Dem
52
Ties
3
GOP
45
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson met in their first debate last night:
The good news is that it only lasted an hour. The bad news is that it's the first of four debates planned for this month. Pity the Maine voter who wishes to be well-informed.
We're not so sure we'll watch all four, but we did watch this one. Collins is polished, but boring. Also, and we're going to be blunt so as to convey an accurate sense of things, she has what you might call "old lady voice." We have no knowledge that she has Parkinson's Disease, but if she were to announce a diagnosis tomorrow, we would not be shocked. Please be clear, this is not to denigrate the Senator. However, one of the themes of this cycle is "new blood." Collins' speaking style screams "old blood," in bold, underlined letters. Jackson, for his part, is much less polished, though he's gotten better. That said, he's very fidgety, and that's distracting.
The main theme of the debate was finger-pointing. So much so that the headline in the Maine Morning Star is, "In first debate, Collins and Jackson blame each other for Mainers' struggles." You really don't need to watch the debate to know that Jackson has the better side of that argument. He was only in the state legislature, and he's not even in office anymore. She's a sitting U.S. Senator, and the thing that's really irking Maine voters is the tariffs, particularly those on Canada. Fuel prices are another source of ire. Collins is clearly much closer to the source of both issues than Jackson is.
Jackson wielded three things as a cudgel: ICE, Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. Collins ducked and weaved, and tried to establish that she's definitely a Republican, but she's not fanatical about it. For example, she said ICE's behavior has been concerning, but that doesn't mean the agency needs to be shut down. And she said that she's not happy with Brett Kavanaugh's vote in Dobbs, but she still thinks he's a good and qualified justice. Particularly odd was when she conceded that she has voted with Trump 95% of the time, but that's based on only 30% of the votes the Senate takes. She also said that she voted with Joe Biden more than 90% of the time. We listened to that part of the debate several times, and we still don't entirely understand the needle she was trying to thread. But we are certainly skeptical that Collins is roughly as likely to support a Democratic president as she is a Republican president on key votes.
There was also some attention paid to Collins' alleged corruption, namely that she took campaign contributions in exchange for steering government contracts to donors. This is clearly a problem for her, such that she made a point of releasing new, ostensibly exculpatory, evidence right before the debate. Our sense is that neither the new evidence, nor Collins' remarks during the debate, are going to change any minds.
Collins' main argument, meanwhile, was that she has brought lots of pork to Maine, whereas Jackson was an incompetent legislator who couldn't get things done. The first part of this argument is pretty good. The second part, less so. Should Jackson be elected, surely nobody expects a junior senator to suddenly take the lead in setting the Senate's agenda.
The upshot is that Collins had the harder job last night, given the baggage she's got, and the fine line she has to walk, and we don't think she did a great job of responding to the challenge. Jackson was somewhere between "competent" and "good," and that was enough to make him the winner, if a winner must be declared. That said, it's going to be very hard to know if these debates moved the needle or not. About 800,000 people are going to vote in this particular election, and the majority of them are already set in their choice. Spread the impact of the debates over four different meetings, and then consider that early voting has begun, and there will be fewer available voters each time Collins and Jackson debate. Barring a major screw-up by one candidate or the other, the effect of these tilts is only going to be felt around the margins. (Z)