Maine

Democrats are finally pulling the plug on Graham Platner, the failson whose juvenile addiction to schizophrenic online message boards, rad Nazi tattoo, anti-Israel rhetoric, mean drunkenness, infidelity and alleged abuse of women they believed would appeal to the white working-class men they loathe. But they’re only doing so after Politico revealed Monday that “A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections.

In recent months, America’s political rumor mills have been grinding out whispers about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maine. Platner, the military veteran turned oyster catcher turned left-wing populist, has somehow survived the story about having a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest – although he says he was unaware of its meaning and has since had it covered up. And he is still on course to beat Susan Collins, the long-serving Republican, in November. His is thought to be the most obvious – yet vital – win for the Democrats as they seek to win back the Senate.  But Platner has a colorful past – to put it mildly.

On a trip to the nation's capital last week, 77-year-old Governor Janet Mills of Maine was confronted with an old skeleton in her closet: accusations of cocaine use. A man approached Mills and, while filming, asked if she believed "sniffing cocaine at work" is a "human right," Fox News reported. Mills gracefully responded, "What the fuck?" That, Cockburn notes, is not a no. The man followed up with a more straightforward question: "How much more does an eight-ball cost with inflation?" Unfortunately, Mills did not give the reporter current street prices and instead chose to walk away. (The answer is around $180 in DC, per Cockburn's law enforcement sources.

What happens now that the Colorado Supreme Court has kicked Donald Trump off the primary ballot? The first thing, apparently, is similar lawsuits in other “blue” states. Those will continue despite the Wednesday decision by the Michigan Supreme Court that Trump’s name can remain.   Nearly all the commentary has been devoted to the legal reasons for these rulings and their political implications. But it is important to consider the effort to exclude Trump in a wider context, one that goes beyond his personality, polarizing candidacy and events of January 6.  That wider frame is a century-long progressive effort to reframe the way America is governed and to loosen the constitutional barriers to those changes.

The Colorado Supreme Court issued a ruling Tuesday night that barred Donald Trump from appearing on the primary ballot in the 2024 election, a shock move that even NBC News described as a “political gift” to the former president. In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that Trump engaged in an insurrection and is thus disqualified for running for office under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment contains a clause that states anyone who takes an oath “as an officer of the United States” and engages in “insurrection or rebellion” cannot hold civil or military office in the US. The section was written with the intention of barring Confederate leaders from returning to public office.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to formally quit the Democratic Party could have serious consequences for America’s most famous socialist. While Democrats in Arizona and across the country figure out how to handle the Senate’s newest independent, the cogs in the Democratic Party’s machine are already kicking her to the curb. Their actions could have major ramifications for some of her Senate colleagues. Moments after Sinema declared her independence, her longtime progressive firm, Authentic, dropped her because its employees felt that working with her was tantamount to “devil’s work.” Now, NGP VAN, the Democratic Party’s top data firm, is cutting ties with her because she left the party. Here’s where it gets complicated for the Democratic Party.

Augusta, Maine Six weeks in Maine can’t make you an expert on the state, but it does teach you a few crucial things about living up here. Weather forecasts are rarely accurate (you’re better off just looking at the sky). Moose will not get out of the way of your car on the road. Rural broadband access, or the lack thereof, really is a big deal. It’s totally normal for your neighbors to construct elaborate displays of bloody skeletons or creepy old dolls in their front yards and keep them up year-round. Oh, and this: Sen. Susan Collins is going to be a tougher incumbent to unseat than the national media and Twitter pundit class would like to think. I currently live in Maine, sort of.