All the handwringing about Platner has done nothing but reveal, to anyone who hadn't yet been paying attention, how little influence these prolific posters actually have outside their immediate spheres of like-minded prolific posters.
Janet Mills has no shot at beating Susan Collins, and has never faced an opponent remotely as formidable as Susan Collins. In 2018, aided by the Blue Wave, she beat a complete fucking nobody (Shawn Moody) who fired an employee for having had a c-section.
In 2022, in the Red Wave That Did Not Happen(TM), she beat psycho MAGA ex-governor Paul LePage, whose approval ratings during his final term never exceeded 40 percent and who had only ever won his previous elections with pluralities of 37.4 percent, 37.6 percent, and 48.2 percent, back before Maine had RCV.
In college football terms, Janet Mills is a middling G5 program (Texas State, perhaps) that's undefeated in Week 3 because she faced an FCS school in Week 1 and Sam Houston State in Week 2. Susan Collins is University of Cincinnati. Not elite, but way more formidable than and likely to crush the Bobcats/Mills.
Jordan Wood has no shot at beating Susan Collins, no matter how badly the BlueSky Zionist libs wish it were the other way. He would fare even worse than Sara Gideon did in 2020. The guy has spent his entire adult life being a congressional staffer, for Californian representatives, including Katie Porter. Yes, this, Katie Porter.
The Susan Collin ads write themselves. In college football terms, Jordan Wood is UTSA (wouldn't even beat Texas State at home) and anyone who actually believes he would win a general election hasn't been paying attention.
Nobody else has any shot at being Susan Collins, because if they did you'd already have heard of them and they'd already have thrown their hats in the race. No Stephen King (too old). No Erin Andrews (who's probably a MAGAt like most sports media figures that have enjoyed any kind of success). No Anna Kendrick.
Technically, it's true that it's "not too late" for someone else to step up, to transition from a nobody to a somebody, but that's a completely unrealistic strategy. The reason Maine voters have grown so quickly to support Platner is because he is from outside the political mainstream, so in order to replicate his success the party would have to be completely hands-off. That just isn't going to happen. It has a lower population than Austin Metro's, so the field is going to be small by design.
How many people from that small population fit the profile of being completely unattached to the party apparatus, championing Bernie's policies, and "looking the part" of the sort of dude young men would have a beer with. The sort of candidate they wouldn't even have to hold their noses to rank on their ballots. He is the only candidate who matches up well with Susan Collins, because he's the only candidate who can flip a demographic that actually matters in a state like Maine.
In college football terms, Platner is a team with a dual threat QB (Vandy) the likes of which Cincinnati/Mills has not yet seen. He's where all the excitement can be found, in Maine. Definitely not perfect by any means, and if you were to look at this matchup through the lens of traditional politics/football it would suggest that his lack of experience and the oppo research, you would think he's too flawed to have any success. If you look at this matchup the way things really are on the ground, however, you begin to recognize that politics (and football) are very different today than ten years ago. You gotta throw conventional wisdom out the window, and do what it takes to win. The excitement on the ground is how points are scored these days. Trump figured that out in 2016, and the progressives who are most capable of generating excitement on the ground are the same ones who consistently beat the spread.
Of the entire Maine senate field, Platner and only Platner has figured that out. The tankies, who never had any clout and are pathologically miserable people who prefer to be unsuccessful if it means they get to be smug, and Zionists, who can't cope with the fact that Israel has never been less popular and will never be popular again, are burning mad about this dude not dropping out.
Oh, on the fear of him becoming the next Fetterman, Gallego, Sinema. I get it, but at this stage I believe the risk is overblown. He's still going to be no worse than Mills or Collins, so it would still be a net win. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly eat crow, but right now I'm not concerned about him being a secret centrist.