEAKER_00: the truth is that no individual Democratic Party human being is Like,
5:51
SPEAKER_00: wanted to meaningfully contest Kamala Harris's ability to inherit the nomination.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm sure there are lots of ambitious Democrats who would have loved to have had
6:00
SPEAKER_00: the nomination handed to them on a silver platter.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: But like,
6:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: in the several weeks when Biden was twisting in the winds in July, right,
6:10
SPEAKER_00: whether you're talking about Pete Buttigieg,
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Josh Shapiro,
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Gretchen Whitmer,
6:14
SPEAKER_00: any of those people could have said,
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Joe Biden should step aside and I should be the nominee.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Or like, I am going to fight this at the convention, et cetera, et cetera.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: And nobody did that, right?
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Like everybody's assumption the whole way.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: I just don't want to say like everybody,
6:32
SPEAKER_00: but like none of the people who could have mounted a meaningful challenge
6:35
SPEAKER_00: to Kamala Harris tried to.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: And I should say just in fairness to that process,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: there is a thing in presidential politics where the presidential nominee picks
6:44
SPEAKER_01: a vice president and then And then that person is nominated and elected to.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: And so there would have been a real weirdness thing about Biden dropping out
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SPEAKER_01: and saying,
6:53
SPEAKER_01: but I also don't have faith in my own vice president to pick up where I left.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: And also,
6:58
SPEAKER_00: of course, I mean,
6:59
SPEAKER_00: if Joe Biden had just dropped dead on the debate stage,
7:03
SPEAKER_00: like Kamala would have become president of the United States.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: Might have been better.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And nobody would have been like.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: Yes, but I mean,
7:10
SPEAKER_00: this is like part of why I continue to find this discourse a little bit odd, right?
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Like if Joe Biden had died because he's old and
7:17
SPEAKER_00: then Kamala Harris had become president, I mean, that might've been good.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: It might've been bad, but nobody would have been like, wow, that's so shady.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Like it's just like literally the process, right?
7:27
SPEAKER_00: So in this case,
7:29
SPEAKER_00: we got a,
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Plattner and his people have clearly tried to designate Troy Jackson as like,
7:40
SPEAKER_00: Tell us about Troy Jackson.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: So, Troy Jackson is interesting.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot to say about Troy Jackson.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: But, like, the proximate thing with Jackson is that Plattner ran for...
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Senate really on a joint ticket with state auditor,
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Matt Dunlap,
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SPEAKER_00: who ran to succeed Jared Golden in Maine's second congressional district
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SPEAKER_00: and Troy Jackson,
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SPEAKER_00: who was a former state Senate president who was running for governor.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the three of them did multiple joint campaign appearances together.
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SPEAKER_00: They were jointly endorsed by Bernie Sanders,
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SPEAKER_00: jointly endorsed by our revolution and were like understood to be running as
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SPEAKER_00: a Troika.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, Plattner won his Senate primary handily.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: Dunlap won his House primary narrowly, but convincingly.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And Jackson lost the gubernatorial primary.
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SPEAKER_00: So this created a situation where Jackson is both the, like,
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SPEAKER_00: Plattnerist candidate for Senate,
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SPEAKER_00: and they have this argument,
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SPEAKER_00: which is like, Grant Plattner won the Senate primary handily.
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SPEAKER_00: He is leaving the race due to scandal.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: But Troy Jackson,
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SPEAKER_00: who was de facto running on a joint ticket with Plattner,
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SPEAKER_00: is kind of like the vice president in this situation.
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SPEAKER_00: And he's just inherited it.
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SPEAKER_00: The counterargument is that Jackson was like literally on the ballot.
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SPEAKER_00: At the same time as Plattner.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: And he ran way weaker than Plattner, right?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: So it's like there was a lot of people who voted for Graham Plattner and on
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SPEAKER_00: the very same day voted for somebody else, for governor.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Then because Maine has a So then you get the other thing,
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SPEAKER_00: which is the guy who finished first in number one votes for governor,
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Nirav Shah,
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SPEAKER_00: and who finished second in the ranked choice balloting,
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SPEAKER_00: he's also running for Senate.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: the Shah argument is basically like,
9:48
SPEAKER_00: this is the guy who,
9:50
SPEAKER_00: other than Graham Plattner, who like has the most support in the state.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, like he did well in the plurality first round balloting.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: He did pretty well in the rank choice.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a narrow referendum against him.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And so like Shah is the guy who like has the most enthusiasts behind him
10:11
SPEAKER_00: and it should go to him.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: He's like the second place finisher in main state politics.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, then Shanna Bellows,
10:19
SPEAKER_00: who is like the other,
10:20
SPEAKER_00: other person who ran for governor, also has her hat in the ring.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And so does, um, uh, a guy who finished second in the main, uh, congressional district primary.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: It seems like most likely this is just going to go to Jackson.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Is the beer guy in the race?
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Then the other other guy in the race.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Dan Kleben.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: He runs the main beer company.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: He announced a Senate campaign and sort of got off because people forget this a little bit.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: But Plattner got in the Senate race before Janet Mills did.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: He got in the Senate race at a time when Democrats had no candidate.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: So Plattner hopped in, then Kleben hopped in.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: And then a couple of weeks later,
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SPEAKER_00: Mills got in and Schumer kind of like called Kleben and was like,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: dude, like get out of this race.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, And Cleban agreed to step aside.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: Now, in retrospect, I think everybody can see that that was a mistake.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: And that we should have had a Cleban versus Plattner primary.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Which would have been two small business owners,
11:31
SPEAKER_00: two guys who are good on TV,
11:33
SPEAKER_00: at least on the level of making TV appearances on behalf of their small businesses.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: One of whom is a kind of, I don't know.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't even want to say moderate because like Maine is a liberal state,
11:48
SPEAKER_00: but like mainstream Democrat, the other of whom is like a left populist.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: I kind of think Plattner would have just beaten him anyway on the strength
11:58
SPEAKER_00: of anti-Israel stuff, but who knows?
