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When Maine Democrats host a quasi-improvised convention of elected delegates at a combined conference center/minor league hockey arena to pick their party’s second nominee for U.S. Senate, it’ll be the race’s most normal thing that has happened to date. The outcome is a foregone conclusion: Troy Jackson, the preferred candidate of the left wing, is set to be officially ratified after his campaign team successfully mastered the jury-rigged process put into place after the Democratic nomination became vacant earlier this month.

That Jackson’s ascension by convention counts as normal is less a reflection of the process itself than a product of the preconvention roller coaster ride that brought Democrats to where they are now.

The chaos in Maine’s Senate race started last year with Janet Mills, the state’s septuagenarian incumbent governor, hemming and hawing about whether she wanted to run for a Senate seat Democrats needed to win to take over control of Congress’ upper chamber. In the meantime, her hesitation froze the field. Every other credible Democrat either ran for governor or didn’t enter the race at all.

There was one exception, a blue-collar oyster farmer and Marine veteran named Graham Platner. He seemed almost too good to be true when a posse of wandering left-wing political consultants recruited him to run. While Platner inspired a large grassroots campaign of progressives and was able to muscle Mills out of the race long before primary day, it turned out he was too good to be true. There were Roman catacombs with fewer skeletons than those in his closet. Finally, culminating with allegations of rape just days before the deadline, Platner withdrew from the race in a letter that ended with him expressing his opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and his support for a........

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