This means he can be replaced with another Democrat
Graham Platner can be replaced as the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine if he withdraws from the race by next Monday, and state law would then give the state Democratic Party until July 27 to name a replacement.
I think you’re underestimating how unpopular Republicans are right now. Not to say any generic Democrat is guaranteed to win, but it’s not like everything is set in stone already considering so
I don’t know. Recent polls showed the Platner/Collins race as a statistical dead-heat (tied within the margin of error). Collins has massive amounts of money to spend, and significant support from outside of Maine. Platner was generating a lot of enthusiasm; there were many houses with Platner signs in their lawns that had never publicly displayed such support for a candidate before. I think a lot of those people are going to be pretty disillusioned by this entire experience, and it won’t take many former Platner supporters staying home to tip the scales for Collins.
We’ll see what happens…
(edit: some coverage of the poll I mentioned, obviously from before the latest Platner issues were published. centralmaine.com)