The Left Takes a Turn

Senate President Troy Jackson (D-ME)

This past weekend, in Maine, it appears that the race to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee has come to a close.  In what essentially became a "runner-up" contest from the recent gubernatorial race, State Senate President Troy Jackson has won the nomination in all but technicality, to the point where two of his chief opponents (Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Dr. Nirav Shaw) have already dropped out of the race.  This will hopefully end Platner as a public conversation piece (though I expect Collins to bring him up as often as possible, particularly given that Jackson and Platner had previously shared a stage together and endorsed each other's candidacies), but it also gives the Dems a genuine chance at the US Senate seat currently held by Collins, which is a must win not just for the 2026 majority, but honestly the 2028 & 2030 majorities as well.  Dems cannot afford to have a Senate seat from a state won by Clinton, Biden, and Harris be in the hands of a Republican, even a moderate one.

Jackson's win is also a win for the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.  While Sanders did not endorse in the Senate caucuses, he did endorse Jackson in the gubernatorial primary, and given that Jackson was a delegate for Sanders in 2016 (when most delegates from Maine were supporting Hillary Clinton), he is very much a victory for that camp in an election cycle where a number of Sanders-endorsed candidates have come out on top.  Jackson's victory is unusual because of the way it came about (a straight-up statewide primary may have resulted in a different result...he was always going to be helped by the convention/caucus approach), so you can't really read into it, but it is a victory for Sanders in his continued quest to create a legacy in the US Senate (and in shaping the Democratic Party in his image).

In the coming weeks, though, the Democratic Party will have three actual primaries that I think will set the tenor of what the Sanders wing (and the frequently associated, though not directly connected, DSA) will consider success in a cycle that has already resulted in major victories with people like Melat Kiros, Darializa Chevalier, & Brad Lander all beating incumbents to win House seats.  These three races, at least from public polling, have shown three races that have a decided Sanders/DSA branch vs. establishment branch (in all three races either Sanders or the DSA or both have endorsed against a more mainstream candidate), all of them appear to be (in somewhat limited polling) competitive, and in all cases they are marked by a truly nasty primary, way more vicious than you'd typically expect from a Democratic Party primary.  These races are the Wisconsin gubernatorial and the Michigan & Minnesota Senate primaries.  I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at the similarities and differences in these races, as they are all serving as canaries in the coal mine for the remainder of the midterms (and 2028).

Director Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI)

Michigan

Without a doubt, the biggest of these races is in Michigan, where we last discussed State Sen. Mallory McMorrow had just exited the race.  The contest has now become a one-on-one race between Rep. Haley Stevens and Health Director Abdul El-Sayed, with Stevens the favorite of the establishment and El-Sayed endorsed by figures on the far left like Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Based on pretty much all aggregate polling, I'd probably prefer to be El-Sayed in this race right now.  With the exception of the Detroit News poll (which, admittedly, is the most reputable poll in this race in the past few weeks), El-Sayed has had a marginal lead over Stevens.  But Stevens is closing well, and seems to have found a groove in the race.  For starters, she's been far less deferential to Bernie Sanders & his supporters than other Democrats in her position have been, referring to the "complaining class" as a related reference to them, and being shockingly on message.  She's also started to own the quirkiness of her personality as an asset, walking the fine line of embracing it & admonishing those who mock it.  This has resulted in maybe her best ad of the cycle which she takes a viral speech her opponents called "cringe" and turned it into a showcase of how she's passionate about her state, as well as El-Sayed having to actually apologize for how supporters have treated Stevens.  Stevens had the momentum, in my opinion; El-Sayed was caught off-guard by McMorrow dropping out and does not seem to be doing anything to gain support amongst Black voters, which Stevens has exploited.  The fact that Obama hasn't corrected anyone on the ad where it looks like he's endorsing Stevens is telling, and Stevens has made a point of showcasing her support for Biden/Harris in 2024 while El-Sayed was uncommitted, are both signs that Stevens is trying to drive this crucial voting bloc in Michigan.  If Stevens wins this race, the way that she was able to create energy for an establishment candidate and upend El-Sayed with the Sanders/AOC backing will be studied.  It also must be noted that a late-breaking endorsement from, say, Kamala Harris would probably be welcomed here, and I think would be a wise move from the risk-averse candidate (i.e. if Harris wants to be president in 2028, she needs to prove she can take some bets that pay off, especially after a badly-misjudged endorsement of Jasmine Crockett)

Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN)

Minnesota

While (one of) the candidates in the race may disagree, the Minnesota Senate race (unlike Michigan & Wisconsin) does not appear to be a race where the left-leaning candidate would put the seat at risk; either Rep. Angie Craig (the moderate) or LG Peggy Flanagan (the liberal) should be able to hold this seat in November given the national environment.  Craig has claimed otherwise, but I think she's wrong, even if margins may matter.  But the fight has gotten nasty (it's been overshadowed by Michigan, but it's become the meanest primary I can remember in DFL history this century in Minnesota), and it's not entirely clear who's winning given a dearth of quality polling.

