This year, it’s clear as the most important factor is just how unpopular Trump is. I wouldn’t say the candidates are immaterial, you can have candidates that fit their states, fit their districts, but I’m not sure how many lessons you can draw, but people are going to want to draw the lessons, in part because I think Platner in particular is not just a candidate, but I think he’s like a position in an intra-Democratic Party factional battle. You know, support for Platner is, among Democratic, high-level, prominent Democratic politicians. A signal, for example, of where you stand with Chuck Schumer’s leadership, being that Mills was a Chuck Schumer candidate, right. Support for Platner signals where you stand with regards to the overall orientation, rhetorical orientation that you think Democratic candidates should take. It stands with how you view the kinds of people that Democrats tend to recruit to run for office. Should they be polished, with the right credentials? Should there be a bit of a looser and more open approach to candidate recruitment? So there are all these things that are tied up in Platner that I think don’t actually have that much to do with Graham Platner, and have much more to do with these factional battles that are happening, have a lot to do with the particular constellation of consultants who are behind Platner and who are looking for, perhaps, like, a greater say in the direction of Democratic Party strategy. I mean, to me, that’s one of the interesting things about this entire dynamic, about observing the arguments about Platner online, is that everything feels like a proxy fight, and not so much dealing with the particular candidate in the particular race in their particular circumstance.
