Susan Collins is still a safe bet for Maine: Tiana Lowe Doescher

Susan Collins has made a career out of surviving cycles that should have ended her. The Platner collapse is just the latest reminder of why. Democrats had a chance to run a candidate with actual working-class appeal in a state that likes to think of itself as blue-collar and independent, and instead they got tangled up with someone whose politics were a little too honest about being a socialist. That's not a strategy. That's a party stuck between what it wants to say and what Maine voters will actually tolerate.

Collins knows this terrain better than almost anyone in the Senate. She's been written off before, by both parties, and keeps coming back because she reads her state correctly even when Washington doesn't. If Democrats nominate another candidate who sounds like he wandered out of a DSA meeting rather than a Bangor diner, she doesn't even have to work that hard. Maine isn't Vermont. It has a stubborn independent streak that punishes candidates who forget where they're running.

None of this means Collins is untouchable. She's frustrated plenty of Republicans over the years with votes that read more like triangulation than conviction. But "safe bet" isn't the same as "beloved." It just means the alternative has to actually be electable, and right now the Democratic bench in Maine looks thinner than they'd like to admit. Until that changes, Collins keeps her seat by default as much as by design.