Overall, like in Michigan, I'd rather be Flanagan than Craig.  She has the stronger hand (she's the DFL-endorsed nominee, which helps in terms of party structure, and has led in more polls), but I'll own that she's run a lousy front-facing campaign even if her organization with the party elite has been impressive; unlike Michigan where figures like Debbie Stabenow & Gary Peters have gone for Stevens, the powers-that-be in Minnesota seem to largely side with Flanagan save for one big name.  That name is Governor Tim Walz, who Flanagan was joined at the hip with in their first term (it's safe to say had Walz not kept this a partnership in the public eye she'd never have be in this position), but he has point-blank refused to back her in the primary, to the point where I have to assume he's probably going to actually vote for Craig in the privacy of a ballot box, pointing to signs that the two have had a major private falling out that will hopefully come to light after the election when Walz's memoir comes out because I am curious.

Craig's biggest mistake in the race was backing the Laken Riley Act, which at the time was dumb given she was no longer running in a swing House district general but instead a DFL primary, and if she loses it'll be because of that (if she hadn't taken that vote I think she'd be winning right now).  But Flanagan's fundraising has been pathetic-she has yet to beat Craig in a single quarter (in Q2 Flanagan's fundraising was roughly half Craig's, and honestly looked like she was running for a House seat it was so small), and Craig has been able to define Flanagan in the public eye quite a bit, particularly focusing on her time leading the fraud oversight that cost Tim Walz his chance at the nomination earlier this year.  I live in Minnesota, and until about a week ago I hadn't actually seen an ad directly from Flanagan, and that she started with an attack ad tells a tale that she's nervous.  There's been a lot of talk about how Amy Klobuchar will pick the runner-up here so they're both competing for Senate seats that they'll likely get, but I'll be honest-Flanagan has had the deck so stacked in her favor and still underperformed that if Craig wins the primary...I think Klobuchar picks somebody else (same goes for Craig if this race is decided by more than 8-points in Flanagan's favor).  All-in-all, Flanagan is the favorite, but not by what she should be, and Craig might be able to pull off a squeaker.

County Executive David Crowley (D-WI)

Wisconsin

Wisconsin had the biggest change-up in the past week, as first Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out of the race, then LG Sara Rodriguez (whom Crowley had endorsed) was involved in a financial scandal with one of her campaign managers mismanaging her funds, and she dropped out, allowing Crowley to come back in, this time with the endorsement of Gov. Tony Evers.  Crowley was a distant fourth before he dropped out (and Rodriguez was third), with DSA favorite State Rep. Francesca Hong and former LG Mandela Barnes both running for toward the top of the ticket.

It's unclear here exactly what Evers was thinking. In a perfect world, he would've chosen to run himself, if we're being honest, but logistically that can't happen (even if he would've instantly become the frontrunner).  Crowley had a great first 24 hours of fundraising (in a race where no one on either side has been a great fundraiser), but he's still dramatically behind, and it's hard to see incentive for either Barnes or Hong's supporters to abandon him when it looks like a two-person race.  It's also not clear why Evers (who once served alongside Barnes) has an issue with his former LG.  Barnes' past support for "Defund the Police" cost him in 2022 for the US Senate (hence I was initially hoping for Rodriguez, and would favor Crowley over either of these two), but losing a high-profile race isn't always a death knell, and I think Barnes could win in a bluer environment.  Part of me wonders if there's a scandal here that no one is bringing up but is a known secret, because it's honestly giving off those vibes as this can't just be personal dislike.  Decent electability isn't remotely the case for Hong, who is the most extreme candidate I've listed here, and is basically a guaranteed loss in November.

I think, at this point, that this race is headed to a nightmare, and I would wager that Hong is going to win at this point, meaning that Tom Tiffany is pretty much guaranteed to succeed Evers, who clearly retired in the hopes of handing off to another Dem in a blue wave year (same as Gary Peters above).  She's too extreme, and Tiffany is not a Marjorie Taylor Greene type that it'll be easy for her to vilify.  I personally see an easy path for Flanagan to win (even if it's only by 4-6 points) and El-Sayed might win, but Hong is a guaranteed loss in the same way Christine O'Donnell was in 2010.  After spending decades trying to get back a Democratic trifecta, the Wisconsin Democratic Party are going to to forego it because they seemed to confuse the electorate of Madison with a statewide electorate.

Conclusion

All-in-all, this looks like the DSA/Bernie wing is going to have three major victories coming up shortly after a solid one with Jackson.  I will note that, given I stuck my neck out and said that I could not vote for Graham Platner after decades of being an ardent yellow dog Democrat, I would vote for all of these candidates (Hong, specifically, I'd struggle with but ultimately choose to vote for, though either she or El-Sayed I don't think I could donate money to if we're being honest as that's a higher bar with me...I never gave money to Joe Manchin either)...I just have very ardent preferences in the primaries, and in both Michigan & Wisconsin I think that making the wrong move will cost us a seat we cannot afford to give up.  But that is the way this year is shaping up-a series of Democratic risks that the party seems hell-bent on taking.

Lindsey Graham's Complicated Legacy (and the Future of His Senate Seat)

Senators Darline and Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

I've been so out-of-practice in writing political articles in recent memory that I have largely been foregoing any discussion of it here, and I think that while I'm fully in the "writing quotas are not a part of this blog" era post 2024 as I'm focusing on other writing tasks...there's too much going on in the world of politics right now, and I want to talk about it.

