Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills withdrew from the D Senate primary, leaving Graham Platner as the presumptive nominee to face Susan Collins in the fall.

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:

Mills’s decision — and the trajectory of her campaign — tells us a lot about this moment in politics. On paper, Mills was the undisputed favorite for the Democratic nominee. All Mainers knew her, many had voted for her multiple times, and she had the kind of track record that someone like Schumer, who was desperate to get her to run against Collins, thought would make her successful.

The opposite is true for Platner. He is a first-time candidate whose baggage is so significant that it would need to be checked, not carried on, when flying out of Bangor International Airport, including deleted Reddit comments that were dismissive of sexual assault and the Nazi symbol he had tattooed on his chest and later altered. Even some of his backers were skeptical of his staying power when he launched his campaign.

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This race has taught political watchers a few things: Voters, especially Democrats who watched their party lose the 2024 presidential race against Trump, are angry with the politics of this moment and the status quo that got the nation to this point. That anger is so deep that candidates who look good on paper but hark back to the politics of yore are easily expendable for someone who, warts and all, makes them feel something.

Platner’s entire image embodies a slice of Maine that most people outside the state don’t understand. With his baggy sweatshirts, his ties to the water as the owner of an oyster farming business and even his gravelly voice, Platner clearly connected with Democrats on a deeper level. In a state that is known for judging people who are “from away,” Platner is notably not.

 Adam Wren with Dasha Burns at POLITICO quote Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM):

“I think there’s just a mood right now in the country where there’s so much economic pressure on hard-working regular folks, and you can either connect with that or not, and that’s how I’ve made decisions in these races: based on whether I think that person is going to do the best job of connecting with that frustration that regular people have right now.”

The deep unsettledness Heinrich describes is upsetting traditional Washington norms around electability, he told Playbook. “I just think who is electable is evolving, and our analysis of these races, and who’s going to be the strongest in a general, which is really what’s most important here, from a majority standpoint, needs to evolve with where the electorate is today.”

After all, that electorate is one that sided with a trail of controversial online comments from Platner regarding political violence, the military, police and more that drew months of attention and headlines.

“We’ve gotten over-analytical as a party, and sanitized and thinking about resumes,” Heinrich said. “None of these candidates are perfect, but I think there’s an expectation by voters today that if you seem perfect, you’re probably hiding something.”