12:03
SPEAKER_00: So at any rate, Cleveland now is like, Trying to do backsies and get in on it.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we'll see what happens.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: The actual process for selecting a nominee is a little bit crazy, in my opinion.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And it is not what I would have done, I guess I'll say.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they have like, I don't know how much leeway the legal requirements give them.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: But this process is...
12:33
SPEAKER_01: Inscribed in law.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know that they know.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: So, okay.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: What is inscribed in law is that they need a replacement candidate by July 27th.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Right?
12:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Law plus the like rules of the main Democratic Party.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: It's important to understand this.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: So like state law says that they need a replacement candidate by July 27th and
12:59
SPEAKER_00: that it's up to the state party executive committee to pick the nominee.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: The state party executive committee does not want to pick a nominee.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Their feeling,
13:14
SPEAKER_00: their read of the Kamala situation,
13:19
SPEAKER_00: of Bernie faction,
13:22
SPEAKER_00: ill will,
13:22
SPEAKER_00: whatever it is,
13:23
SPEAKER_00: is that if they just picked a nominee,
13:26
SPEAKER_00: which is what the law says they should do, that this would be seen as illegitimate.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: So they decided the nominee will be picked by a state convention,
13:40
SPEAKER_00: which is going to be composed of the hundred or so members of
13:45
SPEAKER_00: the main Democratic Party Executive Committee,
13:47
SPEAKER_00: plus 500 delegates who are going to be selected proportionately to the number
13:53
SPEAKER_00: of Democrats who live in each county by the county parties.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And then I had thought initially that that meant that
14:02
SPEAKER_00: the Hancock County Democratic Party was going to select Hancock County's 27,
14:08
SPEAKER_00: or however many it is, delegates to the convention.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: But that's actually not what they're doing.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Each county party is holding a caucus at which just whoever is a registered Democrat
14:20
SPEAKER_00: who lives in the county can show up.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: And just like say who they want to vote for, delegate to the convention.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: So they're really doing like an election election.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: They are coming as close as they can.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the executive director who made a number of sort of well-received web videos
14:39
SPEAKER_00: as this was going out,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: she said like,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: this is going to be the most transparent process that like we could design.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: I kind of heard that and I was like, yeah,
14:48
SPEAKER_00: it sounds like the right thing to say in the moment,
14:52
SPEAKER_00: but like surely that's not actually what they're doing.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: Because they don't have enough time to organize a proper primary because that is
14:59
SPEAKER_00: the hard legal requirement.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: This has to be done by July 27th.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: But so they have come up with this genuinely very open process in which,
15:10
SPEAKER_00: like, I think
15:13
SPEAKER_00: Jackson is going to get it, but there's really no...
15:20
SPEAKER_00: They have like abjured control over the process,
15:24
SPEAKER_00: even though all the law says is that the state party picks who they want.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: The state party then on the fly,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: these are not like rules they inherited from, you know, 1927 or something.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: They in a series of like a frantic series of internal Zoom calls just came up with this process.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, on Thursday, I'm in Hancock County right now.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: There's a bunch of different counties in the state.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: But Hancock County had a pre-existing meeting scheduled for Thursday the 16th.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And it was originally supposed to feature the candidate for county sheriff and
16:01
SPEAKER_00: the candidate for county probate judge,
16:03
SPEAKER_00: which are both open elections here in Hancock County.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: This is a county that has traditionally been conservative, but has swung blue in recent years.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And Democrats are hoping to flip those seats.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Those two candidates were supposed to be the headliners at the county convention.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: They have been bumped from the roster now.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Instead,
16:23
SPEAKER_00: they are going to have a discussion of the main Democratic Party's work
16:26
SPEAKER_00: to rapidly pull together a convention.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: And they are going to choose the candidates not at the formal party meeting
16:34
SPEAKER_00: on Thursday,
16:35
SPEAKER_00: but at some kind of extra meeting that will happen this weekend
16:39
SPEAKER_00: that they still like we're recording Tuesday morning just before 10 a.m.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: They still have not announced when or where exactly this county convention is going to be.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: So it's going to be like a real last minute.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Bangor Daily News reporter has a source who says it's going to be a shit show,
17:00
SPEAKER_00: which sounds correct to me.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: They are really racing to put together what this process is because they are
17:07
SPEAKER_00: in good faith trying to make it open and accessible to as many people as possible.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: But that means they've got to find a venue and they don't have that yet.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Are they anticipating anything like a debate or even just like speeches?
17:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, I am an official candidate.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: This is my critique of the Democratic Party establishment.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm the right change.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: Whatever,
17:34
SPEAKER_01: you know,
17:34
SPEAKER_01: like anything along those lines so that the people who go to
17:38
SPEAKER_01: the caucus have some basis for choosing who to vote for other
17:44
SPEAKER_01: than Graham Plattner liked this guy?
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, so, okay, so,
17:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:50
SPEAKER_00: one of the things that is happening now,
17:51
SPEAKER_00: the state party has a web form where you can say you want to be a delegate to
17:56
SPEAKER_00: the convention, right?
17:58
SPEAKER_00: And so you need to fill out your name, your address, your town, which county it is you live in.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And then you have 250 words in which you can say what your interest is in becoming a delegate.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what people are putting in on that, right?
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Like now,
18:17
SPEAKER_00: presumably one way you could run this race is that,
18:22
SPEAKER_00: you know, so the candidates are doing.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: And so like Troy Jackson could make sure that he has exactly the right number
18:30
SPEAKER_00: of people in each county who have filed to be delegates and that they all say
18:35
SPEAKER_00: in their statement of interest,
18:36
SPEAKER_00: like, I am pledging to support Troy Jackson for Senate.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: And then he could try to use his email list to get,
18:44
SPEAKER_00: but I don't know that this is what they're doing.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: You could then try to get people to say like,
18:49
SPEAKER_00: now you have to go turn out to the Hancock County caucus meeting and like vote for,
18:54
SPEAKER_00: here are the people, here's who they pledged, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: But this is not like the Iowa caucuses in which all the would-be delegates do pledge.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: You could also write on this form, like,
19:08
SPEAKER_00: I just want to pick the person who can best pull everybody together and create
19:13
SPEAKER_00: a unified party.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: They are going to,
19:15
SPEAKER_00: when the state convention happens on,
19:18
SPEAKER_00: I believe,
19:19
SPEAKER_00: the 25th in Bangor at the convention center there, they're going to do a...