The biggest story of the past week (now exactly one week ago) was the untimely death of US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.  I've talked about how, with me having followed politics since the mid-1990's, that there are very, very few politicians in DC who have basically been part of my vernacular since I made this a hobby (i.e. I have no memory of following politics where they weren't players), but Graham was one of them.  My first memories of Graham were probably during the Clinton impeachment trials, where Graham was the only Republican on the House Judiciary Committee to vote against at least one of the four articles of impeachment against Clinton (in Graham's case, it was that Clinton had committed perjury during the Paula Jones case, one of the two articles of impeachment that did not have enough votes to get to the US Senate which is why it might not sound familiar).

Being a Clinton impeachment manager was something of a curse on most of the 13 men who did it from the House.  Within five years of the trial, Ed Bryant, George Gekas, Bill McCollum, & Bob Barr would all lose continued bids for Congress, and eventually Chris Cannon & Steve Chabot would follow (Steve Buyer just a few weeks ago required a presidential pardon, proving this curse is still alive-and-well).  But not Lindsey Graham.  Graham skated through easily into the Senate (despite polling showing a closer race against University President Alex Sanders), and never struggled to win reelection.  He spent much of his career straddling a strange line between moderate (he regularly supported judges nominated by Democratic presidents, including Elena Kagan who spoke about Graham during a House testimony this past week) and almost sycophantic devotion to Donald Trump, a man of whom he once said "if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed...and we will deserve it."  Graham's legacy is odd-his slavish devotion to Trump followed a career where he was often compared (favorably) to the maverick nature of John McCain, and was very popular amongst his colleagues.  I once was at an event with a US Senator (whom I'm going to not name because it was related to my job, and I don't think it'd be appropriate to name as a result) and someone asked her (she was a Democrat) who her favorite Republican was.  She replied pretty much instantly, saying "Lindsey Graham...he's great to work with, he just plays a crazy person on TV."

Graham's legacy is one that is severely tarnished by Trump, and one wonders if he (in part) figured he'd outlive the Trump Era and could rebrand after it.  He was running for reelection this fall, for a term that would extend not just outside of the Trump presidency but likely outside of Trump's expected life range, and like many Republicans, one wonders if he figured the stain of his devotion to him would disappear in the same way much of the Bush administration's worst elements have disappeared from public memory.  But that is not to be the case, though the Graham legacy is very much alive in his sister Darline, who became the first woman to ever represent South Carolina in the US Senate on Tuesday.

Despite what Twitter (heaven forbid they look up something before tweeting) may think, it's relatively common in the United States for a family member to succeed a member of Congress to complete their term, and while it is unusual for a sister to succeed a brother (it's never happened in the US Senate, in fact), Graham was a lifelong bachelor (which invited a lot of speculation about his sexuality, which also may have been a part of his lasting legacy) and didn't have a wife or children who could step in, and had indicated during his 2016 presidential run that his sister would have served as his First Lady had he won, so it makes sense she'd succeed him for the remaining months of his term.

What I did not expect with Darline Graham was that she planned on running for a full term, which was indicated when President Trump (who pushed for her appointment) endorsed her publicly and encouraged her to run.  Now-Senator Graham is not a practiced politician like her brother.  She has worked with people with disabilities and has a Master of Arts, but the extent of her political tenure is literally just involving her brother, doing ads and speeches for his various runs.  Her running was not expected, and is clearly riling up South Carolina Republicans, who haven't had an open seat for the US Senate in 22 years.  Already Rep. Ralph Norman has jumped in, and Rep. Nancy Mace is actively exploring a bid.  I wouldn't doubt LG Pamela Evette might also look at the contest.

Norman, Evette, & Mace, though, are coming off of losses in the gubernatorial primary, where Trump's endorsement mattered, and all of them running against even a novice like Graham will be hard to beat if she has Trump's full backing given the state does not have ranked-choice voting.  This seat is not expected to be competitive even if the Democrats have a relatively quality nominee (Dr. Annie Andrews), as only Mace would put this into "Lean R" territory, and honestly Andrews might've had a better shot against the late senator than most of these other contenders.  If my belief that Lindsey Graham was planning on trying to outrun Trump's legacy by reforming after he left office is to be believed, the only possible way that could happen is through his sister...who seems likely to try and follow in those footsteps by doing what her brother did best in the past ten years: clinging as hard as possible to President Trump.

Patriot Games (1992)

Film: Patriot Games (1992)

Stars: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, SEan Bean, Thora Birch, Samuel L. Jackson, James Fox, Richard Harris

Director: Phillip Noyce

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Harrison Ford: click here to learn more about Mr. Ford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

