pussy facing the world

Also, here's a fun fact: Republicans were able to flip 10 House seats in special elections during the 1st Trump admin before the 2018 blue wave. So far in the second, Democrats have flipped 30 seats and have defended every one of their seats. Republicans have not flipped any and have lost even in a deep red district in Texas (that had not voted for Democrats since the early 90s). And for polls - gotta look at the crosstabs. Most are assuming the same 2024 electorate (or even R+2 in some I've seen).

And also, there's over 4 months still. I don't see how Republicans can improve their prospects (besides obviously their attempts to cheat) but there's plenty of opportunities for things to get worse.

(Also, sorry if the tone is coming off wrong, I mean this all just conversationally).

I've not made the argument that Mills was a great candidate. I don't know if she could have beat Susan Collins. All I've said on that matter is that there's a reason that moderate Democrats encouraged her to run, which is that she's got a lot of the same appeal as Collins while also being a democrat, the hope being that she'd be able to carry both democrats and enough independents to flip the seat.

Also Platner out fundraising raising her doesn't necessarily mean she was a bad candidate either, it just means he had some deep and well connected pockets backing him. This is specifically where Twitter comes into play because he raised a lot of money outside of Maine and that was the work of the podcast bro commentariat glazing the hell out of him to their audience.

Furthermore, primary and general elections are very different beasts, especially in a state like Maine that has a semi-closed primary. In the primary, she and platner were splitting only Democrat and unaffiliated votes. In the general, platner and Collins will be competing for independents and moderates, which Collins has historically won. Collins is a notoriously strong incumbent candidate that consistently over performs polls and we have months left for the republicans to absolutely batter him in the media.

He won because he was able to outspend her with outside of Maine campaign donations driven by podcast bros glazing him all over twitter and the fact that the most significant media coverage of his multiple scandals happened after Mills already stopped campaigning and most people assumed she withdrew.

The incoming blue wave and the early hype of a new player in the game will not be enough to carry him in the general when republicans start spending heavy to smear him left, right, and center. His poll numbers are already dropping and the Republican media blitz is only just starting. You're right that this is probably Susan Collins' most vulnerable election and that democrats winning the senate majority is critical for the sake of our nation but that's exactly why so called progressives throwing their weight and money behind him during the primary is one of the stupidest political moves I've seen in my life.