Katty Kay

So although he's seen, I think, as being very populist, he's an interesting brand of populism in the Democratic Party.

He's different from, say, Mamdani, and he's different from the guy in Michigan who we're going to talk about in a second, too.

What do you think of him?

Do you think he can win in Maine?

Susan Collins, you're talking about, the sitting Republican senator.

and kind of PTSD from being a veteran.

Republicans are thrilled about this.

But I think there is a question, is there a mood in American politics at the moment?

And what's interesting about Plattner is I don't think you can say he's hard left.

I think you can say he's populist and he's anti-establishment.

But some of what he says is left and some of what he says has echoes of cultural conservatism.

He's an interesting kind of very main specific candidate, specific to that kind of rural working class state, white state.

I think there's a chance that he wins because of the nature of the state that he's coming from and because he is tapping into something else.

about income inequality and hard times that a lot of American voters are feeling at the moment.

So I think Maine is still in play.

Republicans are thinking gleefully, that's it.

Susan Collins gets back in again.

The other thing that's happening in Maine is he's much younger.

And Susan Collins is much older and has been around for decades.

And there is a sort of generational shift taking place in American politics, which you're seeing in the Michigan race, too, where you've got a whole group of younger people running and younger voters are fed up with old people hanging on to seats decade after decade and never stepping down and getting, you know, kind of corrupted by Washington and by power.