The past two weeks we have focused on Harrison Ford as he might've been.  With The Conversation, we talked about his unique gifts for character work, giving us an important smarmy (but crucial) character in Gene Hackman's journey in the picture, and then with The Mosquito Coast we saw him attempt to escape the everyman hero that he personified in Han Solo & Indiana Jones to tremendous effect.  But Harrison Ford is not an actor you automatically name-check as a great actor-you think of him as a great movie star, and one who is relatively easy to imitate.  So this week, we're really getting into the era of Ford's "get off my plane!" level of ubiquity.  In the 1990's, Ford was a constant presence in movies and basically competed solely with Tom Cruise as the most invincible of stars at the box office.  Everything he touched would turn to gold, but while Cruise would occasionally challenge himself as an actor in these pictures, Ford didn't.  This isn't to say that Ford made bad movies during the era (ending in the late 1990's, which is where we'll close our month with him next week), but he wasn't racking up Oscar nominations like Cruise was, and most of his films are generic even if they would make buckets of money.  One of the best examples of them, and one of the few I hadn't seen yet (I was alive in the 1990's, and my mom loved Harrison Ford...I saw most of his stuff) is Patriot Games, the first of two outings that Ford would take as CIA analyst Jack Ryan, his other other franchise lead after the two I already name-checked.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Jack Ryan (Ford), a man who used to work for the CIA and is now teaching history at the US Naval Academy.  He, his wife Cathy (Archer), and daughter Sally (Birch) inadvertently witness an IRA terrorist attack on Lord William Holmes (Fox), in which Jack saves Lord Holmes life.  Several members, specifically Sean Miller (Bean) survive Jack's retaliation, though, and are on a quest for revenge against both Lord Holmes (who keeps having people around him dying) and against the Ryans, which escalates to kidnapping attempts on his wife & daughter.  This all ends with us realizing that Holmes' assistant has been a secret informant, and sets up Sean to kill both Lord Holmes and the Ryans in the same party...before Jack saves the day, killing the assistant and Sean Miller in the process.

It's worth noting that this is technically the sequel to another movie, honestly a better one: The Hunt for Red October, where the Jack Ryan character was played by Alec Baldwin (we'll actually discuss this movie a bit before the end of the month in the context of the 1990 Oscar Viewing Project, which I should be done with by next Saturday if all things go according to plan).  A lot of speculation from those in the know (and Baldwin himself) has been stirred about as to why Baldwin, sixteen years Ford's junior at the time and a much more logical choice for a new action franchise, was ousted, with everything from Ford being a bigger star (who had a host of contracts with the studio they were trying to pay off) to Baldwin's salary demands (and legendarily diva-like behavior during his leading man era) all contributing to this bump, but it did happen, and it changes the tenor of the movies.  Baldwin's screen persona was always a bit more seductive & (save for Han Solo) wrier than Ford's, and it shows that Patriot Games is kind of dull.

It's not that it's necessarily bad, because it's not.  The supporting cast (actors like Harris, Bean, & Jackson) are all made up of properly good actors, and Ford knows how to command a screen, but it's also generic.  There's nothing really special about Jack Ryan, nothing that we get to know-this feels like he's just playing Harrison Ford in the way that someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger would become famous for at the same time-not giving us anything beyond what's expected.  Ford, though, was a better actor than Arnold, and it's a pity this is what he has spent much of the latter part of his career doing.  It says something that while Ford was called upon decades after-the-fact to play both Han Solo and Indiana Jones, because no one could imagine anyone else playing these parts (apologies to Alden Ehrenreich), by 2002 when they were making the long-awaited sequel to Clear and Present Danger (Ford's second outing as Jack Ryan), it was Ben Affleck, not Ford, who ended up playing the part.  Had he not been going through one of the messiest Hollywood divorces of the era, Alec Baldwin might've enjoyed the karmic revenge of Ford finally losing out on his part to a younger actor.

The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Film: The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Stars: Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Andre Gregory, River Phoenix, Martha Plimpton

Director: Peter Weir

Oscar History: No nominations, though both Ford and composer Maurice Jarre got Golden Globe nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Harrison Ford: click here to learn more about Mr. Ford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Harrison Ford was not the first actor associated with a specific role or being unable to escape from it.  But in the modern era of filmmaking (i.e. post-Jaws) he really personified the actor whose characters ended up being too popular for him to stop doing them. In the 1980's, this meant that Ford made a number of films as both Han Solo & Indiana Jones (from 1980-84, he made four of them alone, and only took a break for Blade Runner, a rather difficult shoot for the actor despite its later cult status).  But unlike the 1990's, when Ford's dramatic attempts outside of action-adventure would become something of a source of ridicule (and not inspire a lot of critical hosannas), in the 1980's he had a lot of acclaim on this front, particularly in the movie of Peter Weir.  In 1985, he starred in the blockbuster hit Witness, which won him his first (and to date only) Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.  In 1986, he appeared in another dramatic departure from Weir, but unlike Witness it was a flop (he'd recover pretty quickly two years later with the massive success of Working Girl, a movie which got pretty much everyone in the cast but him an Oscar nomination).  The Mosquito Coast is a unique film though (and Ford has frequently cited it as his favorite) given how well it captured a certain type of toxic masculinity, and how brittle & unrelenting Ford's portrayal of the main character is right up until the end credits.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Allie Fox (Ford), an inventor who hates the American Dream, capitalism, and a global economy that relies upon foreign industries to keep it afloat (there's an early scene where he eviscerates a shop owner for carrying products made in Japan, which in the 1980's you can't entirely tell if this is just him leaning in on Reagan conservatism or makes him truly xenophobic).  After yet another employer being disappointed with his impressive inventions (in this case a house that can make ice), he decides to move his family to the jungles of Belize, where he buys a village in the rainforest.  Allie, his wife Margot (Mirren), whom he constantly calls "Mother," and their four children, including eldest son Charlie (Phoenix) initially find success introducing his impressive inventions to the jungle.  But his paranoia starts to settle in.  He convinces his family that a nuclear war has struck America, destroying the country, and when a group of rebels take over his camp, he murders them (not in the way he planned, initially wanting to freeze them to death but instead having them burned to death in an explosion that pollutes the river).  Eventually he drives his family mad with loyalty tests, and is shot by a missionary whom Allie is convinced is running a Christian concentration camp, killing him as his family finally finds freedom.

