← The Focus Group Podcast
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- [00:01]
Bus Driver
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- [00:30]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:32]
Sarah Longwell
This is your name on the list. This is three times points on dining with Chase Sapphire Reserve and a 300 dining credit Chase Sapphire Reserve. Now even more rewarding. Learn more@chase.com Sapphire Reserve cards issued by JP Morgan Chase bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval. Hey, everyone. Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the Bulwark, and I want to talk to you guys about Maine because, as you have probably seen, Janet Mills dropped out of the Maine Senate race in the Democratic primary last week. And we had a focus group pod that was in production. We'd been talking Maine Democratic voters. And since she dropped out, we're not going to do that episode. But I still wanted to talk to you about some of the contours of the race that I thought were really interesting, especially what I heard from voters about Graham Platner and what they think about him. So I want to start, though, just because this is important. Janet Mills was Chuck Schumer's sort of handpicked candidate. She is a popular governor in the state of Maine. Like, wasn't a crazy thing to think that Janet Mills would be a good get to run in the Senate as a Democrat against Susan Collins. But Democratic voters in Maine basically revolted. And I, I think that, look, she's 78. She's been in statewide office since 2009. Uh, she's been governor since 2019. And so even though these voters liked her, they had real concerns about her age. The Democrats feel like they've been burned on age issues in the recent past. And so that was a problem for them. Um, and then if it wasn't just her age, it was also sort of her status as a legacy politician, too, tied to the Democratic Party establishment that they're losing faith in. Let's listen to how these voters talked about Janet Mills.
- [02:30]
Teresa
The thing about Janet Mills is, like, he just said her age, for one thing. But the thing that gets me with her is, I mean, she's been, and she started off, I thought, fantastic. She was sticking to her goals, her promises, her blah Blah, blah. But, I mean, since she said 10
- [02:47]
Political Commentator
years, she was pushed into this by Chuck Schumer, who I absolutely despise. I think he's been the weakest, most ineffective Democratic leader. And if there was somebody, you know, Mitch McConnell has ran rings around him. And I think it was just absolutely ludicrous for her to run for the senate at age 79, frankly,
- [03:15]
Younger Voter
my thought is that we have, we have so many folks who are over 65 as our political leaders who are 40 years older than me and most of my friends, and that just doesn't reflect a lot of the, the people who are in the workforce who are trying to build lives and careers right now. And I, I want more politicians who are closer to my stage in life who can actually reflect the concerns that I have right now.
- [03:49]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so that is sort of the age question. The. She's more of an establishment politician. Lot of this is, across Democratic focus groups, a lot of frustration with sort of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. There's just this, this sense from the Democratic voters that they feel like the party is not fighting back hard enough. And this is, to me, part of what's interesting is online or in a lot of the discourse you hear people sort of having an argument over whether the Democratic Party should be more moderate or, or more progressive. The voters kind of don't care about that. They just want the party to be more aggressive. And so as a matter of policies, you know, it's, it's more like in a place like Virginia, a more purplish state, they wanted somebody who was more moderate, but they also saw somebody like Abigail Spamberger as somebody who was going to fight, who was going to do the big redistricting, you know, jump into the redistricting fight. And so I, I, it's less about whether or not people are gonna be, whether or not candidates are moderate or progressive. They want them to be more aggressive. And I think this redounded to Graham Platner's benefit, even though he is, I think, policy wise, the more progressive candidate. He also was just the one who was, people felt like was going to go fight harder, both to win the election against Susan Collins and then, if elected to the office, against Trump and against Republicans. But here's the thing about Platner, right? Platner has a ton of baggage. He has a Totenkampf, which is like a Nazi tattoo, which he claims he didn't know was a Nazi tattoo at the time. He has posted hateful and misogynistic content on Reddit. He's dabbles in sort of talking about himself as a communist. And so these are all the kinds of things that I think in a different world, the pre Trump world, they would have been hard for them to win a main Democratic primary. But he's like he was crushing Janet mills like by 30 points in the Democratic primary. So we wanted to ask these voters how they were processing this Nazi tattoo which has become like a big national issue. The Reddit post, the misogyny, all of it. Because Janet Mills tried to really make hay out of this in the primary and it just didn't land.
- [06:11]
Commercial Narrator
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- [07:26]
Sarah Longwell
These things used to be deal breakers for the voters, but they're not so much anymore. Let's listen how they talked about it.
- [07:32]
Younger Voter
The controversies about the Nazi symbols and the Reddit posts seem very in line with someone from down east who's lived in a small town their whole life, went to the military, never really got exposed to a lot of outside larger worldview thinking. So kind of like Teresa said, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was a mistake. And I really appreciate that he has been upfront about it and said, yeah, I did this, it was a mistake
- [08:03]
Sarah Longwell
with regard to the tattoo. Again, like I I'll take him for his word and just chalk it up to something that he truly wasn't aware of.
