The Democratic Party is at war with itself — and in Maine, the fight has spilled into the open.
Graham Platner, an alleged rapist with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, won the Democratic nomination for United States Senate last month, beating the candidate the party establishment had recruited by a commanding 53-point margin.
For months, Republicans and others had warned that Platner was unfit for the job.
As soon as party leaders saw polling that suggested he could beat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November they embraced him, hosting him in Washington, DC, and pledging as much campaign cash as he needed.
His baggage didn’t matter. His poll numbers did.
Then the numbers turned, and Platner’s lead collapsed into a dead heat.
That’s when fresh allegations of Platner’s monstrous behavior toward women appeared to confirm what Republicans had been saying for months — and within hours, the man Democrats had celebrated as their rising star became radioactive.
So the machine moved in for the kill — yanking endorsements, choking off the money, threatening to abandon the Maine Senate race entirely unless he got out.
Within days, the nominee Maine Democrats had chosen was gone, run out of his own campaign by the very same people who had gladly leaped on his bandwagon before its wheels came off.
But erasing Platner was only half the job.
Now comes the real pickle: deciding who replaces him.
And the Democratic establishment has no intention of letting the voters anywhere near that choice.
Maine’s next Democratic nominee for US Senate will be picked in a backroom in just two weeks, crowned by a few hundred party insiders at a convention the public never voted for.
The candidates fighting for the seat currently aren’t even required to debate each other.
Maine voters who poured their time, money and passion into this race will be handed a nominee and told to clap.
If that sounds familiar, it should — this is the same party that in 2024 shoved President Joe Biden aside and planted Kamala Harris at the top of its ticket without a single vote being cast.
When the Democratic machine doesn’t like the result, the machine overrides it.
That’s not a party of the people.
And the progressives know it.
They knocked the doors, they made the calls, and they won — fair and square.
But their reward is watching Democratic leadership scheme to install someone more to the liking of the same insiders they just beat.
Both sides are growing increasingly furious, as establishment Democrats publicly slam Bernie Sanders’ clown car of unvetted, untested, severely character-flawed socialist candidates while progressives openly plot to take down the liberal elite.
This civil war is tearing the Democratic Party to shreds, and it doesn’t stop at Maine.
In New York, a wave of democratic socialists swept three House primaries, wiping out establishment rivals and one longtime incumbent.
In Colorado, 29-year-old socialist Melat Kiros dethroned Rep. Diana DeGette after nearly 30 years in office.
From coast to coast, the radical base is in open revolt — and a frightened establishment is doing whatever it takes to hold the line, even if that means silencing the very voters it claims to represent.
The irony is that Democrats’ infighting only boosts Republicans’ chances of winning critical battleground races this year.
Even as their establishment is begging progressives to show up and vote in the fall, they’re putting their finger on the scale to remove a leftist darling.
Meanwhile, progressives are nominating socialists and communists under the Democratic Party banner, forcing vulnerable incumbents in tough races to answer for their insane policies.
And I, as chairman of the Republican National Committee, could not be happier.
Republicans know exactly who we are.
We trust our voters and let them decide our nominees: By our own rules, the RNC doesn’t get involved in primaries.
We put up candidates who love this country instead of apologizing for it.
And while the Democrats spend the next four months clawing at one another in the dark, we’ll be out in the daylight — registering voters ahead of November’s midterm elections, getting them to the polls and making our case to the American people.
Let Democrats have their civil war.
Republicans are fighting every day to win the midterms and defy history in November.
Joe Gruters is chairman of the Republican National Committee.