It's easy to see, watching the film, why it didn't resonate with Reagan America, even with (or maybe especially because of) Harrison Ford in the lead.  The movie is dark, and shows a toxicity in the male ego that you don't usually find here.  In the 1980's, with Reagan promising a return of the American Dream for white families (and in particular white men) while widening income gaps and unsteady unemployment numbers took its toll on Middle America figures like the Fox family.  Huey Long had said that "every man is a king" and in the 1980's that was the reigning theology for conservative men, and while Allie Fox presents as being anti-capitalist, he is deeply conservative about gender & family life, and that shows in the way that he blames women and people of color for his failures to be truly successful the way he trains his children to think he should be.  It's hard not to watch this film, and in particular the way that he treats his wife Margot (not physically abusing her, but clearly indulging in what we'd now consider emotional abuse) and think of the MAGA movement, and the way that it tries to get back to this era...knowing full well that it is filled with angry men who still blame the world for their failures.

Ford's portrayal of Allie Fox is really good, and it's in part because he doesn't let up on him.  Most actors, particularly ones who are super reliant upon audiences wanting to root for them, wouldn't have allowed their characterization to be so unsympathetic.  They would've given him redemption, or an apology scene with Helen Mirren at the end of the movie.  But thankfully Weir doesn't do that, and we get with Ford's performance a broken man, one you might understand where he's coming from because he's the product of his environment (capitalism can tear us all apart in the end), but who is also so egocentric he doesn't acknowledge the harm he's doing because it's his harm.  In a year where men like Graham Platner (who put so much of the blame for their failings on others rather than himself) are being celebrated by the left (and Donald Trump, doing the same thing, is a deity for the right), it's hard not to think that Mosquito Coast and Ford's layered performance aren't ahead of their time.

5 Thoughts on the Graham Platner's Allegations

Well, I did not expect to get two political articles out in two days after a relatively long drought for them, but that's the way the political news crumbles sometimes.  Without further adieu, let's discuss the horrifying allegations faced by Graham Platner, the (present) Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine.

Graham Platner (D-ME)

1. Graham Platner Must (and Will) Drop Out

For those unaware, Graham Platner, who has faced multiple scandals involving a Nazi tattoo, racist & sexist Reddit comments, physical abuse, and extramarital affairs, added to that list with an allegation of rape from Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old woman who dated Platner on-and-off for two years.  Racicot, a registered Democrat, said that she was initially reluctant to come forward because she agreed with Platner's politics, but said "I'm just here to tell my story to give a clearer picture of who he is and the type of past he has."

Platner initially vehemently denied the allegations & refused to get out of the race, but that tenor had softened in a Twitter video he posted, where he said he would step back for a few days and consider what to do next (while still denying the allegations).  The deadline to drop out and be replaced (without any issue) by the state party is next Monday, and I'll be honest-Platner will be forced out sometime before then, I suspect within the next 48 hours.  Already an avalanche of US Senators and Senate candidates have issued statements asking for him to step aisde, and combined with flagging poll numbers & potentially soft fundraising numbers (he hadn't yet released his Q2 numbers, always a warning sign this far into the month), he will step aside, likely saying he's doing so "to not be a distraction," but nonetheless disappearing into political anonymity.  Either way-a week from now Graham Platner will not be the Democratic nominee for the US Senate.

Senate President Troy Jackson (D-ME)

2. Democrats Will Pick a Replacement-But Whom?

Under the pretty clear assumption that Platner will drop out of the race before the Monday deadline, Democrats will get to pick a replacement.  While Gov. Janet Mills would probably be the frontrunner for this if she hadn't run, she did run and turned in an underwhelming performance (and she also seems pretty much done with politics), so I doubt she's the candidate.  The same seems to be the case for Rep. Jared Golden, who is retiring at the end of this term, but otherwise would be our best candidate and could easily beat Collins.

Therefore, it's likely to be someone with a less obvious national profile.  The far left, including Hasan Piker, are making the argument that Platner represented their ideals and while he should go, they should get the opportunity to replace him with someone from their line (former Senate President Troy Jackson).  But Jackson has a relatively robust connection with Platner (there's literally video of Platner saying that he's "proud to share a stage with him") which Collins would pretty quickly weaponize against him, and also (on a personal level) I'm feeling pretty heartily burned by the Sanders/Khanna wing of the party (more on that in a second) so I honestly hope that they pick someone other than Jackson, though online sentiment (and for what it's worth, betting markets) seem to think he's the frontrunner.

