Now that Graham Platner has withdrawn his Senate candidacy, his supporters in Maine seem equally furious at their former nominee and at national Democratic operatives both left and center. The former seized on Platner as a bundle of male proletarian stereotypes without bothering to vet him thoroughly for precisely the sort of background and character issues that brought him down. The latter cleared the field of viable alternatives to the hapless Janet Mills, even as they worked behind the scenes to undermine Platner and then exulted in his humiliation. The national narrative, as my Maine-residing colleague Rebecca Traister put it, promoted a “cartoonish proxy war … pitting the oysterman Platner, working-class cosplayer and dirtbaggy avatar of the male left, against a hidebound Establishment.” So it’s understandable that the locals would just as soon be left alone to work out their own representation in the U.S. Senate.

But it’s also understandable that Democrats nationwide tend to believe that “as Maine goes, so goes the Senate,” to adapt the ancient slogan about that state’s bellwether status. Susan Collins is the only GOP incumbent up for reelection this year whose state Kamala Harris carried in 2024. In fact, Maine hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential election since 1988, when George H.W. Bush (whose family........

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