Schumer Blows It in Maine

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Despite the best efforts of leaders of the US Senate to keep their chamber looking like a retirement home, the gerontocracy suffered a major setback yesterday when the sitting governor of Maine, 78-year-old Janet Mills, a Democrat,, suspended her campaign for the US Senate.  Mills, who is almost three months older than the senile reprobate who is typing this blog post, was handpicked by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader of the Senate, to seek that nomination and to run against Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins in the fall.  

Janet Mills was supported financially in her effort by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, DSCC, in the primary election in Maine.  The DSCC formed a joint fundraising committee with Mills last October with the aim of helping her defeat the other Democratic hopefuls and be able to take on Collins in the fall.  The DSCC is headed by New York's Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who was appointed to that important position by New York's other US Senator, 75-year-old Chuck Schumer.

Governor Mills cited difficulty in raising campaign cash as her reason for exiting the race.  That was true, at least in part, even with the financial support of the DSCC, but she was also being swamped in the polls by Maine novice politician Graham Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and Marine Corps combat veteran.  Platner was leading Mills by more than 30 points when she left the race yesterday.

(In the most recent polling Graham Platner is also leading the Republican senator he hopes to beat in the fall, Susan Collins, by between 6 to 9 points, so a Democratic pick-up there seems possible, or even likely, despite the best efforts of Chuck Schumer and the Democratic political insider establishment to stomp out Platner's candidacy in the primary.)

Schumer and the DSCC are also being accused, with reason, of putting their thumbs on the scales in US Senate races in Iowa and Michigan. 

Chuck, here is my unsolicited and free advice:  focus on New York politics and on making the US Senate function.  There is a 34-year-old, highly popular Democratic Socialist mayor in New York City, one whom you declined to endorse, who could develop an interest in taking your US Senate seat, and there certainly will be some younger members entering the Senate shortly, probably even Graham Platner, who will be focused on electing more dynamic and aggressive leadership to run that body.

Either that, Chuck, or go sit in a corner someplace and ride out the rest of your term by writing "sternly worded' letters.   A generational tide is washing in, finally, and you would be wise to get out of the way.  Here's what Bob Dylan had to say about it when you and I were teenagers:

"Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall

For he who gets hurt 

Will be he who has stalled

The battle outside ragin'

Will soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'"