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"Nowhere Man" (The Beatles); "Don't Dictate" (Pentration)
The only noteworthy aspect is why Mills -- who blamed lack of financial resources -- stuck it out as long as she did, amid polls giving insurgent oyster farmer Graham Platner opening a 33-point lead in their forthcoming Democratic primary. Perhaps, like most of her fellow Boomer-era voters, Mills was praying for the Beatles to return -- with their dead counterparts, in Ed Sullivan-era black and white -- with a sprightly ode to slay the demons of rap, metal, or any new song recorded after 1980.
I can almost hear the campaign theme ringing in my head, powered by those bouncy, yet raw, untrained, Please Please Me-era guitars: "Ooh, ooh, Janet, baby, you're the one for me/Vote for Janet, 'cause she always aims to please/Janet's my top choice, she always knows best/She stands heads and shoulders above all of the rest!"
Instead, Governor Mills will have settle for exiting on her shield to the strains of "Nowhere Man," the one who's always "making all his nowhere plans, for nobody," although she chalked up her decision to lack of resources. Even there, she lagged far behind, with a modest $2.6 million, versus the $4.0, 4.1, $4.6 or 4.8 million reported for Platner, depending on which source you believe (WBUR/Boston, Open Secrets, The New Republic, or Ken Klippenstein, respectively).
The news leaves Platner on a glide path towards nomination, though he obviously has much work to do between now and November. However, he seems up for the challenge, in contrast to Democratic party elders -- who remain stuck in a different era, and often give the appearance of being readier to die than change. But we'll get to that point momentarily.
If Platner amassed a 4-1 financial edge over Mills, it's because "people wanted him," Klippenstein asserts. End of story. Buying into Mills's "lack of funds" alibi amounts to "a verbal sleight of hand that makes it sound like a budgeting problem, like her campaign manager overdrew her checking account," he adds.
Not that Mills didn't try to find a workaround for her problems, though. When her initial attempts to take down Platner didn't work -- he's inexperienced, he's unelectable, he's weird, and so on -- Mills hit on a novel idea. If elected, she promised to serve only one term, hopefully easing concerns about sending yet another septuagenarian to a Congress that's bursting at the seams with them.
Which begs the question of why she was running at all, considering how long it will take America to recover from two Trump eras -- as even voters who expressed admiration for Mills, like baker Bev Chapman, told the New York Times (see link below): "'She’s been a great governor for Maine,' Ms. Chapman said, 'but new blood is needed and we need more progressives running who are not afraid to stand up to the current administration.'"
Of course, another (unspoken) reason for Mills's workaround not working any miracles is that it sounded just like the sort of pandering from veteran politicos, once they're cornered -- and don't see an obvious way out of the box canyon. But all the workarounds in the world can't save a candidacy that voters won't support, as Klippenstein notes:
"She would have been 86 at the end of her first term. Think about that. At a moment when even mainstream Democrats are beginning for generational change, the party's solution to flipping a must-win seat was a 78-year-old whose pitch was essentially 'I have been around a long time.'"
Fine, I'll take you up on it.
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“Let it play out,” McMorrow told POLITICO on Thursday evening. “This is a moment for Democrats, and I mean Democratic voters on the ground, to decide what party we want next. It is our turn. It is not the party’s turn anymore."
"That rebellion continues to this day. Yet much of Washington’s Democratic elite is still in denial. They prefer to attribute the rise of Trump and, more broadly, Trumpism — its political paranoia, xenophobia, white Christian nationalism, misogyny, homophobia, and cultural populism — solely to racism. Well, racism is certainly a part of it. But hardly all.
"In 2024, Democrats didn’t even get to choose their nominee from the primary process, since Biden dropped out after a dreadful debate performance and was replaced by Kamala Harris — leaving some Democrats feeling like higher powers were picking their nominee.
"The anti-establishment groundswell has
by now spread to independent voters — who are now a whopping 45
percent of the electorate and have moved sharply against Trump. It’s
one of the most dramatic shifts in recent political history."
