Maine Dems Favor Another Commie, Just Without All the #MeToo
Socialist Graham Platner clone Troy Jackson says, “We’re well on our way to getting the government we f***ing deserve.”
“Democracy,” journalist H.L. Mencken once observed, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Troy Jackson, the presumptive Democrat U.S. Senate nominee from Maine, unintentionally said the same thing on Saturday night: “We’re well on our way to getting the government we f***ing deserve.”
Oh boy.
Maine Democrats had a real opportunity. They could have rejected the self-proclaimed communist with the Nazi tattoo and a lot of #MeToo baggage before choosing him as their nominee for U.S. Senate. After his exit, they could have chosen the guy who wears a dress and changed his name to Ashley. They could get a lot of intersectionality points. Instead, it appears they opted for another run-of-the-mill socialist.
Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and former state Senate president, has locked down the delegates he’ll need for Saturday’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner. “Delegates aligned with Jackson won the vast majority of the 500 slots that were up for grabs on Saturday and Sunday as Maine’s 16 counties held two days of delegate selection for next weekend’s nominating convention,” reports Fox News. “And Jackson’s top two rivals for the nomination, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Nirav Shah, a former top public health official, dropped out of the race on Sunday.”
Unlike the move to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris, Maine Democrats are at least pretending to care about some level of democracy and a transparent process.
As you’ll recall, Platner faced a litany of criticism over his tattoo and his treatment of women before allegations of sexual assault finally shook the Democrats out of their socialist stupor.
But wait — Maine Democrats did not, in fact, come out of their socialist stupor. The lesson they learned from the Platner debacle was not to moderate in any way other than sexual assault; it was to double down on the hip new socialism sweeping the Democrat Party.
One of Jackson’s delegates explained, “I was a big supporter of the previous candidate, Graham Platner. I really liked his policies. Troy mirrors a lot of those.” The New York Times called Jackson “the most closely aligned ideologically with Mr. Platner.”
Jackson certainly sensed his victory was nigh, posting on social media, “In November, Mainers will defeat Susan Collins, and we will take back our Senate seat from the billionaires and corporations who think they own it.”
Through the end of June, Collins has $11 million in her campaign war chest and a 30-year track record of generally pleasing Maine voters as a frequent thorn in the side of GOP conservatives.
Jackson isn’t just another blue-collar white guy, though. He’s a former Republican who switched sides a couple of decades ago and never looked back. He’s a favorite of Senator Bernie Sanders, who also endorsed him in the gubernatorial primary earlier this year. Sanders failed to win the Democrat presidential nomination in two attempts, but he has done more than anyone except Barack Obama to influence the party’s leftward direction. Of Jackson, Fox reports, “He backs raising taxes on billionaires, the universal healthcare system known as ‘Medicare-for-all,’ abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and he opposes military aid to Israel at a time that Democrats are increasingly divided on support for America’s longtime Middle East ally.”
At a virtual town hall for Sanders’s Our Revolution organization, Jackson declared, “This movement has always been bigger than one person. It’s about taking on a system rigged against working people, fighting for ‘Medicare-for-all,’ strong unions, higher wages, reproductive freedom, and an economy where billionaires and corporations finally pay their fair share.” Jackson didn’t distance himself from Platner but embraced the erstwhile candidate, saying, “That’s the thing that I think Graham did the best: talked about fighting against the healthcare industry and the prescription drug industry to make sure that people in this state and this country have affordable, quality healthcare.”
As I said, he’s a run-of-the-mill socialist.
Suffering a decade-long bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Democrats have concluded that running as hard and fast to the left as they can is the way to victory. That likely won’t pan out in Maine, but don’t expect Dems to moderate anytime soon.