19:25
SPEAKER_00: They're going to do it like an old school presidential nominating convention
19:29
SPEAKER_00: where you need a majority to win and you do multiple rounds of voting.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: And presumably the delegates will be able to bargain with each other between rounds.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Netflix did a miniseries about Grover Cleveland.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Not Grover Cleveland.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm blanking on his name.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: James Garfield recently.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, and they depict this, right?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: And so it's like in the first round,
19:54
SPEAKER_00: there's like two candidates who are really,
19:56
SPEAKER_00: really strong, but neither of them have a majority.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: It winds up the nomination going to James Garfield,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: who was just there physically present and talking to people because the supporters
20:08
SPEAKER_00: of the two main factional candidates hated each other so much.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: They eventually compromised on a third guy who wasn't even in it.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: That could happen here.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: My guess is that the first ballot will just be a big test of strength for Jackson.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
20:26
SPEAKER_00: he will either be so close that he gets it or it'll turn out
20:31
SPEAKER_00: that there's been some like big anti-Jackson organizing.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: So this is what I wanted to ask you
20:37
SPEAKER_01: is that like you're on the ground.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: I know that you can't exactly canvas the whole state.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: But is there like any bitter grapes?
20:44
SPEAKER_01: Like I obviously like there is a going to be a rump of of like Plattner dead enders
20:50
SPEAKER_01: and who either think he was done dirty or who were like,
20:52
SPEAKER_01: I wish he had just stayed in even though I believe the accusations against him.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: But like,
20:57
SPEAKER_01: The people who made him,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: who lent him credibility as like,
21:02
SPEAKER_01: this is somebody who's up to the job of being senator,
21:05
SPEAKER_01: people like Ro Khanna are out there being like, I'm sorry, I got this wrong.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: I think Ro Khanna is even like, I should have listened to my wife.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: Who told me these red flags are real.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how that elite sentiment on the progressive side
21:23
SPEAKER_01: of things is filtering down to the electorate.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: But from my perspective, if I was a main caucus goer or whatever...
21:34
SPEAKER_01: I would be inclined to think that Plattner's juggernaut was as much about his lack
21:42
SPEAKER_01: of ties to the official Democratic Party as to whatever agenda he was running on.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: And so you'd want to try to...
21:52
SPEAKER_01: But also that the people who supported him were very interested in a kind of progressive change.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: And so you want somebody who combines outsideriness with...
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean- And that sounds like Kleban to me, not like Jackson, but- It's very hard to say.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: So where I am at physically and where I have spent by far the most time over
22:16
SPEAKER_00: the years is just like literally near Plattner's house
22:22
SPEAKER_00: and very much like his core base of support,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: like Hancock County, Northern Coastal Maine.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: There's sort of like,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: people often think of Maine as- Existing in two parts
22:35
SPEAKER_00: because it's two house districts.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: But there's really three parts of which this part is the smallest.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: And also the one that Plattner is from and the one where he overperformed most in
22:45
SPEAKER_00: the primary and so on and so forth.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So lots of like true Plattner heads up here who,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: you know, beyond the like elite politics around him.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: The main AFLC, I guess like,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: In state politics,
23:06
SPEAKER_00: I would say you have an inversion of the like national dynamic, right?
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Like zoomed out in national politics, Mills was like the establishment candidate for Senate.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And Nirav Shah,
23:21
SPEAKER_00: who she was sort of implicitly aligned with in the gubernatorial succession race,
23:27
SPEAKER_00: is also like
23:28
SPEAKER_01: establishment.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Are she in Pingree like not- Well, this is what I'll say.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: And like Jackson was aligned with Plattner as like an anti-establishment figure
23:42
SPEAKER_00: who campaigned with Bernie, with Ro Khanna, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Troy Jackson was like the president of the Maine State Senate 18 months ago.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: So he's not much of an outsider.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: I should have made this explicit.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: This was my point, is that he might be the leftmost guy, but he's also like a party guy.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Like Maine is just a quite liberal state or has become one.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: So Hannah Pingree,
24:11
SPEAKER_00: who is going to be the next gubernatorial nominee,
24:15
SPEAKER_00: she was the Speaker of the State House, right?
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And Jackson was the president of the state Senate.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: So Maine could end up with a ticket of Pingree and Jackson,
24:28
SPEAKER_00: which would just read as very, very establishment oriented, right?
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Like that the speaker was term limited out and the president of
24:36
SPEAKER_00: the state Senate was also term limited out.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: And now they're going to be the nominees for governor and state Senate, right?
24:42
SPEAKER_00: Whereas like Kleban is an outsider.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Nirav Shah is also an outsider.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: He was the state's COVID director, but he's not part of the state politics, right?
24:55
SPEAKER_00: But that's because in Augusta,
24:57
SPEAKER_00: The dynamic was that Pingree and Jackson and the main AFL-CIO and
25:04
SPEAKER_00: the main environmental groups were like,
25:08
SPEAKER_00: you know, like the group, this is a democratic trifecta state, right?
25:11
SPEAKER_00: So like progressive interest groups were pushing a lot of legislation
25:16
SPEAKER_00: and Janet Mills signed much of that legislation,
25:19
SPEAKER_00: but she also vetoed some of that legislation.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's like what the left wants in state politics and what the establishment wants
25:28
SPEAKER_00: in state politics are like basically the same.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And Mills,
25:32
SPEAKER_00: even though she was the governor,
25:34
SPEAKER_00: was a little bit like on the outside looking in,
25:37
SPEAKER_00: in terms of like, what is the Democratic Party doing here?
25:42
SPEAKER_00: So- You know, I mean, but that's very literal, right?
