The dude has literally dozens of easily discoverable quote-bites of him excitedly expressing how much he loves killing, can’t get enough of it, wants to get back to doing it asap. How does he pass any smell test at all for anybody who is nominally on the left? I just don’t get it, I feel like he should be seen as so rotten that touching him would taint you (looking at popular youtubers and twitch personalities).
There are sort of two lefts in Maine. The “populists” which have deep Trotskyist roots but are more like Greens (and the AFL), then the Marxist left which is much smaller and mostly Trotskyist ultras and two small MLish groups. The former have deep ties to the Bernie network (which is why he’s gotten so much national coverage) and are all in for Platner. The latter might be quietly supportive of Platner but notably haven’t endorsed him.