Susan Collins goes completely off the rails

| 4:30 pm EST March 5, 2020
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Ayuh, Susan Collins, the Mainahs (people of Maine) are kickin’ you down cellah (into the basement). Anyone who’s read any Stephen King knows that the straight-talking people of New England, and Maine in particular, don’t take kindly to trumpery. As with so many of the apologists for child rapist and traitor Donald Trump, Maine Senator Susan Collins is puzzled why she’s suddenly so unpopular. And therein lies the problem, not that it’s a puzzle that she’s unpopular, but that she doesn’t understand why.

Statehouse speaker and Democratic challenger Sara Gideon may have an explanation for her. “Wherever we have been in the state, people will come up to us and say, what do you think happened to Susan Collins?” Gideon explained. “We really hear that question posed in that way all of the time. It feels like she is making decisions that are in somebody else’s interest, not in ours.”

That “somebody else” is, of course, Donald Trump. The most recent decisions Collins made that don’t sit well with the people of Maine were her vote to affirm Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, and, of course, her vote to acquit Donald Trump in his impeachment trial. From the standpoint of the average “Mainah,” that was “wicked bad.”

In a high-stakes re-election year with control of the United States Senate its second most consequential prize, Collins’ race represents more than just a symbolic restoration of the New England Senate to the Democratic Party. It’s payback time. Her work for the most hated president in memory makes this race personal, not just for the people of Maine, but for the people of the rest of the country as well.

Collins is clueless and, as usual, out of her depth. “I don’t even understand that argument,” Collins says. “I am doing exactly the same thing I’ve always done. I’ve always cast votes with an eye to how they affect the state of Maine and our country.”

Perhaps senator Collins needs to be sat down Maine fashion and have it explained to her that the people of Maine — the women of Maine in particular — value a woman’s right to choose, and Brett Kavanaugh is an enemy of that right. And now that she knows that her child raping president didn’t in fact “learn from the experience [of being impeached],” despite her “aspirational” hopes that he would, she can understand why so many people hate her. And they hate her not just in Maine but in the rest of the country as well.

“There have been times when I’ve annoyed the Republicans, and times when I’ve annoyed the Democrats. I think most Mainers appreciate that independent approach to the issues,” Collins said. This time, it would appear, she’s annoyed most of the people of Maine and, as a bonus, the rest of the country.

Should Maine and the rest of the country lose its pro-choice rights and should Roe v Wade be repealed, many people will look for someone to blame, and much of that blame will justly fall on the shoulders of Susan Collins. With any luck this, her fourth term, will also be her final one, because, in the words of the New England band They Might Be Giants, you “can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.”