Personally, I think you could make an argument that they could go with the second place finisher in the Maine gubernatorial race, which would be Dr. Nirav Shah, but he also is a first-time candidate and (again) the party should feel a bit burned there.  It honestly feels like the Democrats, given the charges against Platner, might pick a woman as his replacement (this was a big consideration when Al Franken resigned, and ultimately ended up being a good decision), though there are men who aren't first-timers and might be in the mix (Attorney General Aaron Frey and State House Speaker Ryan Fecteau being the top ones).  State House Speaker Sara Gideon, Rep. Chellie Pingree, or Secretary of State Shenna Bellows would all work...but they've all lost to Collins before, even though I think they'd all three go in potentially as favorites if they ran this time.  Ultimately this in some ways enters VP speculation (i.e. it's mostly a guessing game where no one knows how it turns out), but I'm going to throw in one additional name I'd be looking at if I was in the contest: current Senate President (and Jackson's successor to that office) Mattie Daughtry, who is young (she's 39), a woman, a longtime & respected state leader, and because she hasn't run statewide doesn't have any of the "far left vs. establishment" baggage many other candidates have.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

3. Susan Collins Race Just Got Completely Changed

There was mixed opinion on whether or not Susan Collins would be happy or sad about this change, and I am going on record as saying that Collins was probably miserable when this leaked yesterday.  A good comparison is the 2012 race where Republicans begged Todd Akin privately to get out of the race (according to most reports State Treasurer Sarah Steelman was ready to take over for him as a replacement), but Claire McCaskill stayed silent and only tacitly spoke against him because she knew she'd lose to Steelman.  Collins is in the same boat-she clearly wanted Platner as her opponent, likely was aware of this story (or the rumors about it), and may well have had more ammunition about Platner in her research bag.

Now Collins will have to run against a different candidate, admittedly one who is less vetted & will start out with a cash disadvantage...but that will pretty quickly evaporate.  There's no evidence this close to the election that voters punish congressional replacement candidates (this is not a Biden/Harris situation), and as long as they don't pick someone with a similar scandal or who has strong ties to Platner, he likely will be a political asterisk by November.  Instead, Collins will have to run the kind of campaign she would've had to run in 2018-where the only option to send a message to Trump is to vote her out, and she has to convince Democratic voters why they should keep her against a candidate they'll like.  I have long-maintained that 2018 might be the only election cycle since she was first elected that Collins would've lost.  2026 could well become that case, and without Platner in the race, she becomes the mild underdog in my estimation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at a campaign rally
with Jackson (left) and Platner

4. The Left Needs a Reality Check (or a Time Out)

I've resisted so far in this article saying "I told you so" but I'm going to say it now less to be "that guy" and more because I think it needs to be underlined.  Platner, for starters, was always a bit of a silly choice for the US Senate.  He had no political background, had never held (or even run) for political office, and he was hardly a compelling speaker if you compare him to, say, Jon Ossoff or Beto O'Rourke.  His aesthetic and personal history became a weird sort of Rorschach test for people desperate to not run yet another long-tenured political officeholder against Collins.

But the scandals were obvious, and plentiful, and the fact that so many Democrats were willing to take the risks and ignore the giant red flags of a Nazi tattoo, assault allegations, and years of casual online racism & misogyny should reflect badly on them.  Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Martin Heinrich, Ro Khanna, David Hogg, and the hosts of Pod Saves America should be ashamed of themselves.  They will claim "no one could've seen this coming" but it was very, very obvious in the same way it's always obvious Trump will have more scandals, and either they are aggressively stupid (which they aren't...well, most of them aren't) or they genuinely don't have strong beliefs beyond winning power and influence.  They were willing to nominate a Nazi-tattooed man who had had rape allegation rumors surrounding him for months for the most consequential Senate race in the country, just because it might endear them to his far-left supporters.  I'm sorry, but that is exactly what people like Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, & Ted Cruz attempted to do in 2016 in glomming onto Trump, and they deserve to be uttered in that same breath after their behavior here.

Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI)

5. Will This Influence Any Other Races?

The DSA/Democratic Tea Party train has already left the station a bit in New York and Colorado, but honestly-so far that hasn't really caused an issue like Maine, where a swing state (and in this case, a flip) was made vulnerable by nominating a candidate that was politically toxic.  It's also not clear (to me) how much legs this story has, or whether or not people will associate Platner's candidacy with the people who carried water for him (i.e. the Bernie's and the Ro Khanna's) or if this will totally be put into the confines of the scandal.

But I am definitely watching Michigan right now.  Both for the US Senate and for the 7th district, we have a duplicate of this race-a more established Democratic woman, being portrayed as the favorite of the establishment, facing off against someone backed by the Sanders/Khanna wing of the party.  In both cases, if the party doesn't back Haley Stevens & Bridget Brink (and instead backs Abdul El-Sayed & William Lawrence), they're not necessarily (hopefully) going to have a scandal of this magnitude, but they are going to be coming into the general with a coalition that we were seeing in the past few days was falling apart in Maine post the the primary glow even without the recent Platner news, and could potentially take winnable races off of the map.

The Fallout of Mallory McMorrow's Exit

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-MI)

Yesterday, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign in the US Senate primary in Michigan.  This isn't super surprising.  McMorrow started with a lot of promise in the race.  After going viral in 2022 for a speech attacking Republicans, McMorrow seemed like a rising star in the party, and I'll own that much of her campaign (in terms of quality) was considerably sharper than her other two opponents: Rep. Haley Stevens and Wayne County Public Health Director Abdul El-Sayed.  But McMorrow struggled in the race.  In an era where the conflict in Gaza disproportionately impacts Democratic primaries compared to the general electorate's concerns, McMorrow was stuck in the middle.  She did not receive money from AIPAC (which Stevens has), but she was not as ardently anti-Israel as El-Sayed, and she pissed off the far left by criticizing El-Sayed's campaigning with Hasan Piker, who has been accused by many (including me) for being a dangerous force within the party, and of trading in antisemitic dogwhistles.  In retrospect, McMorrow would've been better off still going for a promotion, but instead for Stevens' House seat and backing Stevens from the get-go while still getting a national platform in the process.