- [08:11]
Commercial Narrator 2
And, you know, when people are younger,
- [08:13]
Sarah Longwell
sometimes they do things that they. They like. Might be like, not necessarily regret later in life, but, you know, just realize that, oh, well, that was like an uninformed decision.
- [08:24]
Political Commentator
You know, I've done stupid things. When I was very young, he was in the military. He did four tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. A lot of trauma there. I wasn't aware. I even heard that he has, like, Jewish in laws now. I think, you know, he's explained that that was a mistake. I think it was Genu about that. We all make mistakes.
- [08:50]
Sarah Longwell
It actually might be good that he's going to bring in people that. Who don't believe in political correctness. So not bothered by the tattoo generally. And this has been consistent. We've done a couple of Dem groups in Maine. People are much more. And look, I think there's a few things going on here. One, I think after 10 years of Donald Trump and his baggage, his foibles, I just don't think Democrats. That's like they're throwing out the old rule book the same way that they think Republicans have. That's part of it. Part of. It's just a, you know, a sense that people do make youthful mistakes. I think there's a. We've been moving. I hear voters doing a thing where they're. They're more forgiving now that the Internet has sort of takes people down on a pretty regular basis because it's been around long enough that people who are in their, you know, 30s and 40s now have stuff that they posted when they were teenagers. And you can go back and look and, you know, everybody's sort of like, I don't know, when I was a teenager, I said idiotic things. And people seem to have a kind of deference for this idea that, well, he was in the military and, you know, they kind of did stupid things in the military and got this bad tattoo. And so just, just a lot of forgiveness for the idea that somebody might have made mistakes and is now, you know, on a better path, which is what they. They see. They sort of take him. They sort of buy his narrative that he is. He's grown and he was in a dark place before. The voters take that as a mark of authenticity, which, you know, I do think that. That we talk a lot about authenticity. And one of the ways that I see that manifest in voters is they sort of see the warts and all as A sign of authenticity. Like part of what Donald Trump was doing that made voters think that he was authentic is. Didn't necessarily apologize for the parts of him that people saw as really pretty awful. They're like, no, that. That's why he's authentic. He kind of owns the parts of him that are bad as opposed to the artifice of the per candidate. And so there's almost a thing that's happening where people's vices or their mistakes become these markers of authenticity, that they are a real person. They're not some carefully curated politician, which is the kind of thing that voters are now kind of rejecting. Then there's one last caveat, though. I will say this because this was interesting. The one concern people had for Platner, not the tattoo, not really the old Reddit posts, it was. They were a little worried that he reminded them of another Democrat that they have felt burned by after he did kind of his everyman shtick, his populist shtick. And then they felt duped. Who could that be? Let's listen.
- [11:36]
Voter Comparing Platner to Fetterman
I sometimes think of him as John Fetterman. When John Fetterman got elected senator in Pennsylvania, I thought, oh, I like this guy. He's wearing a hoodie. You know, he's. He's not going to be like the rest of them. And last I know, he might as well become a member of the Republican Party. He's got been all over the place, disappointed. I wanted somebody different like that, and Graham Platner fits that bill for me. But John Fetterman kind of soured me on being that much different.
- [12:06]
Sarah Longwell
I guess I'm going to give Teresa from Maine the last word on Platner.
- [12:12]
Teresa
I just hope he's not going to bring the past into today, but, I mean, he's got a lot of good stuff going for him. A Vietnam veteran. I do see about the tattoo myself. I mean, my late husband was a Vietnam veteran, and some of the tattoos he had, he wished he'd never gotten. They were stupid.
- [12:29]
Sarah Longwell
So will Platner be the next John Fetterman? Who knows? But if he were going to be the next John Fetterman, he'd first have to win the United States Senate seat there in Maine and unseat the fully unseatable or unbeatable after so many cycles. Susan Collins. But this could be the year. I mean, that, that blue wave, it is, it is building. There's no doubt about that. I think the question remains, even though these Democratic voters seem to be forgiving him for his past foibles, they don't mind the Totenkampf tattoo. I think the question is, will swingy, more moderate independent voters buy that story as well, or will they go for the old standby with Susan Collins, even if they're mad at Trump this cycle? I'd put my money on Platner. Honestly, that just seems to be the mood people are in. But never count Susan Collins out. She's a tough one to beat. All right, thanks for listening, guys. We'll see you again soon. Bye bye.
- [13:39]
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