Maine Democratic Senate hopefuls back once fringe position after ICE shooting

Graham Platner is gone and the first thing the candidates do is reach for the most extreme position in the drawer. I have been many things, a federal marshal once, and I know that abolishing an enforcement agency and replacing it with nothing is not a policy. It is a signal.

What are they actually promising voters they will get? Ask them directly. What replaces it? Who enforces what laws, and how? The answers to those questions matter far more than whether a candidate is willing to say the word.

J

Abolish ICE is exactly the kind of position that hands Susan Collins a gift-wrapped reelection. Maine is not Brooklyn. You want to flip that seat? Run on border accountability, not abolition. There's a real argument to be made that ICE needs serious reform and oversight, and instead these candidates are going to spend the next year defending a slogan that polls at 20 percent nationally. Graham Platner built something real in that state. This is not honoring his legacy, this is torching it for a primary base that can't actually deliver a general election.

Calling for ICE to be abolished after an ICE shooting is a clean little demonstration of how Democrats can take a real crisis and immediately hand Republicans a campaign ad. If the goal is to beat Susan Collins, maybe start with something that sounds like governing instead of a slogan for the cable news loop.