If you thought you heard a loud, collective groan earlier this week, you probably did.
That would have been Maine Democrats expressing considerable frustration at the latest gubernatorial polls, which indicate Independent Eliot Cutler and Democrat Mike Michaud are set to divide the anti-Paul LePage vote enough to allow the Republican incumbent to squeak into a second term.
If you recall, this is more or less exactly how LePage got elected in the first place. In 2010, the Democrats put up the listless Libby Mitchell and she and the then late-charging Cutler divided the anti-LePage voters to the point where 39 percent of the vote was enough to deliver the Blaine House to LePage.
The fallout of this recent poll has been much (Democratic) opprobrium heaped on Cutler’s head, as if the independent is somehow duty bound not to despoil a two-horse race with his pitiful third-party nag.
We dismiss such concerns out of hand.
We leave it to the candidates to earn the votes and put our faith in the voters who actually cast their ballots.
When it comes to third-party candidates, Democrats will always point to the 2000 presidential election, claiming Green Party candidate Ralph Nader siphoned away 97,421 critical Florida votes that would have delivered the presidency to Al Gore.
Mathematically, they are likely correct. Absent a third option, most of those Nader votes in Florida and elsewhere probably would have gone to Gore.
Such an argument belies the contention that Gore lost that election more so than anyone else won it. Coming off eight prosperous years, under a personally popular president, and facing a national stage neophyte, the 2000 election should have never been that close to begin with.
Mike Michaud supporters had best stop worrying about how many voters Cutler is going to cost their man and start figuring out how they are going to get more Michaud voters to the polls, if in fact they can.
Both Cutler and Michaud had better figure out a way to get it done because Paul LePage is going to do what he does, and as he proved in 2010, he is a formidable campaigner.
If Cutler or Michaud is going to be the man for the job then they need to make that case on its merits. Just being the anti-LePage isn’t going to be enough.
