Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who has sold her soul to Donald Trump and doesn't understand why that's a problem, is whining that people are being mean to her and she might just take her ball and go home.
"The divisiveness of our country and the unceasing attacks by dark money groups in Maine have clearly had an impact," Collins told Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis, after telling him that she hasn't decided for sure that she's even going to run for re-election. But wait ...
"But I believe that once Mainers really focus on the race and we remind them of my being the No. 1 most bipartisan member of the Senate, and all the accomplishments that I can point to that have directly benefited the state, I'll be fine." Uh huh. She's not thinking of quitting, not really. She's sending out a bat signal to get more dark-money groups to fund her. Like she did last week when she put a bunch of b-roll tape out on the internet for the dark-money groups she's totally not coordinating with to pick up and put into ads for her.
She knows how that works. Last fall, she was the grateful beneficiary of around $100,000 in the form of a dark-money ad from the Judicial Crisis Network thanking her for her vote for Brett Kavanaugh. "In the midst of the chaos one leader stood out," one of the ads said. "She did the right thing, supporting him. Thanks Susan Collins, for being a reasonable voice in Washington."
In fact, Collins has been raising a lot of outside money, and very little from the folks back home. She raised $2 million in the last quarter, but only about $26,000 from small-dollar donors, and even worse, a whopping 95% of her total haul came from out of state. She's raised less than $100,000 from people in Maine.
Her problem is not scary outside groups picking on her in Maine. Her problem is the people of Maine, and the nation, who have had enough of her schtick and are voting early with their dollars. In November 2020 they'll cast their ballots and cast her out, if for nothing else but the fact that she said in this interview, with a straight face, that she can hoodwink them into falling for the "No. 1 most bipartisan member of the Senate" line.
Let's keep building that fund. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!
