(upbeat music)
- Hey everybody, Mark Calperon here,
a special episode of Next Up. Thank you for being here.
“It's so much going on with Graham Plattener”
as we head into the weekend. I wanted to give you my reporting and my thoughts about where we are. And a lot of stuff's out there about this as we wait to see if Plattener really goes through
with getting out as we wait to see who the Democrats have they come up with a process to pick his successor. And whether somebody can launch, well, I've been not to impressed with the thickness of the people who are vying to replace them.
A lot of them have lost elections, either recently in Maine, or including Democratic primaries, or they've lost the Susan Collins in the general. So this is not a huge group of Titans
and usually takes an enlightened to be a incumbent senator.
So we're waiting on that to see what the process is and then who emerges. We're waiting to see what the Collins folks do, how aggressive they are in trying to kill this in the crib. And of course, Maine voters.
So let me run through sort of how I'm thinking about it now. First on the media side,
“I think the press has already played a massive role here.”
We still haven't seen a great explanation from anybody about why this last round of what turned out to be existential, negative stories, accusations against planner. Why that happened right before the deadline?
I haven't really had that explained. So that's a big thing. The New York Times story from a few weeks ago, we've talked about that on next up.
I've talked about it on two way.
How the press, the New York Times wrote that story, which appeared to be an effort to catch and suppress. If the Times has an explanation of why they wrote the story, the way they did, they haven't explained it. We haven't really heard again from Jody Canter.
The New York Times me too, reporter who defended planner and effect what she thinks now about what's happened. Having really heard her, at least I haven't seen her, explain her initial comments that got so much attention. And I do believe that the media going forward
is gonna have an opportunity to either continue to obsess about planner and ask the other Democrats about it to ever the nominee is about planner.
“What role a planner will play in terms of media coverage?”
I think will be a big issue going forward. Then there's a question of Susan Collins. Democrats have said when it was planner and now, she's very hard to beat all incumbents are hard to beat. But Collins has a history of defying the polling.
Collins Susan Collins has a history of working with her allies including her super PAC to really go hard at the Democrat. She's a history of winning when she's been out to spent and she may not be out to spend here depending on how much the Democrat can raise.
But my anticipation, and you've already seen one video from the team Collins kind of mocking the Democrats, my anticipation is that on that mocked the process, this line that Republicans used with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, when that switch was made,
they'll say what about the voters? Because this is gonna be 600 people picking the nominee rather than the tens of thousands who voted for Grandpladner. And I suspect that there are already doing opposition research on these other Democrats.
And whoever emerges, I think we'll get a big welcome into the campaign before they're up and running. They're gonna have to do all, spend all their bandwidth, all their resources on trying to win the nomination. And then the day they win the nomination,
whenever that is the next couple of weeks, they'll be hammered by the Republicans. So I'm interested in seeing that. I'm interested in seeing what Planner does. Assuming he gets out on Monday, I just so curious
to see how he approaches talking to the press going forward because you know every reporter, every TV, or person, every print reporter, once a big interview, they wanna ask him about some of the allegations. They wanna ask him about that video he made
that was so self-involved and made the extraordinary accusation that they said, all the accusations against him were false and that the reason all this happened was that the establishment wanted to stop him. So I wanna see what happens with him.
How he conducts himself, assuming he gets out. How he conducts himself. They'll be this extraordinary moment. The candidates, the major candidates, trying to replace him have all said,
we don't want his endorsement. But they also say, we're all running on his platform. So there's no doubt, no doubt. They do whatever the Democrats dominate through this extraordinary process.
We'll share Planner's platform, certainly more than Susan Collins does. And so it would be natural for a grand planner to say, I endorse this person, even though they'll all likely wanna keep their distance from him.
So I'm curious to see how he navigates that. And then for the Democrats, this is an excretion experience. The Bleeding Democrat in the state is the governor, Governor Mills, who got shocked by Planner. He was beating or so badly,
she was having so much trouble raising money
That she basically quit the race before the primary.
She's been silent.
Hasn't really said she's not gonna definitively
that she's not gonna enter to replace him on the ticket. But there's no sign of that. But the executive director of the main Democrat party is extremely low key, haven't heard much from him. The executive director has made some of these videos
that have got of attention, but she's a staffer. She's not a principal here. The other senator from Maine is an independent former Democrat, Angus King, haven't seen him exercise much leadership.
There's no big figures in the Democratic Party in the state, George Mitchell, Ed Muskie. These are no longer players and main politics. They've been the big Democratic figures historically.
