Hey everyone. Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the bulwark. And I want to talk to you guys about Maine,

because as you have probably seen, Janet Mills dropped out of the Maine Senate race in the Democratic

primary last week. And we had a focus group pod that was in production. We'd been talking to Maine

Democratic voters. And since she dropped out, we're not going to do that episode,

but I still wanted to talk to you about some of the contours of the race that I thought were

really interesting, especially what I heard from voters about Graham Platner and what they think

about him. So I want to start, though, just because this is important. Janet Mills was Chuck Schumer's sort of handpicked candidate.

She is a popular governor in the state of Maine.

Like, wasn't a crazy thing to think that Janet Mills would be a good get to run in the Senate as a Democrat against Susan Collins.

But Democratic voters in Maine basically revolted.

And I think that, look, she's 78.

She's been in statewide office since 2009. She's been governor

since 2019. And so even though these voters liked her, they had real concerns about her age.

The Democrats feel like they've been burned on age issues in the recent past. And so that was a

problem for them.

And then if it wasn't just her age, it was also sort of her status as a legacy politician,

too tied to the Democratic Party establishment that they're losing faith in. Let's listen to how

these voters talked about Janet Mills.

The thing about Janet Mills is like, he just said, her age, for one thing.

But the thing that gets me with her is, I mean, she's been, she started off.

I thought fantastic.

She was sticking to her goals, her promises, her blah, blah, blah.

...