Three Keys to a Democratic Victory in Maine

Welcome to The TNR Blue Book. Today, read about Troy Jackson, Dems’ soul-searching on the Massie amendment, and more ...

Editor’s Note: Welcome to The TNR Blue Book. It’s our new daily newsletter that covers Congress and much more, but with a distinctly TNR twist: Our focus will be strictly on Democrats, liberal and progressive groups, and the fight to take back power and save democracy. Every morning, you’ll get a rundown of late-breaking news, what Democrats on Capitol Hill are thinking, quick hits on what you need to know nationally, the latest on what’s coming out of the think tanks and activist groups, short interviews with progressive newsmakers and authors, and more (including some humor and political trivia!). There’s nothing else out there like it.

The three keys to a Jackson victory in Maine

Today we’re focused a bit north of Washington, D.C., where Maine Democrats are rallying around a new presumptive nominee for U.S. Senate to replace disgraced Democrat Graham Platner: logger and former State Senator Troy Jackson. Maine political insiders see some positive signs in how quickly the party has resolved the chaos surrounding Platner’s exit. But Jackson, they add, now has a tough task ahead.

Over the weekend, the state Democratic Party’s delegates election process delivered Jackson a majority of the 601 delegates who will officially nominate the Democratic candidate for Senate, making Jackson’s victory in the official nominating convention on Saturday all but certain. Anthony Emerson, a 31-year-old Portland resident who’s been active in Maine politics since middle school, was running to be a delegate for Cumberland County, but wasn’t selected. When we spoke on Saturday, Emerson still thought Nirav Shah had a decent chance of winning a formidable number of delegates. By the time Monday rolled around, Jackson’s main opponents had dropped out and coalesced around him. That’s a good thing, Emerson told me. “It shows enthusiasm for his campaign, and that his campaign can organize people efficiently,” he said.

Emerson said that the energy at the virtual Cumberland County delegate election meeting was slightly anxious. “But I feel like that’s just Democrats for you,” he added. “We’re always worrying. Especially because Collins overperformed expectations so much in 2020.”

Collins’s decisive, nine-point victory over Democratic state Representative Sara Gideon in 2020, despite trailing in every major poll in the lead-up to the election, is the stuff of Democratic nightmares. But David Farmer, a Maine political analyst I spoke to, said 2026 could be different—if Jackson manages a few key tasks. Here are the ones he highlighted:

1. Get Democrats to turn out. It sounds obvious, but voters are less likely to cast ballots during a midterm election than a presidential election. Getting Democratic voters to the polls should be possible: Democrats in the state have been activated by the two-week process of finding a replacement for Platner, and the party has a monopoly on attention. The murder of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero at the hands of an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13 will also likely galvanize pro-immigrant Democrats to head to the polls.

2. Pick up independents in Portland and surrounding suburbs. In 2020, Gideon received 67 percent of the vote in Portland, a deep blue city that Farmer says she should have performed better in. He attributes that underperformance to Lisa Savage, who was running as an independent and picked up nearly 11 percent of the Portland vote. “Those Lisa Savage votes came straight off of Sarah Gideon,” Farmer said. “In a two-way race, [Jackson] has the opportunity to pick up thousands of votes just in Portland.” Jackson won the plurality of the Portland vote, 28 percent, in the gubernatorial election this June, a good sign for his prospects in the city.

3. Win over undecided female voters. Farmer suggests that independent female voters could be key to Jackson’s win. Collins was a pivotal vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Collins called the decision “ill-considered.” But Democrats are emphasizing Collins’s role in confirming a crucial vote in the 5–4 decision overturning Roe, hoping to pick up pro-choice female voters who otherwise might stay home.

“It’s always going to be tough. There’s a reason that she’s won for 30 years,” said Farmer about Collins. But Jackson still has a path to victory. If Democrats can harness the attention and energy around his nomination, and strategize carefully from here, the Maine Senate seat could still be in play.—Emma Janssen

Would Dems pass a different version of the Massie amendment?