“So, what are the how the Democrats gonna rally here?”
And of course, Senator Schumer, a lot of the people around him are saying we told you so. You shouldn't have picked Grant Platner,
but they can't have their fingerprints on any of this.
They can't have their fingers on the process of selecting the replacement. But once there is a replacement, that person will almost certainly welcome. As Grant Platner did, the support from Washington
Democrats and their super PAC to try to help him win and whoever the main or woman who replaces them on the ticket. And then there's the governor's race where Democrats have a pretty decent chance to win the governor's race and how that candidate
for Governor interacts with Platner, our Platner's replacement rather, how they can paint together. All of this is a huge uncertainty. New York Times did a great piece today about the history
of Senate candidates being replaced. Sometimes they replace their controversies, sometimes for somebody passes away.
Sometimes they're career plans change
“and they run for something else all of a sudden.”
But they don't have a great history. And normally, a simple space isn't used, I think it's like it doesn't. Normally when a person's been replaced, they've been losers in the general election.
This general election, people say, well, if it's a kind of a vanilla candidate, if it's someone who's not controversial, they should be able to beat Susan Collins. She's vulnerable because some of her votes,
she's vulnerable because of her age. She's the establishment, she's vulnerable because Maine is a more of a blue state than a red or purple state. I'm not sure that's true.
And one of the great debates right now in politics amongst political professionals and analysts is the Democrats better off without planter. It's easy to say they will be, although I don't think you can say definitively
until we see who the nominee is. But it's easy to say, well, planter had so much baggage. Well, he did, but he also had a great campaign skills. He also had a lot of energy behind him. And he was established brand within the Democratic Party
that people were enthusiastic about. None of the other people currently putting themselves forward to replace him. They don't have that same start quality, that same charisma, that same energy.
Planter was having trouble raising money, and he wouldn't have had the support,
“they say, and I think they would have followed through”
of the big Democratic backers of super PACs. So in that sense, they're better off. But it's hard to beat in and come, but as I said, it's hard to go from running in state races, which is what most of these people have done,
some of run for the house, to running in a major league level. Well, let's see how many debates there are. Let's see how the person who replaced Planter does the debates. And let's see how they do if they get asked
and interviews about international relations, national security, complicated federal issues. Let's see how they do. Because in addition to brushing up on all that stuff, they're going to have to learn to prepare for debates
and in terms of mechanics, raise money, higher staff. All these things are going to take time. And in the meantime, Susan Collins, who's been running for election for six years, is going to be laying in wait.
So like I said, let's wait and see what the process is like for picking the replacement. Let's see who the replacement is. Let's see if Platter does get out. Let's see how the Collins folks handle it.
Let's see how the media covers it. There's plenty to play out here over the next few weeks. And then once the general election set, it's going to be fascinating to see what the initial polls are like. That'll tell us a lot.
Once there's an nominee and they'll get a bunch of coverage at nationally and in the state. Let's see what that one on one match up looks like in the initial polls. A to see where the voters of main are.
But if the person's behind, if they're well behind, there won't be absolute panic, but they'll be deep concern in the Democratic Party, because that'll test the question of how this sort of generic Democrat would do against Susan Collins.
If there had or even then then game on, then we'll see how the Collins folks try to define the race. The pressure in this period to get the nomination from the 600 people, a lot of them will be super-progresses
Of be platinum types.
The pressure's going to be to go to the left
“to be for a lot of liberal, progressive, socialist policies.”
And let's see what the Collins campaign can do with that. In addition to looking at the background of all the potential candidates,
let's see how they do saying these positions are too far at the left.
Because Susan Collins, her strength besides her reputation
“should be bringing home the bacon for main,”
for federal, or just, her strength has been, she's a moderate, that she can work across the aisle
that her positions are not doctrine air
or they're not ideologically far to the right. Let's see what Susan Collins does with the,
“she wants to win, she's extremely competitive.”
Six years ago when she was running, she was the poll showed her way down. Part of why she wanted, she's a fiercely competitive. She does not want to lose this race. And let's see which she does to brand whoever
the Democratic Democrats nominate as far to the left. That's your special episode. Next up, thank you for listening. You can see all my episodes and listen to them all on YouTube and next up at Halburn.
And then it's course as a podcast. grateful to you. Hope you have a great weekend and look forward to spending time with you next week episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and bonus episodes to say pop up.
Have a great weekend, everybody. (upbeat music)