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Like, since most people nowadays,
25:50
SPEAKER_00: including in Maine,
25:50
SPEAKER_00: including everywhere, like,
25:52
SPEAKER_00: get their information about politics from the national firmament of takesters,
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Jackson was on an organizing call yesterday,
26:01
SPEAKER_00: last night, with,
26:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:03
SPEAKER_00: with Abdul El-Sayed,
26:05
SPEAKER_00: with Ro Khanna, with, um,
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Some other left-wing House candidate in Michigan,
26:11
SPEAKER_00: a left-wing House candidate in California, with Ed Markey.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: You know,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: just like, team,
26:20
SPEAKER_00: this group of leftists characterizes themselves as running against
26:25
SPEAKER_00: the establishment.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: And they characterize everyone who they are running against as moderate.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: And so Shah is understood by anyone who follows national politics as like
26:37
SPEAKER_00: the establishment moderate.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, Shah supports Medicare for All.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Shah supports an arms embargo on Israel.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: I asked on Twitter.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Like, are there any actual policy differences between Jackson and Shaw?
26:50
SPEAKER_00: Or is this mostly about which team of consultants is going to get a cut
26:54
SPEAKER_00: of what's sure to be a massive set of ad buys in the Senate race?
26:59
SPEAKER_00: That bit of trolling got me communicated.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Talking to the rival teams of consultants did not persuade me
27:08
SPEAKER_00: that there are meaningful policy differences, which isn't to say there's no stakes.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Like if Jackson becomes a senator, he will join the Bernie, Warren, potentially Syed party.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Like team and will presumably endorse other factional candidates
27:28
SPEAKER_00: in other state conflicts,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: the way that Plattner would have, the way that Warren and Bernie have done.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Schaub will probably not do that, although he might, but like he doesn't have those connections.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: He'll be more like a normal blue state senator, which is to say very liberal on policy issues.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: But like Sheldon Whitehouse.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
27:54
SPEAKER_00: and it's like, I wish,
27:57
SPEAKER_00: I think we need like a richer understanding of the factional conflicts in
28:01
SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party to sort of explain this because it's just like,
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Maine is a blue state that does not really feature like meaningful,
28:12
SPEAKER_00: like heterodox, like moderates, moderates.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: It does feature...
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's when Plattner was around,
28:24
SPEAKER_00: it featured somebody who expressed not just left wing policy views,
28:28
SPEAKER_00: but a lot of like animus toward the institutional Democratic Party.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Jackson is sort of the heir to that, but like also he was the state senate president.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Like how much animosity to the institutional democratic party could he possibly have?
28:43
SPEAKER_01: This is why I wonder if there's any sense within the democratic,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: like of the primary electorate of being burned by this crew of endorsers.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: Where they're going to be like, you know, fool me once and go with somebody else.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Because like that would be a totally reasonable response after the Plattner debacle.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: But again,
29:01
SPEAKER_00: the flip side is that while I have heard a lot of concerns about Jackson as
29:05
SPEAKER_00: a nominee from various people, they're not like vetting concerns.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Jackson has been in main politics forever.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: And people actually understand really well what his strengths and weaknesses
29:19
SPEAKER_00: a I mean, no, you never know, right?
29:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's been a state senator from the most remote place in the eastern United States.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm telling people this, but like Jackson's from a town called Allagash, Maine.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Allagash is a longer drive from Allagash to Portland than it is from Portland to New York City.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: It is way out there.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people think they know the town of Allagash from the Allagash Beer Company,
29:50
SPEAKER_00: but the Allagash Beer Company is nowhere near Allagash, Maine.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: You would get there if you canoe the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: You end up in the town of Allagash where there is one restaurant and you
30:05
SPEAKER_00: then conventionally eat lunch there before driving home.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: There's logging in that area.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing about Jackson is that on paper,
30:17
SPEAKER_00: he is clearly the best candidate because he is left wing.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: He was endorsed for governor by Bernie Sanders.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: He has been endorsed by Graham Plattner.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: But he is also a former state senate president, right?
30:33
SPEAKER_00: So he's not like some Yahoo who doesn't know how to do politics.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: He has built coalitions.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: He's passed legislation.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: He's presumably at least like somewhat vetted.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Like he's been in politics a while.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: He ran for governor.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: He lost, but he didn't like lose because of a scandal.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: He's also a really strong electoral performer.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: In his state Senate races, he ran way ahead of Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: He ran ahead of Governor Mills.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: He ran ahead of Jared Golden in Golden's own district.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: So he checks all the boxes.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: The...
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Fly in the ointment.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Like I talked to one guy who's way more left-wing than me and like
31:17
SPEAKER_00: a veteran politics guy, although not main politics.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: He just moved here in retirement.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: But like a, you know, like a labor factional political organizer.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: The thing about Jackson is until quite recently, he was pro-life and opposed to gay marriage.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: And that reflected his district.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
31:41
SPEAKER_00: He represents an old school Obama-Trump crossover district that has a lot
31:46
SPEAKER_00: of Francophone Catholics.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: These guys,
31:52
SPEAKER_00: it sounds absurd,
31:53
SPEAKER_00: but Maine actually has a substantial Franco-American minority population.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: This is why Jackson sounds like a Southern boy, right?
32:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he has an Acadian accent.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: These guys, Francophone Mainers, used to be loyal Democrats.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: They flipped Paul LePage, who was a Republican candidate for governor.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: He's going to win Golden's House seat, is a native French speaker himself.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: And LePage,
32:19
SPEAKER_00: with anti-immigrant politics and with the growing cultural liberalism of
32:23
SPEAKER_00: the National Democratic Party, really realigned Franco Mainers.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: Jackson was a very strong electoral performer because he continued to overperform
32:34
SPEAKER_00: with that block of voters.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: But as Jackson went into leadership, You remember how Harry Reid used to be pro-life?
