The short answer to why Sen. Susan Collins must go is that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell must go and she is one of their chief enablers. In order to restore the democratic rule of law, it is absolutely imperative that we replace the tyrant Trump and the obstructionist McConnell with elected officials who will serve the public interest rather than their own self interest.
Freelance journalist Edgar Allen Beem lives in Brunswick. The Universal Notebook is his personal, weekly look at the world around him.
Susan Collins may once have been a humble public servant, but since the advent of Trump she has morphed into an unrecognizable sycophant who allies herself 90% of the time with Trump. This from a woman who once understood that Donald Trump was “unworthy of being our president” and did not vote for him in 2016.
Because she voted for Trump’s tax cut for the rich, his sexist judicial nominee Brett Kavanaugh and to acquit Trump himself in the Senate impeachment trial, Collins has plummeted in public opinion polls. A Morning Consult poll of 500,000 Americans in January ranked her as the least popular member of the Senate, even more disliked than Mitch McConnell. Collins has fallen from grace because Mainers and Americans used to expect better of her.
It is clear from Collins’ campaign ads, however, that she sees herself not as a servant but as a savior of the people. It is both embarrassing and revealing that she would choose to show a tearful Lubec woman calling her “our savior” because the federal government paid $20 million for harbor improvements and a Yarmouth mother and her lovely daughter calling Collins a champion because she is co-sponsoring a bill to lower the criminally high cost of insulin.
There is an element of truth and an element of exploitation in both these ads. You’re not a savior just for helping get transportation funds and you’re not a champion just because you co-sponsor a bill that hasn’t passed even though no one other than Big Pharma would oppose it. The price of insulin tripled between 2002 and 2013. Seven years later, no one has done a damn thing about it.
Drug company executives should be sent to prison, but Susan Collins will never punish them because they bankroll her political campaigns. That’s also why she will never help enact meaningful gun control laws. Her whole career was launched with backing from Richard Dyke, former owner of Bushmaster, the Maine company that manufactured the assault weapon used to slaughter little children and their teachers in Newtown, Connecticut.
Collins pledged to only serve two terms when she first ran for Senate in 1996. Four terms, 24 years, is long enough. Too long in Collins’ case. She no longer serves the people of Maine and America, she serves Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and her corporate donors.
Maine’s disenchantment with Collins is expressed through frequent sightings of “Bye-Bye, Susan” bumper stickers, but I fear this sentiment may be wishful thinking. Collins is more vulnerable than she has ever been, Democratic candidate Sara Gideon would be a refreshing change, and the race may be close, but it almost seems more than one can hope that Collins will be defeated.
If Susan Collins wins a fifth term, it will be because of the power of incumbency, seniority, geography and nativity. All she has going for her now is that she is native of northern Maine. That’s not enough. Sen. Collins has overstayed her welcome and, in the process, destroyed her legacy. She really must go.
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