To put it another way, whoever reads the room -- starting with those angry, disaffected independent voters -- will walk away with the keys to the kingdom, as Trump did, when he first got elected, in 2016. Bernie Sanders might have walked away with them, too, had the establishment not wrenched the nomination away from him -- a steal fueled by the mistaken impression of being able to coexist with wolves in sheep's clothing. Rest assured, it's not a mistake that progressives will -- nor should -- make in 2028.
A preview of what awaits Platner this fall?
Time will tell...
(National Senate Republican Committee,
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Much of that negative messaging focused on making Mamdani -- and now, Platner, or any progressive daring to follow in their footsteps -- seem like the offspring of Hitler, Manson, and Satan. The attack ad prepared for Mills (above) is a small sampling of just how far Republicans will go, since it's impossible to imagine such a mild-mannered figure as Mills causing nightmares for anyone (other than the donors who wrote her checks, and now experiencing a major case of buyer's remorse).
Yet Platner has weathered those storms, because people are weary of giving incumbents a free pass -- while their challengers must come across as lifetime Boy Scouts who only hang out with the likes of Donny Osmond, as they while away their days drinking milk, and listening to the Jungle Book soundtrack.
The upstart generation has its flaws, "but I think there's an expectation by voters today that if you seem perfect, you're probably hiding something," as an anonymously quoted Democratic consultant mused to Politico. All that pearl clutching over a decade-old post seems downright absurd, when we look at the tramping of democracy, nonstop grifting, and maximalist power abuses that characterize the Trump regime.
Obviously, Platner won't enjoy the same commanding financial advantage against the overstuffed Collins, who -- unlike Mills -- can count on an avalanche of dark money to bail her out of a jam. All the same, she offers a perfectly doable pickoff -- if Platner does his job correctly, by demolishing her artfully woven facade of "concerned" moderation.
It's an act that Status Quo Susan, as we'll call her, has honed to perfection over her five-term Senate career. We know the routine well, which typically kick-starts with some tricky issue or other. Status Quo Susan will furrow her brow, purse her lips, hemming and hawing through her latest non-answer -- amid noises of how "alarmed," "concerned," "disturbed," or "troubled" she claims to feel about it -- before she finally votes as her tribe expects, and demands.
It's a routine that sometimes stretches to Hamlet-style proportions, as Collins demonstrated during the Brett Kavanaugh debacle -- where commentators made much of her studious note-taking during the explosive confirmation hearings, amid allegations of serious sexual predation against him. In the end, Status Quo Susan joined Vichy Democrat Joe Manchin to ease Kavanaugh over the finish line, 50-48 -- a spectacle that caused some wags to question the scrupulousness of her note-taking.
Again, which of these capsule summaries feels more worrying? A decade-old Reddit post that may or may not reflect its author's current mindset, or the latest chameleonic shift of a career politician who hasn't held a traditional town hall meeting with her constituents since the Clinton era -- over 25 years ago? (Platner, in contrast, has already 61 town halls.) If that isn't entrenched arrogance, what is?
It's the reason, presumably, why Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run For Something, tells the Independent: “People are hungry for change — the institutions that got us to this point cannot be the ones to get us out of it.” Indeed, and so noted.
This, more than anything, is the type of circle that voters -- particularly Democratic ones -- are beyond tired of squaring, as Klippenstein asserts: "People are fed up with an establishment that doesn't listen, that tells them everything is under control, even as it drives the country into a ditch. So they're taking the keys away."
Democrats would do well to consider taking those same keys away from Schumer -- and his equally tepid passive-aggressive counterpart, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries -- if they retake one or both houses of Congress this fall. It may not the outcome that either of them prefers, but it's what their base demands, and their party deserves -- to say nothing of a country that's crying out, loudly and clearly, for something else. --The Reckoner
Those Gerontocrats Right To The Exits):
Ken Klippenstein:
Voters Take Keys Away From Elderly Politician:
For Many In Maine, No Tears Over Mills's Exit...:
https://archive.ph/r1MfD
Schumer Faces Renewed Scrutiny After Mills Meltdown:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/30/chuck-schumer-janet-mills-meltdown-2026-00902217
The Independent: Step Off, Chuck!:
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/schumer-senate-democratic-primaries-mills-b2969045.html
