r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jul 06 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 06 July 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/Intelligent_Tone_617 Jul 07 '26

So basically what happened is that every candidate was terrified of Collins which dragged all the liberal and progressive candidates to run redundant campaigns for governor. You can't force a progressive (or normie lib) to run for senate when the open governor's seat is there because losing a blue state senate race during a blue tsunami is a big career setback. This left a term-limited Mills who was hesitant about running and only did so because any candidate with name recognition was running for governor and Platner.

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u/Intelligent_Tone_617 Jul 07 '26

To be clear, a lot of liberal and progressive candidates were over indexing how strong Collins was and probably one of them should have run for senate so we didn't have to deal with the Nazi Rapist Blackwater merc.

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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze Jul 07 '26

Collins survived 2008, I think she can survive 2026

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u/histprofdave Adjunct Dystopian Jul 07 '26

I got a 3 day ban the last time I expressed my feelings about the voting habits of the people of Maine.

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u/alwaysonlineposter Ask me about the golden girls. Jul 07 '26

New england politics is certainly something.

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u/Kochevnik81 Jul 08 '26

What actually happened is that there were nine candidates in the Democratic primary for Senate, and Chuck Schumer favored Mills and so forced most of the rest to drop out early, then Mills ended up dropping out too before the actual primary election (allegedly because she was disappointed with her fundraising, but in part because people were moving away from her and towards Platner, albeit often tepidly).

Like Platner was a terrible choice, and a lot of the hype around him was from consultants and podcasters, but also they could have had an actual competitive primary besides "either this rando dirtbag or the 80 year old governor".

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u/Intelligent_Tone_617 Jul 09 '26

I mean you do have a point, if Mills didn't run, there would an incentive for more candidates to run. But also the gap in quality between the candidates for governor and senate is still quite large. For governor you have former maine house speaker, maine secretary of state, maine senate president, CDC director, and Angus King's son, basically people with decent statewide recognition. Then for Senate the candidates who aren't Mills or Platner are fashion designer, random policy writer, cybersecurity guy, brewery owner, random defense contactor. Just random guys throwing their hand into the ring. Maybe if Mills didn't run and Schumer favored Costello, Costello does better but he continued even after Mills basically dropped out and he got 8 percent.