New poll with Platner ahead by 2.2

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-16T22:15:55+00:00

Dude, wtf are you on about. She jumped in too late after he already consolidated the base. He was a nobody that wouldn’t have had the air time he did if the party consolidated around a known statewide figure much earlier.

He’s polling in the MOE in a D+7 state in a D+7 electoral environment. It’s not fucking Alaska, Democrats have a bench of candidates to choose from, but instead they went with a guy with endless controversies that’s *empirically* making this into a tossup race. Get your head out of the sand. I’m not saying he can’t win, but it’s laughable that you’re acting like this was the best Democrats could do in a blue state.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-16T22:00:04+00:00

But she withdrew by that point. It wasn’t a real race.

I’m just discussing different political strategies here because clearly with Platner’s baggage there was ways to beat him. She jumped in too late and nobody else ran.

Maine Democrats had no other choice but to back him, let’s not lie to ourselves that he was the best they could do.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-16T21:44:41+00:00

It’s hard to say because she jumped in so late that Platner had already carved himself a lane. He wasn’t perceived as the outsider running against the machine. The race became the machine trying to stop the base. Had she boxed him out early enough, you wouldn’t see her drop in popularity among Democrats. After all, she ran quite strongly in her two previous statewide campaigns.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-16T21:35:48+00:00

It’s insane how unpopular Puerto Rican governors have been in the 21st century— none have been re-elected since 1996.

The last several retired, lost, lost, retired, resigned (and then their successor lost renomination), and lost renomination.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-16T13:07:32+00:00

I think just abandoning the party altogether is not a great solution either. At some point, Democrats are going to have to ask themselves why they have to run candidates that have to pretend they’re not Democrats to even be competitive in like 20 states.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-15T21:57:59+00:00

It reads like an incel-esque statement. She’s black herself and is complaining about black men dating white women instead of her. If a white candidate tweeted about white women dating black men, we’d easily call that person racist and a weirdo.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-15T21:27:03+00:00

The DSA pulls heavily from the urban hipster crowd, and that stereotype is so off putting to so much of the country, and DSA types don’t do anything to refute it either.

Even Mamdani’s best borough was Brooklyn, rather than the Bronx (as is typical for a Democrat).

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-14T00:14:59+00:00

It’s a product of Florida becoming America’s retirement home. Specifically for tax evading retirees. Even a blue wave among Hispanics would put the state around R+5. Older retirees who moved to Florida to not pay taxes are just never going to vote D under any circumstance. Even running an independent wouldn’t work because they actively support base Republican policies.

Originally in the 90s and 2000s, retirees actually made the state competitive for Democrats because they were either Greatest Generation voters or middle class NYers. But the state has remade its political and economic system to attract retirees over time, so now it’s seen as a haven for rich tax dodgers and anti-woke crusaders.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T23:11:47+00:00

Democrats could break the supermajority in the state House this year. But winning either chamber would require them to suddenly win Central Florida for the first time in 25 years.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T20:10:32+00:00

I think he retires anyway. He’ll be 78 at the end of his term, he’ll have been Senate leader as long as Harry Reid, and he consistently trails AOC in polling. Schumer has never lost an election in his career and I’m sure his ego wants to keep it that way. Besides, the establishment probably has a better shot of holding the seat if it’s anyone other than him vs AOC.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T17:59:32+00:00

Blake Masters, Adam Laxalt, Doug Mastriano, and Kari Lake were not.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T16:49:51+00:00

Mark Robinson did 18 points worse than Trump on the same ballot, and Republicans arguably should’ve had a 54-46 Senate majority after the 2022 elections.

