Katty Kay

Here's the maths.

Democrats need to add four seats to their total.

Then they control the Senate as well.

The seats that are in play are Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, and Michigan and Maine.

And we're going to talk about Michigan and Maine.

Today, quickly, in Maine, something important happened last week, which is that in the primary, and we're still in the primary phase, in Maine, there is this guy Graham Plattner, who we've spoken about, ex-vet, ex-oyster farmer, more on the populist wing of the Democratic Party, younger.

He was up against the sitting governor, Janet Mills, who was going to step down as governor and run for the Senate seat, and last week, in something pretty seismic in Maine politics,

Janet Mills pulled out of the race saying she didn't have enough money and she didn't have enough support.

It was very interesting because you have an establishment Democratic politician who normally would have been a shoo-in for the Senate race to be the nominee for the Democratic Party in Maine.

And along comes this upstart with no political background.

There's no machinery behind him, and somehow he takes fire.

Democratic voters in Maine think, this is the guy we want because he is anti-establishment.

Young voters in particular like him.

I think Republicans are thrilled that Janet Mills has pulled out because they thought she was a harder opponent for them in Maine.

Democrat activists are thrilled that she's pulled out because they like Graham Plattner.

Graham Plattner is a super interesting character, Anthony, because in some ways he's very progressive, economically very progressive against the oligarchy, against income inequality, but he's also pretty in line with Maine, which is a white...

quite conservative state.

So he opposes, for example, an assault weapons ban.

He doesn't call for abolishing ICE.

He just wants some ICE reform.