32:44
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's one of these things where sometimes politicians change their views
32:49
SPEAKER_00: on issues and they tell you that they've changed their views and they give some kind
32:54
SPEAKER_00: of explanation.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: Harry Reid just stopped being pro-life at some point in time and never really went into it.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have a big heart-to-heart interview.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: He was just kind of like, eh, I'm pro-choice now and also I'm a Democrat's leader.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: Well,
33:10
SPEAKER_01: I think there may have been more of an element of just natural ideological evolution
33:16
SPEAKER_01: because I don't think him being pro-life was super essential
33:20
SPEAKER_01: to his electoral success.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: If anything, not.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: He did some things that I thought were genuinely admirable.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: He was a majority leader in a really horrible cycle for himself
33:35
SPEAKER_01: while he was shepherding the Affordable Care Act through.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: And a person with less conviction would have probably teamed up with Rahm Emanuel
33:43
SPEAKER_01: to scuttle the ACA or really...
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Turn it into a nothing thing.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: But he was like, no, man, we're going for it.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: So he had this kind of like,
33:51
SPEAKER_01: let's just shoot the moon attitude about stuff,
33:54
SPEAKER_01: which makes me think that his change of heart about abortion was just like, yeah,
33:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be passing laws making this illegal and not
34:04
SPEAKER_01: a like calculating maneuver.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just don't.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: But I guess I will say that it's like Reed's evolution had that middle step.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Where he was like,
34:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm pro-life,
34:16
SPEAKER_00: but like I'm democratic leader and I'm like advancing,
34:20
SPEAKER_00: you know, these progressive bills.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: They weren't bills about abortion one way or the other because that wasn't like
34:25
SPEAKER_00: the legislative agenda.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: But then he flipped at some point and like became a Freedom of Choice Act co-sponsor
34:33
SPEAKER_00: without like whatever.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not to impugn Harry Reid, but just say that like Jackson had a similar evolution.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: But.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Nevada was like getting more liberal as Harry Reid was getting more liberal.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: Maine has been getting more liberal as Troy Jackson has been getting more liberal.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: But the slice of Maine that Jackson represents has been getting more conservative.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: And so Jackson,
34:56
SPEAKER_00: in his most recent reelection campaign,
34:58
SPEAKER_00: he still overperformed, but like he overperformed by less.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, he was he's on a downward trajectory.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: He was term limited out.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: And that district went overwhelmingly for a Republican successor.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: So one question about Jackson is like,
35:15
SPEAKER_00: can his residual strength with Obama to Trump crossover voters,
35:20
SPEAKER_00: will he carry any of that forward as a Senate candidate?
35:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, even though he's flip-flopped away from his old cultural conservative positions.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Probably some of it will.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: Hillary Clinton overperformed in Arkansas.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Compared to Obama or Biden,
35:37
SPEAKER_00: which sounds absurd because she didn't run at all as
35:42
SPEAKER_00: the culturally conservative former first lady of Arkansas.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Residual good feelings amongst the oldsters.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: This stuff does matter.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: There were some old people in Arkansas who like the Clintons
35:51
SPEAKER_00: and don't like any other contemporary Democrats.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: One concern that I've heard about Jackson, though, is that Susan Collins...
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Can run radio ads in Southern Maine that are like,
36:06
SPEAKER_00: unlike Troy Jackson, I have 100% pro-choice voting record.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Right?
36:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if she
36:15
SPEAKER_00: will.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, you know, it's just like, because there's been...
36:20
SPEAKER_00: The whole Plattner phenomenon got a lot of people talking about Democrats and
36:25
SPEAKER_00: the working class and this like vein of Obama to Trump crossover voters who do exist
36:31
SPEAKER_00: in Northern Maine.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: But like Collins's electoral strength,
36:34
SPEAKER_00: if you look at her 2020 bid,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: was just that like she did well with pro-choice women who don't like Donald Trump,
36:43
SPEAKER_00: but are not otherwise particularly left wing.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: And the question is like,
36:50
SPEAKER_00: Did those people just assume that Trump was toast in 2020 so they didn't care
36:56
SPEAKER_00: about anti-Trump politics anymore?
36:59
SPEAKER_00: And now Collins is fucked?
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Which is like kind of what I think.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Or can she still win him?
37:05
SPEAKER_01: I think that like what you're talking about is something
37:07
SPEAKER_01: that would have made sense prior to the Kavanaugh vote.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: But now- Just saying that opens her up not just to the question of what happens if
37:18
SPEAKER_01: the pro-life Republicans in the North are reminded that she is running as
37:23
SPEAKER_01: the pro-choice candidate, but also that she's a liar, that she's just like...
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Like pretending to be pro-choice in any meaningful way.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: But when the most important vote in the history of the pro-choice movement came up,
37:38
SPEAKER_01: she put on the court the guy who became the decisive vote to
37:43
SPEAKER_00: overturn Roe v.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: Wade.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: I think she wants to avoid that most likely.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: So that's why I'm wondering if she's going to want to go there.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: So speaking of things that I think...
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Could cut both ways and may trip her up,
37:57
SPEAKER_01: but may trip the Democrats up,
37:59
SPEAKER_01: is that yesterday an ICE agent shot a 26-year-old Colombian man.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: In the head, in southern Maine, in front of his- In Bidford, yeah.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: In Bidford, in front of his wife and three-year-old daughter.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: This man was,
38:13
SPEAKER_01: I think,
38:14
SPEAKER_01: reportedly authorized to work in the U.S.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: and was not the intended target of the ICE operation.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: It has not gone over well that this happened.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: And maybe we'll talk about this a little more on the other side when we get to
38:30
SPEAKER_01: the consequence of Lindsey Graham dying,
38:32
SPEAKER_01: of Mitch McConnell being out,
38:33
SPEAKER_01: and of Donald Trump kind of like Feeling power slip through his fingers
38:38
SPEAKER_01: and acting out.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: But I think this ice surge,
38:42
SPEAKER_01: which is nationwide and has resulted in more violent encounters,
38:49
SPEAKER_01: including another murder in Houston.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, of a,
38:53
SPEAKER_01: of like a family man who'd been here for 30 years,
38:56
SPEAKER_01: like that is also not going over well.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: It, it fits a pattern of desperation where it seems like the White House has chosen
39:03
SPEAKER_01: to do something that already backfired really badly for them,
39:07
SPEAKER_01: but in the hope that this time it'll get them, um,
39:11
SPEAKER_01: the riots that they think, uh, We'll,
39:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:15
SPEAKER_01: invert the politics of immigration enforcement for them
39:18
SPEAKER_01: or else just unlock new dictatorial powers for.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, so, OK, so two things specifically in the main shooting.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: One is, I mean, again, to underscore the lack of.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Clear policy stakes in this Senate race.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: All of the candidates, Senate candidates, support abolishing ICE.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: So that's the stakes on the Democratic in the primary, yeah.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: What that means to anyone, I don't know.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: I think this is a...