McMorrow's campaign has shown something challenging in the Democratic primaries, and something that could be a harbinger of things to come in the 2028 presidential election: there is not room for a candidate in-between a moderate establishment type (like Stevens) and a candidate who embraces the far left (like El-Sayed).  Her campaign was sharp, she ran it textbook, and much better than Stevens, who has struggled with being socially awkward in a number of public debates and El-Sayed, who seems to be an unserious candidate; while other top Senate candidates like Josh Turek, Roy Cooper, & Mary Peltola were featuring photos of them at parades & Independence Day events in their states on social media, El-Sayed had a video of him line-dancing in an American flag cowboy hat & skin-tight black v-neck to Taylor Swift's hit "You Belong with Me."  All-in-all, McMorrow felt like a really good compromise candidate-a true progressive who would push the Senate left while still being palatable enough to moderate audiences to win swing voters in a state that Donald Trump won in 2024.  But if there's a recurring theme in the Democratic Party in 2026, it's that no one wants compromise (except me-I endorsed McMorrow and donated to her campaign).

This now sets up a really interesting dynamic in the race though: a true one-on-one, no incumbent race between an establishment figure and a far left figure.  Other races like this have either A) not featured a race relatively light on scandal, which honestly this is (as far as I can tell, there's no actual scandal involving either Stevens or El-Sayed...people just don't like their politics or their approaches, but this isn't an Andrew Cuomo situation) or B) featuring an incumbent that people can say "throw them all out to!" in the way they did Diana DeGette & Adriano Espaillat (Stevens is a sitting member of Congress, but she's not a senator).

Aggregate public polling shows Stevens in a better (but not impenetrable) position, though El-Sayed has shown up in the lead in at least some public polling against Rep. Mike Rogers.  In terms of the primary, in the past few weeks there's been a lot of candidate or PAC-backed polling, but reading through the weeds it feels like El-Sayed has a lead, though a small enough one that McMorrow's supporters could make the difference if they break toward Stevens, and there's at least some polling to show they might.  This race has entered tossup territory, and it will be interesting to see how this turns out.

This is because there's a lot of vested interest from both sides for their candidates to win this race.  Stevens started that avalanche with an endorsement from Attorney General Dana Nessel immediately after McMorrow's exit (as well as powerful SuperPac Emily's List).  I would anticipate that at least some combination of Gretchen Whitmer, Gary Peters, Jocelyn Benson, Elissa Slotkin, & McMorrow herself will also get into the race, probably to endorse Stevens.  Whitmer's endorsement would be the most consequential-she's still popular (she'd have closed down this race had she won), and there's apparently a lot of bad will from El-Sayed's campaign against her in 2018.  If she backed Stevens, it'd be worth a few points in her direction.

But if you look to the presidential races of 2024, you also see some lines being drawn.  Chris van Hollen & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both have endorsed El-Sayed.  This is notable in particular for AOC, as she refused to get into the Maine Senate primary recently with another left-supported candidate (Graham Platner).  On the flip side, Ruben Gallego & Catherine Cortez Masto have both endorsed Stevens, and so has Nancy Pelosi, perhaps the most lauded establishment Democrat in the party.  It's pretty clear that if you're an establishment Democrat, you want Stevens, and if you are supporting the emerging Democratic Tea Party movement from the left, you want El-Sayed.

If you've read this blog very long, you'll guess where I stand, though I will own that (like McMorrow) I feel a bit adrift.  I am a relatively conventional Yellow Dog Democrat, but one who is probably considerably more progressive than most of the politicians I support, and I was excited we had looked like another Tammy Baldwin/Tina Smith-style liberal who can easily code as a moderate.  But I also care about who we are nominating-I don't like full-on litmus tests, especially in purple/red districts like this and I also don't approve of some of the public misogyny & coded xenophobia that is coming from El-Sayed's camp, and sometimes from him himself.  I also don't think someone who publicly supported "Defund the Police" is a good candidate in Michigan, and brings insane amount of risk with him.  I therefore am hoping for Stevens, even if (as of right now) I'd bet on El-Sayed ever so slightly...though there's a lot of game to play, and if Stevens pulled an Angela Alsobrooks (i.e. a candidate who closed well enough to win in what would've been seen as an upset a few weeks earlier) I wouldn't be surprised.

