But Democrats face a titanic challenge coalescing around a new nominee and have a short window to build a campaign from scratch. There’s the infighting over what, exactly, that process looks like as Platner holds out for a progressive successor. 

The Maine Democratic Party has so far promised a process that is “open, inclusive, transparent, and fair,” although it has so far been tight-lipped on whether that includes debates, a statewide caucus, or some other format. MS NOW reported late on Wednesday that officials are considering a full-fledged convention.

Then comes the challenge of actually reintroducing a nominee to Maine voters with four months until Election Day — and doing so in a way that insulates that person from Platner’s political baggage.

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The entire episode is reminiscent of Harris’s failed campaign for president, and Democrats don’t have to squint hard to see the parallels. She had roughly 100 days to pick up the mantle from former President Joe Biden and struggled to separate herself from the administration and its policies.

Looking back, the party’s decision to hand-pick her, rather than pursue the sort of “blitz primary” proposed by some Democrats, was also viewed as a strategic mistake that damaged voter trust.

The question now is whether Platner’s successor can avoid Harris’s fate in a battleground that may decide whether Democrats retake control of the Senate next year.

Andrew Bates, a former spokesman for the Biden White House, called the Platner succession battle a “good analog” to what Democrats went through in 2024, and said he was heartened that the Maine Democratic Party was promising an “inclusive” process.

“My top recommendation looking back at 2024 would be that there does need to be some kind of competitive process and the ability for everyday people to at least weigh in publicly,” Bates told the Washington Examiner.

“A lot of voters did not care for the idea that someone had been chosen for them,” he added, “even if it was not logistically possible to do more primaries.”

The outcome was a decisive loss for Harris in half a dozen swing states, some of which Bates attributed to the “bad taste” the ballot switch-up left in voters’ mouths.

The recriminations from the presidential race continue to play out two years after Biden dropped out after his poor debate performance against now-President Donald Trump. Earlier this year, former first lady Jill Biden embarked on a book tour that reopened those wounds, prompting criticism from Bates and other Democrats who questioned the wisdom of doing so publicly right before the midterm elections.

Also shaping the Platner saga is a civil war that has the Left fanning doubts that the Maine Democratic Party can be a neutral umpire. 

Platner’s allies were already at odds with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), whose preferred candidate in the primary, Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME), failed to gain traction.

The rhetoric escalated this week as Platner refused to bow out of the race unless he had a role in picking his replacement. The state party accused his team of attempting to “put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like.”

The Platner campaign, in turn, accused Maine officials of conspiring with Schumer “behind closed doors” to cut out the left wing of the party.

That bitterness could ultimately increase the odds that an open process develops. Maine Democrats need Platner to drop out before a Monday ballot deadline, and as an olive branch, the state party promised to include his allies in the planning on Wednesday.

Also calling for a transparent process is a slate of Democrats who ran for other elected offices this year and have expressed interest in replacing Platner. Nirav Shah, a former health official who placed second in the gubernatorial primary last month, has advocated at least one televised debate and warned that a failure to make the handoff as democratic as possible could cost Democrats votes in November.

“That’s critical, because if the process is anything but, if it is a handing of the torch, then the eventual nominee will not have generated enough trust and buy-in from the base, let alone the broader party, to be able to prosecute the case against Sen. Collins,” he told the Boston Globe.

One of Platner’s biggest pieces of leverage is that he is not alone in pushing for a more progressive nominee. Virtually all of his supporters have called on him to drop out of the Senate race, describing the rape allegations as a “red line,” but share his distrust of the political establishment.

And in a bid to keep control of the process, Platner’s team is soliciting feedback from volunteers and other supporters through Friday.

On the whole, Bates argued that Democrats will come out in a “better spot” if Platner withdraws, something the Platner campaign reportedly found in flash polling taken after the sexual assault allegations emerged on Monday.

Former state Sen. Troy Jackson, a progressive favorite, performed better than either Platner or Mills in a survey that polled Maine voters on six different possible candidates.

“People are rightly going to be disgusted by these allegations, and if he were to go forward, they would be a very serious wound,” Bates said of Platner. “Another person who does not have that background would have a better chance at winning.”

Still, the risk of bartering with the Left is Democrats’ eventual nominee may carry some of Platner’s baggage into the general election, and Republicans are banking on that being the case.

For Harris, Democrats believe it was the anemic economy under Biden and her unwillingness to break in any substantial way from his presidency that contributed to her loss. She is weighing another run in 2028, when Trump is term-limited, but is expected to face a crowded field of Democratic competitors.

In Maine, the liability is being linked with a man who spent months explaining controversial social media posts and why he had a Nazi-linked tattoo on his chest.

“These people who promoted this con artist for their own personal and political gain should not be part of the process to repair the damage they have caused,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president of policy at the center-left Third Way. “And that is both for moral reasons and practical reasons.”

The Maine Democratic Party has attempted to mitigate against that impression by coming out so forcefully against Platner, reiterating Wednesday its allegation that he was trying to “manipulate” the process.

But Kessler, a former Schumer adviser, argued that Platner’s “accomplices in the political consulting class” should also be barred from the debate. 

“No one associated with this disaster can win the majority of votes in Maine,” Kessler said. “The nominee to beat Collins must be someone who can credibly say that they were not a part of this. His endorsement and seal of approval is poison.”

Bates countered that ignoring Platner’s candidacy altogether is not realistic and would disregard how spectacularly Mills floundered.

“My first thought is that he’s not in a position to be making demands,” Bates said of Platner. “But his supporters have every right to make a case to the party that they do act in a way that is mindful of what the electorate was saying in choosing somebody who came from a nontraditional background.”

Platner, although he won the nomination, was an early underdog and campaigned as a political outsider running against the establishment.

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On Schumer, Bates defended his recruitment of competitive candidates across the Senate map, but said recruiting Mills, viewed as a more conventional Democrat, turned out to be an “error.”

“She was not the kind of person that Mainers are interested in representing them, and sometimes heavy-handedness can backfire,” he said.