39:53
SPEAKER_00: I understand why everybody now wants to say that they are for abolishing ICE.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: This is,
40:00
SPEAKER_00: I think,
40:00
SPEAKER_00: going to come back around to bite not Democrats in Maine,
40:06
SPEAKER_00: but Democrats elsewhere in the ass in subsequent cycles.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it is what it is.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: The other thing is that, you know, people get killed in law enforcement operations.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: What's been really striking about the ICE shootings is the wildly unprofessional way
40:27
SPEAKER_00: in which the Trump administration has handled the aftermath of all of the shootings.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: I do not have like sources that can understand this,
40:36
SPEAKER_00: but like this Biddeford shooting has been the exception to the rule.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: You can see Susan Collins grabbing, right?
40:42
SPEAKER_00: The Trump administration has handled this the way you would imagine the Obama administration.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Not quite, but closer.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Very, like they like announced that there will be an inspector general's investigation.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
40:55
SPEAKER_00: They weren't like, and now we're going to smear everybody who ever met this guy.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: No, it took them nine hours.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: They came around to a
41:07
SPEAKER_01: description of the incident that's consistent
41:11
SPEAKER_01: with police abuse,
41:14
SPEAKER_01: basically, and put the guy on leave,
41:18
SPEAKER_01: which is closer,
41:20
SPEAKER_01: but are they going to allow local police to investigate this as a homicide?
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah, yeah,
41:25
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I'm not here to do cover for the Trump administration.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying,
41:30
SPEAKER_00: We would not be,
41:33
SPEAKER_00: there's just,
41:33
SPEAKER_00: there's a universe in which
41:35
SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration is handling all ice shootings like this.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: By saying, like,
41:39
SPEAKER_00: we are tough on immigration, we, like,
41:42
SPEAKER_00: believe in interior enforcement, but, like,
41:47
SPEAKER_00: we take seriously the question of,
41:50
SPEAKER_00: like, what specifically has occurred in these incidents, and, like, they...
41:56
SPEAKER_00: Clearly,
41:57
SPEAKER_00: reading between the lines,
41:58
SPEAKER_00: Susan Collins has exerted some kind of influence on them to be like,
42:03
SPEAKER_00: do not do your normal thing where you try to maximize polarization around everything
42:10
SPEAKER_00: that happens.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: Because polarization is not good.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: Maximizing polarization on immigration is good for Ken Paxton.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: It's good for Ashley Hinson.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that the shooting in Houston is good for Ken Paxton?
42:24
SPEAKER_00: It's not that the shooting in Houston is good for Ken Paxton, but just like in general.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: If all everybody does in Texas is retreat to their partisan 50-yard lines,
42:36
SPEAKER_00: that's good for Ken Paxton.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: And it's terrible for Susan Collins.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: Both Susan Collins and James Tallarico in different ways in different states
42:47
SPEAKER_00: with different issue sets,
42:48
SPEAKER_00: but structurally similarly,
42:50
SPEAKER_00: they have to get people to be like,
42:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't normally vote for an X, but in this case I will because A, B, C, D.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: It's a no brainer for both Maine Democrats and Texas Republicans to just be like,
43:06
SPEAKER_00: if we just yell all the time about everything,
43:10
SPEAKER_00: like probably that works out for us on average.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And so like Susan Collins is like trying to get National political polarization out
43:20
SPEAKER_00: of this race.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: And so anyway,
43:25
SPEAKER_00: the most galaxy brain idea that I heard was
43:28
SPEAKER_00: that they should somehow engineer Pingree to get out of the governor's race,
43:34
SPEAKER_00: give that to Troy Jackson, and then put Pingree into the Senate race.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, that's not what's going to happen.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: No, I know.
43:41
SPEAKER_01: So I was wondering, because- I noticed that they're handling the main situation differently.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: I read it as less Susan Collins working behind the scenes and more as just like
43:53
SPEAKER_01: the gravitational force of her.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: The fact that she is endangered and also that she is appropriations chair
44:02
SPEAKER_01: and also former colleague of Mark Wayne Mullen,
44:04
SPEAKER_01: who now runs DHS,
44:06
SPEAKER_01: like all these things that Make it clear to the administration without her having
44:10
SPEAKER_01: to say anything that they need to handle the situation differently.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: And the only reason I think that that might fit the facts better is
44:15
SPEAKER_01: that she's not out there being like, I made this happen.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: I say thus far, no further.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm breaking with the administration on this policy.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: And I can't make
44:32
SPEAKER_01: the federal government cooperate with local police in Minnesota
44:36
SPEAKER_01: in Texas, but I can do it here.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: And she didn't, she's not saying that.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Like her Twitter account is really just kind of like narrating what she's hearing
44:44
SPEAKER_01: from the, you know, in scare quotes, the administration.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: And it makes me think that she's just like,
44:49
SPEAKER_01: she is trying to stay away and they are trying to work toward her in a way
44:53
SPEAKER_01: that they know is better for her than like if they just do their normal thing.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she is just trying to say,
45:00
SPEAKER_00: but like,
45:00
SPEAKER_00: you know, she's,
45:03
SPEAKER_00: she is noting that That this is being handled like in a broadly appropriate way.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: Like the Boston office of the DHS inspector general has taken over
45:12
SPEAKER_00: the Biddeford shooting investigation in cooperation with the FBI,
45:14
SPEAKER_00: blah, blah, blah, without like getting into it.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: She's acting as if there's like no context, right?
