Well, whaddaya know. Looks like not even Susan Collins was buoyant enough to escape President Trump’s red undertow.
After 30 years of defying even extreme national political forces, the last Republican senator holding on in a blue state has wiped out like a drunken surfer. Her defeat in Maine drives home how national politics have trumped local concerns, even for lawmakers with strong personal brands and a deep store of good will among their electorates. Especially when that reputation was increasingly built on nostalgia and wishcasting.
A relic of the dying strain of independent, northeastern Republicanism, Ms. Collins made Democrats crazy in a way few other Republicans manage. They seethed at what they saw as her empty expressions of concern about her party’s increasing radicalism. They argued that on those occasions when she voted against her party, as with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it was theater that didn’t make a real difference. And she kept winning, even as she accumulated baggage in the Trump era, including her vote to acquit the president in his first impeachment trial and her votes to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and, more recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Until now. She was dragged down by the economic pain her state has suffered at the hands of Mr. Trump’s policies, most vividly his preposterous tariff war with Canada, which hit Maine hard.
Not to dismiss the Everyman charms of the new Democratic senator-elect, Troy Jackson, but this race was never about him. He was little more than a placeholder, a late-in-the-game substitute for Graham Platner, the oyster-farming populist who thrilled progressives until his candidacy collapsed beneath a pile of scandal and regret. Digging through the rubble of the primary, party elders dusted off Mr. Jackson, a former president of the State Senate who had placed third in the primary for governor.
A former logger, Mr. Jackson had more authentic working-class cred than Mr. Platner, which did not entirely redound to his benefit. He was a little too rude and rough around the edges for some people’s taste, with all the charisma of cottage cheese. Even his campaign team didn’t like his style and kept him almost hidden for much of the race.
But he avoided major missteps, and he did well in his debates against Ms. Collins — even if his telling her to “shut up” raised questions about his abrasive manner and attitude toward women. All things considered, Mr. Jackson was solidly meh. But it turned out that meh was enough to get him over the finish line. And once in the chamber, he could easily prove himself. His time in the state legislative trenches, including leadership, should give him a bit of a head start, and it’s worth noting that an electrifying campaigner and a successful lawmaker are not necessarily the same thing.
With Ms. Collins’s departure, the Senate is losing its last Rockefeller Republican. Not that the absence is likely to be keenly felt. For all her self-congratulatory moderation, the Maine senator made increasingly little difference in the hyperpolarized chamber, something even she recognized. During one of her debates this fall, when asked for an example of a time her vote against her president and party changed the outcome, she came up empty. In the end, even her vaunted independence gave way to Mr. Trump’s heavy hand.
In the Republican Senate conference Ms. Collins is leaving behind, the conditions for cross-aisle deal making have rarely looked bleaker. The only pragmatic, independent-minded moderate left standing is Lisa Murkowski. And for all her Alaska grit, there’s not much Ms. Murkowski can do by her lonesome — unless the bipartisan spirit suddenly moves the president. Which pretty much guarantees we’re in for more partisan nastiness and dysfunction until 2028 rids us of Mr. Trump’s toxic presence and his party can, hopefully, start easing its way back toward sanity.
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