OVP: The Conversation (1974)

Film: The Conversation (1974)

Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Harrison Ford: click here to learn more about Mr. Ford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Harrison Ford's public persona has long been of a man who didn't really want to be a movie star.  A lot of this, I have long-suspected, is at least partially untrue (otherwise why do it, especially when he became bonkers rich & didn't really need to do it anymore...after all, his wife is also a talented actor who now rarely works).  But it is interesting that Ford's fame came relatively late.  The role that made him a movie star was Star Wars, which was released just days before his 35th birthday. For comparison's sake with some of his 1970's peers, Al Pacino at that age had several Oscar nominations and the Godfather franchise, Dustin Hoffman had been Ben Braddock & Ratso Rizzo, and Jack Nicholson & Peter Fonda had both boarded a motorcycle into legend.  Ford spent much of the 1970's balancing his time between small roles in movies and making furniture for people like Joan Didion, Valerie Harper, & George Lucas.  Ford's movie career, though, is really interesting because he appeared in a lot of interesting movies, among them Michelangelo Antonioni's controversial Zabriskie Point, and three Best Picture nominees: American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now, and today's film The Conversation.  For all of the talk about Ford at one point before Han Solo nearly quitting the industry to work as a high-profile carpenter, the more intriguing idea might be what he did in this film: taking on the role of distinctive, very handsome character actor in important auteur-driven features.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Conversation is a movie best headed into with you knowing as little as is humanly possible, so while I provide a spoiler alert on all of my reviews because I generally want to know as little as possible about all movies I'm going to, this one in particular it helps to go in blind so I'll reiterate that now.  The movie follows Harry Caul (Hackman), a man who runs a service that essentially follows people and records them for money (it is not lost on me that The Conversation, which competed with Chinatown for Best Picture in 1974, bears a striking resemblance to the Roman Polanski film as both are about private investigators who uncover more than they expected from a routine case).  Unlike Jake Gittes, Harry Caul does not advertise and is not well-known for his work.  He is, instead, anonymous to the point of unhealthy, keeping everything about him at a distance to the point his girlfriend (Garr) doesn't ever visit his apartment and he doesn't even have his own phone.  This is driven by wanting to avoid retribution, but also the very real threat of violence in his career.  Similar to Chinatown (again) there are allusions to a previous case throughout the film that the audience only understands to be too horrific to mention, and that haunt both detectives to the point they are constantly in fear of repeating it.

The Conversation is considered a landmark film, but because Francis Ford Coppola had it come out the same year The Godfather, Part II (one of the greatest movies ever made), it always feels like it doesn't get its due, and so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect headed into this-would it be a really handsome movie, one that stands up but can't compare with a picture as perfect as Godfather II, or would it be just as exceptional.  Again, similar to Chinatown, it's not clear until the last moments what's happening, and it's also not clear where The Conversation will land in that comparison.  But as the movie concludes, you realize it's also a true masterpiece.  We understand as the film ends that Harry has no idea what he's walked into, and what he's helped cause.  He assumes that the conversation between Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams at the beginning of the movie is of a couple that might be having an affair, and becomes concerned when he uncovers (while listening to the clips that he initially won't hand over to a man known as "the Director's" assistant without first meeting the Director himself) that a part of the clips that he couldn't initially hear says "he'd kill us if he got the chance."  When he meets the Director (played by an uncredited Robert Duvall) he becomes worried for the young couple's safety as it's clear Cindy Williams is the Director's wife.  But as we learn in the waning moments of the film, he's missed something on the tapes-the emphasis in Forrest's reading of the word "us."

Because as the film ends, it's a case where Frederic Forrest has murdered Robert Duvall's husband with help from his lover, leaving all of the money (and secret organization he has) to Cindy Williams, and leaving them the opportunity to end up together.  The movie's sound work is legendary (and Oscar-nominated) for a reason, as not only is the entire setup with Hackman's Harry filled with us getting whirs & blurs from the recording equipment, but also the film tells in flashback narrative things the audience will have missed.  The film clearly inspired everything from The Usual Suspects to Severance (which borrows heavily from The Conversation's score), and you see why-this is a movie that shows paranoia is justified...and cannot be resolved.  We end the movie with Harry knowing he is being watched, knowing that he can't escape or be safely private...and having to give in to that to not go mad.

Harrison Ford's role is a key component & a crucial part of this story, even if he's only in about three scenes.  He plays the Director's assistant, and plays him with a level of bureaucratic cool that you kind of just assume he's a jackass (also according to most reports, Ford played him as gay which kind of comes across in the way he's super bitchy in a way you don't find a male character in the 1970's, even if there's no hint of this other than him wearing a stylish green suit in one scene that Ford bought with his own money), one who has gotten to this position through being absurdly handsome and honestly it's the sort of character you assume you don't need to pay attention to as the movie progresses.  Because I am writing this about Ford, though, I was paying attention, and it gives you a whole other angle here.  Ford's Martin Stett is the only figure in the film who 100% knows everything that's going on we learn as the film goes by-he works for the Director, but he's also clearly aware of the affair, and given that he's still working for Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams in the end, it's possible he orchestrated all of this in connection with them.  The paranoia seeps into the actual film...was this all a setup to use Harry, kill the Director, and give the young couple everything they wanted?  Only Ford's Stett, who calls Hackman in the end to tell him he's being watched, knows for certain, and makes him the true antagonist of the picture.  Ford is good in this, and as we'll talk about next week, that layered acting ability didn't totally diminish when his visage started to adorn the postered walls of teenage boys, but as I said above-it's hard not to think of Ford in the same way we think of someone like Robert Duvall or John Cazale, someone who added extra layers to already great movies, as a supporting character actor, while watching The Conversation.