45:21
SPEAKER_00: Like she fell out of a coconut tree, to coin a phrase.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
45:27
SPEAKER_00: so like,
45:29
SPEAKER_00: because again, I mean,
45:29
SPEAKER_00: I think like the way Collins would like to see this is, you know, this man died.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: Which is sad.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: On its face, it seems like something inappropriate probably happened.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: We don't fully know that.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: There is going to be an independent investigation.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: And also,
45:46
SPEAKER_00: it seems that,
45:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Democrats are reacting to this by being like,
45:51
SPEAKER_00: maybe we shouldn't have immigration enforcement.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in a more conservative state, this, like, might work.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: But it's me.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, like, like,
46:04
SPEAKER_00: When the American voting public was much more fired up
46:08
SPEAKER_00: about immigration 18 months ago, the state voted for Kamala Harris.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think she's just probably drawing dead at this point.
46:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:23
SPEAKER_00: The other thing people say about Jackson,
46:25
SPEAKER_00: people I know,
46:26
SPEAKER_00: like real Plattner heads who went to multiple joint events,
46:31
SPEAKER_00: is that like part of the reason people got so gaga for Plattner is
46:36
SPEAKER_00: that he was really like a star performer at those joint events.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: And that Troy Jackson,
46:42
SPEAKER_00: who's this kind of like war horse of main populism,
46:46
SPEAKER_00: is a little like unimpressive because Whereas Plattner,
46:50
SPEAKER_00: everybody was like,
46:52
SPEAKER_00: now we have our guy, like, you know, like this is who we've been waiting for.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: I cannot convey to people enough.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: That Graham Plattner has incredible in-the-room charisma.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: I did not agree with Plattner's takes, but I found him very charming and personable.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: And my dad went to a Plattner fundraiser after the first couple of scandals broke,
47:18
SPEAKER_00: and he had big doubts and felt very reassured.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: I think this goes to show that that's a bad heuristic for picking politicians,
47:28
SPEAKER_00: but it's just objectively-
47:30
SPEAKER_01: Incomplete, if that's the only one, that's the issue.
47:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's just objectively true.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: And Jackson does not have the sauce.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: Who's the most rizzy candidate of the-
47:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that any of them are
47:44
SPEAKER_01: rizzy,
47:44
SPEAKER_00: but like-
47:48
SPEAKER_00: I think the way Shaw eventually got to be a frontrunner in
47:52
SPEAKER_00: a gubernatorial election is that like his TV appearances
47:55
SPEAKER_00: during COVID were really good.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: He does good interviews.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: He's like a smart guy.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: He does talking points, etc.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: Cleban's cool, too.
48:06
SPEAKER_00: You know.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: You look at the difficulty Democrats have had beating Susan Collins over the years.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure you would attribute that to like her out of control charisma.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I mean, I'm a tedious literalist about policy.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: Or due to her like out of control charisma.
48:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, these are things, like she's also a known quantity.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: Plattner was not, Zoran was not.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: They used the vertical video to get on people's radars.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: Right, but I'm saying like, what is known about her, people like have traditionally liked.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: So look, I have to do these reality checks with myself a lot of the time.
49:07
SPEAKER_01: I think they kind of go both ways.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Like I when I find myself telling Democrats
49:11
SPEAKER_01: that they should just like scandal monger Republicans,
49:14
SPEAKER_01: they tend to be like, but you have to attach it to people.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: Tell them how this corruption scandal affects their bottom line.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
49:22
SPEAKER_01: what did Hunter Biden's laptop have to do with anyone's bottom line
49:25
SPEAKER_01: or Hillary Clinton's emails?
49:26
SPEAKER_01: Like you can just dirty somebody up and go ahead and do it.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: Same thing with the Riz thing.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: It's like Amy Klobuchar does very well and she's both uncharismatic
49:35
SPEAKER_01: and also apparently a very weird and unpleasant person.
49:38
SPEAKER_01: Person to work for, according to some reporting.
49:41
SPEAKER_01: And like, it doesn't affect her electability.
49:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, similarly, like,
49:47
SPEAKER_01: I do think that there is a kind of riz that is,
49:52
SPEAKER_01: like, you see it in the San Jose mayor, the Cincinnati mayor.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: It's like, maybe you see it in the COVID director from Maine.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: Is that like,
50:03
SPEAKER_01: it's like confident competence where they accept Explain the things they know
50:08
SPEAKER_01: through raw experience really well and in an interesting way and it gets people,
50:11
SPEAKER_01: but it's highly substantive.
50:13
SPEAKER_01: And that's different than a kind of like free-floating populist charisma where it's
50:19
SPEAKER_01: a lot of pumping fists and like railing against the establishment without a lot
50:24
SPEAKER_01: of content.
50:25
SPEAKER_01: But I think people do like, you wouldn't want to learn the lesson from Susan Collins and A.B.
50:32
SPEAKER_01: Klobuchar that you should choose
50:38
SPEAKER_01: Like, awkwardness or lack of charisma.
50:41
SPEAKER_01: It's clearly in a package, an asset.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: I just again want to say, like,
50:45
SPEAKER_00: about Jackson, I mean,
50:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
50:51
SPEAKER_00: I think that Jackson has squandered some of the qualities that historically made him
51:00
SPEAKER_00: an electoral over-performer.
51:02
SPEAKER_00: But I think that even though
51:07
SPEAKER_00: Newbies to main politics who saw these rallies and came away very impressed
51:12
SPEAKER_00: with Plattner and very unimpressed with Jackson.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: The fact is that like Plattner was running quite weak
51:20
SPEAKER_00: with like working class Mainers and Jackson in his community
51:25
SPEAKER_00: where people know him did quite well.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: And so at least analytically,
51:31
SPEAKER_00: I feel confident that Troy Jackson understands that electorate in inland Maine.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that it's like important.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: I would have been way more comfortable with him replacing Jared Golden than
51:49
SPEAKER_00: with this guy Dunlap who wound up getting the job.
51:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going to happen at these conventions.
51:55
SPEAKER_00: I will also say like,
51:57
SPEAKER_00: I have been a little bit like negative polarized against Jackson by
52:02
SPEAKER_00: the like dogmatic advocacy on his behalf by some of the Plattner people
52:09
SPEAKER_00: who I think kind of maybe should have taken a step back.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I kind of see that too.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: After the situation that they unleashed on us to just like come out
52:16
SPEAKER_00: the gate being like, this is our guy.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, fuck off, man.
52:20
SPEAKER_00: But the case for Jackson on paper like really is strong.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: And the...
52:27
SPEAKER_00: Platnerist logic that he's the heir apparent, I don't think is ironclad, but it's reasonable.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, if they asked me, like, I would probably go for him.
52:43
SPEAKER_00: And I would just urge him and his team,
52:47
SPEAKER_00: just as I was saying about Platner, to just, like, Try to normalize this race.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, that just like it's Maine, it's a democratic state.
53:00
SPEAKER_00: Stop talking shit about the democratic party.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: This is not some galaxy brain, how are we going to win in Idaho kind of situation.
53:12
SPEAKER_00: You just want to mobilize partisan Democrats to vote for the Democratic candidate
53:17
SPEAKER_00: and talk about how a Democratic Senate majority will block Trump's judges
53:22
SPEAKER_00: and will have leverage.
53:23
SPEAKER_00: And sure,
53:24
SPEAKER_00: say like,
53:25
SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to push Chuck Schumer to be more aggressive,
53:28
SPEAKER_00: all that whatever good kind of stuff.
53:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:31
SPEAKER_00: You like the the like futility,
53:34
SPEAKER_00: the like anti party sentiment,
53:37
SPEAKER_00: which like clearly is felt in the hearts of many people.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: It's just like not what's going to win you this race against Susan Collins.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: Like you're just you're running on partisanship.
53:47
SPEAKER_01: I agree with all that.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: Like I have in my head,
53:50
SPEAKER_01: in my heart, what I would want to hear from the candidates at the convention.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: And it is like a retrospective critique of the Democratic establishment,
53:58
SPEAKER_01: but just on the like years of tolerating filibuster abuse and blah,
54:02
SPEAKER_01: blah, blah that got us into this situation.
54:04
SPEAKER_01: And you can tie that to health care and abortion and all kinds of substantive issues
54:11
SPEAKER_01: that I think do galvanize core Democrats,
54:15
SPEAKER_01: but fundamentally like You can kind of skip all that.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: I think it's good, too,
54:21
SPEAKER_01: because people have a pretty sour feeling about
54:24
SPEAKER_01: the quote-unquote Democratic establishment.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: But you can kind of short-circuit all that with Collins in the race,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: being like,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: she's the epitome of why it's important to have a Democratic Senate,
54:33
SPEAKER_01: because when you don't have a Democratic Senate,
54:34
SPEAKER_01: people like her put Brett Kavanaugh on the court.
54:36
SPEAKER_00: If you want to criticize anybody, I would consider criticizing Angus King.
54:41
SPEAKER_00: No, you know what I mean?
54:42
SPEAKER_00: If you want to do some intra-party critique,
54:44
SPEAKER_00: to just be like, look, like,
54:47
SPEAKER_00: This is a blue state,
54:48
SPEAKER_00: but we literally haven't had a Democratic senator in a bajillion years.
54:54
SPEAKER_00: And that it was a mistake of Chuck Schumer to let this guy in the caucus
55:00
SPEAKER_00: who doesn't vote with Democrats on this shutdown thingamajiggy,
55:05
SPEAKER_00: who doesn't endorse against Susan Collins, and just make people...
55:10
SPEAKER_00: Feel good about Democrats in an anti-establishment way.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: Of course,
55:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to work with Senator King on the fucking lobster boats and whatever else,
55:21
SPEAKER_00: but we're going to have a Democrat who fights for the Democratic Party,
55:24
SPEAKER_00: who fights against Donald Trump.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: I remember when Angus King was governor.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: I agreed with him about some stuff, but disagreed with him about other stuff.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: I think these, like,
55:36
SPEAKER_00: Hacks in DC have been like too credulous about just like,
55:41
SPEAKER_00: we'll take fucking anybody.
55:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: And like, I'm going to have a real Democrat.
55:45
SPEAKER_01: Also, very quickly,
55:48
SPEAKER_01: I looked this up because I needed to make sure I remembered Golden's positions.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: But you mentioned that Jackson outperformed Golden, who is himself an overperformer.
55:56
SPEAKER_01: But Golden has Jackson's new views on abortion and same-sex marriage.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: And so if what Jackson's new positions are,
56:07
SPEAKER_01: Do mechanically to his performance is take him from his old over-performance
56:11
SPEAKER_01: to Golden-level over-performance.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: He's going to win in a romp.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: He's going to crush her.
56:18
SPEAKER_00: Although, I mean, yes.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: I will be interested, you know, a funny quirk.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've talked a lot about Jared Golden over the years.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: Had Golden been the Senate nominee,
56:30
SPEAKER_00: you would have been in the weird situation where Golden agrees with Trump on tariffs
56:35
SPEAKER_00: and Susan Collins does not.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: Jackson has not like explicitly addressed the Trump tariffs issue,
56:43
SPEAKER_00: but like historically has been like a very,
56:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
56:46
SPEAKER_00: like an old school protectionist, like labor-backed Northern Union Democrat.
56:52
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be interested to see how he navigates that.
56:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:58
SPEAKER_00: Tariff issues are very picayune and weird,
57:01
SPEAKER_00: but he definitely has a record as a somewhat Trump-like protectionist.
57:05
SPEAKER_00: We should probably take a break and talk about the corpse of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're going to have to do it quick because, man, we spent a lot of time on Maine.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear us talk about the two dead Republican senators,
57:18
SPEAKER_01: go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscriptions.