ME Sen I can't really be Collins it yet

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

I am going to be keeping this race at Likely D until and unless we start seeing Collins + 30 polls. All the people who are calling Susan Collins invincible or otherwise favored are generally also people who said the same about David Valadao in 2018. People should have learned something from David Valadaos "surprise" loss in 2018 that I correctly predicted that they seem to not have learned. Not a single seat where Clinton won by 4 points or more in 2016 remained Republican in 2018, and all but 3 of them that Clinton won by any margin also flipped as well, even as pundits like Sabato were predicting a total of more than double that. The Senate only had a sample size of 1 race where Republicans were defending a Clinton state, Nevada, and Jacky Rosen won by more than Clinton did there; the main reason for using House races here is because we get a sample size of 25 seats by doing so which gives us information to work with, but its really not that different. While Clinton won Maine by just under 3 points, its still in the range where Democrats won almost everything, and the 2020 Democratic nominee for President will inevitably win Maine by far more than 3 points.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Likely D, teetering at the edge of Safe D.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

To this day, I still do not understand why Collins decided to commit the biggest political suicide in recent history by voting for Kavanaugh. She could have fully and completely ensured herself a successful re-election by voting against Kavanaugh, but instead, she decided to fully and completely ensure herself a failed re-election.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

To this day, I still do not understand why Collins decided to commit the biggest political suicide in recent history by voting for Kavanaugh. She could have fully and completely ensured herself a successful re-election by voting against Kavanaugh, but instead, she decided to fully and completely ensure herself a failed re-election.

Counterfactuals are never that straightforward.
Imagine she had opposed him. As the key vote, Manchin would be under phenomenal pressure to refuse Kavanaugh.
The backlack probably loses him his seat in 2018, and the GOP now sits on 54, still without certainty regarding Collins.

Manchin would have won by an additional 4 points beyond his actual margin if he voted against Kavanaugh. It would not have hurt him at all.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

To this day, I still do not understand why Collins decided to commit the biggest political suicide in recent history by voting for Kavanaugh. She could have fully and completely ensured herself a successful re-election by voting against Kavanaugh, but instead, she decided to fully and completely ensure herself a failed re-election.

Only partisan voters care that deeply about the Supreme Court appointments. Those appointments don't matter to swing voters who decide the elections.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I still can't be figuring out what the thread title means it yet. I pointed this out once before and nobody has helped me to figure it out.

Nearly everyone regardless of their own partisan ideology, however, would prefer a Supreme Court appointee who was not a serial rapist over a Supreme Court appointee who was a serial rapist, especially when both appointees would inevitably end up being very similar to each other at the ideological level. Susan Collins is on the record as someone who voted that serial rape is acceptable. Voters do care about that, and they will vote her out in 2020 over it.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

It's possible the Kavanaugh vote ends up benefiting her politically-she may not have been able to be renominated if she had voted against and been responsible for stopping both Obamacare repeal and the Kavanaugh nomination, and she may have enough of a positive image with moderates and Maine may be close enough to a swing state to make the damage she takes with the general electorate for the Kavanaugh vote survivable. I hope that she is proven wrong here, but Collins probably only needs to outrun Trump by a few points to win.

She was a safe bet to win renomination regardless of how she voted on Kavanaugh. If there was any appetite among Maine Republicans to replace her, they would have done so in 2014. The Tea Party was very much already around and strong by then.

Nobody would have ever cared negatively about it had she voted against Kavanaugh unless the nomination failed and she kept on voting against not just Kavanaugh but also all other nominees Trump put up afterwards as well, and only if Kavanaugh ended up failing as a result as well. Contrarily, she probably could have managed to erase the fall she took to her formerly centrist reputation from when she voted for the Tax Bill in 2017 if she voted against Kavanaugh, but by voting for Kavanaugh, she instead dug the hole even deeper.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

https://twitter.com/BetsySweetME/status/1265393908554649602
Sunrise Movement Endorses Betsy Sweet
This may seem not that important but as a member of the sunrise movement I gotta say the organization is insanely good they took Brad Sherman primary challenger in my District to from polling around 0-1% to getting 11% after endorsing him 2 weeks before the election really good groundgame which during covid translates to phonebanking and other things I expect Gideon to win the primary still but this really helps Sweet

thank god there is RCV or this would really scare me, but with it I think it turns people out that will still vote for gideon over collins

This. The left-leaning independents on the ballot do worry me, but hopefully they mark Gideon before Collins on their ballots.

Betsy Sweet is running in the Dem primary, not as an indy in the general though.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

...she has proven to be an invaluable member of the senate essential to making bipartisan accomplishments possible.

Like voting in Kavanaugh (which was very unpopular) and voting against impeachment (which was far more popular)?

She had to vote the way she did in both of these votes or she would have overwhelmingly lost the Republican Primary. DDNN does not fault candidates in these types of situations.

Only voting for impeachment would have caused her to lose a primary out of these 2. Voting against Kavanaugh would have made zero difference.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

And this is why Troy Jackson should have run

Two candidates from Aroostook County? We wouldn't be able to handle all the populist

According to ourcampaigns, Susan Collins is from Portland, in Cumberland County.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Does anyone remember this poll:

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=275757.0