If a person is, at the end of the day, a Never-Platner Dem primary voter, they surely must be very frustrated that the only other option has come down to the far from inspiring moderate Mills.
Mills will be 85yo at the end of her first term, and she would be the oldest-ever 'first time elected' US Senator in US history should she win, and that, much to the dislike of some here on DU, is absolutely having an impact.
She also has multiple problematic stances that definitely hurt her in a Democratic primary and likely in the general as well, should she advance to it.
For instance she is pro filibuster, she is anti-decriminalisation for small personal use amounts of drugs, she actively opposes red-flag laws for guns (despite her opposition, voters approved a red-flag law in November 2025), she has vetoed collective bargaining rights (so she is anti-union to a degree, and the unions are so far endorsing Platner), vetoed wealth taxes, vetoed protections for renters, and vetoed some tribal sovereignty laws, etc. She also polls worse (atm) against Collins than Platner.
Platner himself has some real problems (as relentlessly pointed out on DU by some) that Collins and the RW dark money will no doubt drop tens of millions of dollars to hammer him with in the general should he win the Dem primary.
It is a shame, IMHO, that the Maine Dems could not recruit a better candidate than these two. They had one (again IMHO), in Jordan Wood, but he dropped out to run for the US House in ME-2 when Jared Golden announced he was not running for re-election.
= new reply since forum marked as read