Democrats aren’t even close to finding a sustainable path forward on Israel, following a seismic House vote splitting the party down the middle on aid to the country. But all signs point to a sea change in how the party talks about the Middle East.

On July 15, representatives voted on the Massie amendment, which would cut $3.3 billion in unconditional aid to the country. The amendment failed, but in a major shock, 103 Democrats—even some who have previously received funding from pro-Israel organizations—voted for the amendment. Even Representative Thomas Massie, the Republican who brought the amendment and the sole “yes” vote in the GOP, was shocked by how many Democrats supported it. “I thought we might get 24, and 60 in my mind would have been a tremendous victory,” he told me on Thursday.

Democrats who voted for the amendment say they did so because there was no better way to express their dissatisfaction with Israel’s war in Gaza and actions during the war in Iran. “Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel is an ally. Israel does not have a right to buy F-35s on its ally’s credit card,” Representative Jake Auchincloss told me.

Auchincloss has been a beneficiary of funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and received $10,000 from the group during the 2025–26 cycle. After his “yes” vote, though, the option to donate to him disappeared from AIPAC’s website, along with the other Democrats the group supports who voted for the amendment.

Representative Sarah McBride is another typically pro-Israel Democrat who voted for the amendment. “It was a hard decision to come to,” she said. “The language was poorly written. The vehicle was deeply imperfect. But when the question is called, you have to decide: What is the message you want to send?”

Many of the 98 Democrats who voted “no” on the amendment emphasized that their vote wasn’t because they support the actions of the Israeli government. Representative Rosa DeLauro, for example, pointed to the amendment’s broad language as the reason that she couldn’t vote for it. “Its vague wording gives the Trump Administration broad leeway to determine which programs are defunded and how,” she wrote in a statement.

In her statement, DeLauro signaled that she wants to set stronger restrictions on Israel in the future. “We must ensure that any future security relationship with Israel is structured similarly to defense agreements with our Western and democratic allies,” she wrote. “A new defense agreement must be based on respect for human rights and allow for a route to Palestinian sovereignty.”

Auchincloss also has a vision for future legislation on Israel: “It needs to provide for Israel’s qualitative military edge,” he said. “But it also needs to represent the profound concerns of the American public about further conflict in the Middle East.”

I asked him if there’s a middle way forward for Democrats on Israel, and whether the party would be able to coalesce on a policy toward the country. “Is there a middle way? There needs to be, both in terms of individual policies that point Congress in that direction, and also as we start to architect the next memorandum of understanding,” he said, referencing the Obama administration’s agreement that guaranteed Israel $38 billion in military aid between 2019 and 2028.

Even though Democrats haven’t come to any concrete solutions to their Israel problem, the votes on the amendment signal that a shift is coming. “Number one: Public opinion is changing. Number two: It’s being reflected here in Washington, D.C. And number three: AIPAC’s grip, at least on one party, has been severely diminished,” Massie said of the vote.—Emma Janssen

Warren enters the fray in Michigan

There are just two weeks to go until Michigan’s August 4 primary, and the big battle between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and moderate Representative Haley Stevens over who gets to replace retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters shows zero signs of calming down. Monday morning, Senator Elizabeth Warren became the latest sitting progressive to back El-Sayed, despite Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer having endorsed Stevens.

“Michiganders deserve a senator who will fight for you, not for special interests running millions of dollars in TV ads to buy this seat,” Warren said in a subtextually spicy video posted to X. Warren also touted El-Sayed’s union credentials, and insisted that El-Sayed was the “only candidate in this race who can build the grassroots movement needed to win in November”—a not very thinly veiled rebuttal of establishment Democrats’ view that El-Sayed is too far left to defeat a Republican in the general election. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are also backing El-Sayed and appeared at a rally with him in Lansing on Sunday.

The context for that line........

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