Maine Democrats Find Another Man to Lose to Susan Collins

Troy Jackson brings populist passion, a reported temper—and one obvious campaign stress test.

Maine Democrats have apparently decided that the proper response to one spectacular candidate-vetting failure is to conduct another experiment in real time.

Troy Jackson is poised to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee against Susan Collins. According to a detailed Washington Post investigation into Jackson’s temperament and more importantly for voters in Maine, the Bangor Daily News, his six years as Maine Senate president included yelling, cursing, table-pounding and a now-famous flying water bottle.

One female senator was reportedly screamed at from inches away after refusing to change her vote. Another Democratic leader allegedly ordered Jackson out of her office after he cursed, shouted and became aggressive during an argument over gun legislation. Jackson’s campaign disputes some details and denies that he physically intimidated anyone, while acknowledging occasions when his frustration got the better of him.

This raises an obvious question: What happens when this populist former lumberjack debates Susan Collins, a 73-year-old senator whose public manner resembles a grandmother patiently explaining that everyone may have dessert after finishing the peas?

Perhaps Democrats should not wait to find out. Jackson’s campaign should hire a 4-foot-11 actress to pose as a timid, soft-spoken and relentlessly irritating female staffer. Her assignment would be to correct him in public, disagree with him at inconvenient moments and begin every conversation with the words, “Actually, Troy.”

If Jackson can endure six months of this without shouting, pounding furniture or sending a beverage airborne, he is ready for Susan Collins. If he cannot, better to discover that in a campaign office than during a televised debate.

Progressives should also abandon the comforting fiction that misogyny is exclusively a right-wing condition. Older left-wing men can be wonderfully egalitarian in the abstract—and considerably less enlightened when an actual woman contradicts them.

The 2020 confrontation between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren offered a useful example. After Sanders publicly denied Warren’s account of a private conversation, she confronted him: “I think you called me a liar on national TV.” We cannot know precisely what Sanders said privately, but Warren was clearly correct about the effect of his denial. Many Sanders supporters immediately treated his certainty as proof and portrayed Warren as dishonest, calculating or hysterical.

The larger joke is Maine Democrats’ candidate selection. Primary voters chose Graham Platner over Gov. Janet Mills. After Platner collapsed, party delegates rallied around another older male populist with substantial baggage.

Maine Democrats apparently agree that a woman cannot beat Susan Collins. Their solution is to keep finding men who might lose to her.

Collins must be terrified—or at least trying very hard not to smile.

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