What Happened In Maine? Collins Surprisingly Held Her Own This Election. Here’s Why. | Talking Points Memo

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This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. 

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1343856
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Fuck Collins, and fuck every person who voted for her.

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I was going to say something, but, well, not needed.

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“Forget it Jake. It’s Maine.”?

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It’s really too bad.
Moving on, may Collins fret away as a wannabe ranking member of a minority party’s delegation to committees.

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What Happened In Maine? Collins Surprisingly Held Her Own This Election. Here’s Why.

Because way too much moose dung has seeped into Maine voters skulls. These are the same idiots that decided that LePaul was such a great man that they gave him two terms.

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I called it for Collins at least two weeks before Election Day. Why? I heard Collins say of Gideon, “She’s from away”. So I looked it up and found that, sure enough, Gideon was not a native Mainer. That was all it took. We’re talking about a state in which a popular saying is “Just because a cat has her kittens in the oven, that doesn’t make them muffins”. In other words, even someone born in Maine still isn’t recognized as a native if their parents came from “away”.

Don’t get me wrong - I love Maine, I love Mainers. In normal times, I’m up there at least twice a year visitlng. But it is one of the most Nativist state in the entire country. If I know that, how the hell can anyone in the Democratic Party not know it? How could they have thought that a someone from “away” would be able to defeat a Mainer with roots as deep as Collins?

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Could we just sell Maine to Canada, and be done with Susy “Windsock” Collins for good?

Location, location, location…

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Similar, though not identical, to Ernst in Iowa. JE is not personally popular, but voters wanted Republicans to hold the Senate majority. Every election I have hopes for Iowa. I guess an 8% Trump margin ends that.

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That reminds me of the joke of the 98 year old man born in Portsmouth, NH who moved to Maine when he was six months old. His obituary was headlined “Out-of-Stater Dies Here.”

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It’s not a joke.

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I talked to my relatives in Canada. They said even if we threw in all the maple syrup from the entirety of New England they’d pass as long as it included the Mainers.

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If it would help.

But only consensually, of course.

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All we had to do was run a native Mainer against Collins and she would have been gone. This was an “own goal” by the Democratic Party. The election was ours to lose, and we threw it away.

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What happened in Maine? Does it go without saying that Mainers who voted for her are fucking idiots? Apparently it does, but I’ve now remedied that.

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Nope this reeks. If what you are saying holds Golden would have been toast in ME-2. Where did these Collins voters come from?

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In all of the info Collins purportedly put out promoting no where is there is a mention that she voted yes to seat Kav who’s inclined to overturn reproductive rights and the fact that Planned Parenthood gave her an award some years back for being a supporter of reproductive rights. Windsock Susie indeed.

@ken_t According to Wiki Gideon born in RI has lived in ME since 2004. Does “from away” ever go away?

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ME-2 is where virtually all of the non-natives live. It’s the Portland/Freeport axis. So a non-native like Gideon can do well there. But ME-1 is close to 100% native. It has both liberals and conservatives, but they ALL see themselves as “Mainers” first.

Not until the secind generation is born there. I’m serious - that is NOT a joke. Gideon’s grandchildren will be the first in her family to be accepted as native.

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I can’t speak to the local Dems in Maine, but I think a lot of Dems have a completely different mindset that doesn’t fit with these nativist sentiments. I grew up in Michigan and I’m currently living in Washington, but I’ve never once considered the “origins” of the candidates I vote for. I do have a soft spot for Michiganders, but fundamentally, I think of myself as an American and I don’t care where people come from, so long as I think they will help their fellow Americans.

I suppose local Mainers ought to be more aware of the dynamics in the state, but if many of the Dem leadership in Maine are like Gideon, they may have their own blinders on that issue.

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My husband’s father and stepmother lived in Boothbay, and when he’d go to visit them there, he’d be called “from away” but nicely which was true. He was from California. I know my father-in-law was born in Alabama, hadn’t lived very long in ME (with stops in CA and elsewhere in between) stepmother-in-law was a ME native, wonder if he was considered from away.

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