The Left can’t pick candidates. Just look at Kamala.
Now a GOP Senator hit this Democrat with a brutal wake up call they won’t forget.
The Senator From Maine Gives Her First National Interview Since Platner’s Nomination
Susan Collins has been in the United States Senate since 1997. She has won six elections in a state that Barack Obama carried twice by double digits and that Joe Biden won in 2020. She is one of the most effective legislators in the institution, with a record of bipartisan results that her colleagues on both sides of the aisle routinely acknowledge — even when they disagree with her votes.
Graham Platner sent explicit photographs to more than a dozen women on an anonymous messaging app. He had a Nazi skull tattoo on his chest for twenty years. He mocked a Purple Heart recipient bleeding on a battlefield in Afghanistan. He physically restrained an ex-girlfriend and locked her in a bedroom. He has described himself as a communist.
Collins gave her first national interview since Platner won the Democratic primary on “The Story” with anchor Martha MacCallum this week, and she laid out the contrast plainly.
“I never expected to have an opponent like Graham Platner,” she said. “He is very different from me. He’s the antithesis of the steady leadership that I provide in Washington that has delivered real results for the state of Maine and for our nation.”
She addressed the controversies one by one, her composure never wavering. “There have been numerous controversies. He often denies them only to be contradicted by others who say what he told them. To me, one of the most appalling is his making fun of a Purple Heart recipient who had been wounded by the Taliban, lying on the war field, and he ridicules this individual. And another example, it’s his treatment of women in general, and also his opposition to law enforcement.”
She said what should be obvious — that these revelations are normally disqualifying — but noted the world has changed. “I would have said in a different time that any one of these would have been disqualifying for someone to be a candidate to serve our country and the state of Maine in the United States Senate, whether they were Democrat or Republican.”
The Platner Counter — And Why It Doesn’t Land
Platner’s response to the mounting scandal file has followed a consistent pattern: PTSD, alcohol, a “dark period” that he has now moved past. He said in a statement that he “has been open about what was a very dark period of my life where I struggled with undiagnosed PTSD, too often self-medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend.”
The PTSD explanation is worth taking seriously. Veteran mental health struggles are real, documented, and deserving of compassion — and the stress of multiple combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq can produce exactly the kind of behavioral deterioration Platner describes. The explanation has enough emotional credibility that it has kept significant Democratic support in place despite the pile of controversies.
But there are limits to what a PTSD explanation covers. PTSD does not explain a twenty-year Nazi tattoo. It does not explain deleted Reddit posts that predate or postdate the combat service timeline. It does not explain an extramarital sexting operation that appears to have been organized and sustained, not impulsive. And it does not address the physical restraint allegation, which if accurate describes deliberate violent conduct, not a dissociative episode.
Platner, in his primary victory speech, accused Collins of being “just as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves.” The rhetorical energy is apparent. The credibility, given what is now in the public record, is considerably less so.
The Race — And What It Tells Us About November
Maine’s Senate race has become one of the most watched in the country for the same reason it has always been — Susan Collins has always been a figure who defies the conventional partisan gravitational forces. She wins in a state she shouldn’t be able to win, by appealing to voters who genuinely believe she represents them rather than her party.
She said it herself in the MacCallum interview: “In the end, this comes down to whether you want a candidate who will go to Washington, engage in angry rhetoric every day, but not get anything done, versus my service to the people of Maine, where I have delivered real results to the people of Maine. I believe that the people of Maine want steady leadership.”
The Democratic Party’s calculation — that Platner’s populist economic message and veteran biography will overcome the scandal file in a competitive Senate race — is a significant gamble. The latest polling has Platner trailing Collins by nine points after previously leading. Collins, characteristically, is not gloating. She is simply drawing the contrast, letting the record speak, and trusting Maine voters to know the difference between steady leadership and angry rhetoric. In Maine, more often than not, they do.