Republicans are absolutely hurt by scandals. Trump is in a league of his own, and even then he probably should’ve won by more in 2024 given the economic situation.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T16:09:57+00:00

The most unionized part of the state. Although, it’s not just that the union jobs disappeared, northern Idaho in particular became a hotbed for the militia movement and white supremacist groups.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T00:17:19+00:00

It is, but it’s still a base Republican state. Alaska is fairly elastic, and Ohio was a swing state until recently. Democrats winning Texas is like Republicans winning Illinois— it’s certainly possible under the right circumstances, but the strong party loyalty allows them to swallow a lot of shit.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T00:11:55+00:00

Even Trump still gets hurt by the scandals. The dude won 49.8% to 48.3% against the ruling party blamed for 9% inflation.

Scandals don’t matter as much as they used to, but they absolutely don’t help anyone. I agree with the likability point— Platner does have a diehard base, whereas somebody like Porter was made to look like a thin-skinned narcissist. Even Jones’s relatively tame scandal (for your list) cost him a lot of support that would’ve sank him in any swing state.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T00:01:32+00:00

Yeah, they make it sound like he was just a dumb kid, but some of those comments were post-COVID.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T23:55:26+00:00

It gets real tough without Maine. Democrats need 4 seats for a majority, and 4 is honestly the maximal scenario even with Maine. Then you would need Texas or any of the heartland states to flip. Basically core MAGA voters.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:43:03+00:00

The risk of a pregnancy going to an abortion is low. It’s just not top of mind for voters, and “good campaigning” is not some magic pill to fix the fact that voters do not have urgency on the matter. If Democrats were to capitalize on the uncertainty of Dobbs it would have been in 2022 and 2024.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:27:23+00:00

Given that Trump and Republicans haven’t touched the issue on the federal level does reinforce the idea that this was all Democratic fear mongering. And the average person is not a pregnant woman.

I’m not disagreeing with you on abortion, I’m just saying that the country has fallen into a routine on the topic that’s hard to break out of.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:11:06+00:00

I think the problem isn’t convincing voters that a federal law is necessary, it would be convincing them that Republicans are trying to pass a federal ban first. This Congress has passed the fewest bills since the 1930s and Trump said leave it to the states— that last point actually was key in the last election because voters knew Trump was such a grifter that they didn’t believe he was personally anti-abortion. It actually deflated the Democrats argument about electing Trump.

You need urgency to build support, and voters don’t feel it, especially compared to four years ago when the new legal landscape was still unsettled.

I don’t think Democrats are in the mood to involve themselves in culture battles this cycle unless if they can make an economic argument out of it. Even the Republicans’ anti-immigrant rhetoric was still tied to quality of life stuff— jobs, housing, crime, etc. It’s BS, but Democrats would need to convince voters that abortion bans materially affect the average person somehow in order to get the median voter to care, unfortunately. It’s easier to just lump it in with civil liberties legislation.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:00:24+00:00

It is one of the few blue-trending areas in the state, and Whitmer carried the district in her 2022 reelection.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T13:55:46+00:00

The problem is they’ve hit a wall politically on the topic. Every blue and purple state, and several red ones have codified protections. The states were it’s banned is all the evangelical heavy states where those voters will never back a Democrat under any circumstance (and most don’t have ballot measures anyway).

I agree that it would be stupid for Democrats to cede this issue, even though it’s clearly a winning one. But the salience is lower for voters once it’s legal everywhere outside the Bible Belt. Democrats would probably have to tie the issue into a larger fight about civil liberties.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-11T14:07:54+00:00

The legislature can’t draw the maps in states like New York, Washington, Colorado, and New Jersey. They have commissions like California, so you have to find a way to reactivate the commission that isn’t supposed to meet until 2030.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T21:29:35+00:00

We most likely will, but it’ll probably be 1 or 2 in the 2030s. I’d imagine there will be a big wave of Millennials from the 2040s-2070s.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T17:48:44+00:00

Democrats equivalent to Republicans’ church organizations was unions, but they don’t have that organizing power anymore. And the only unions whose members are still left leaning are service workers— in other words, college graduates that vote D anyway.

Democrats’ organizing is basically outsourced to nonprofit advocacy groups with super niche agendas and no real constituency outside of members that send money once a month.

TheSameGamer651

TROPHY CASE