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Living in Maine, as I do, which is usually far off the beaten political track, I seldom have a front-row seat to the kerfuffle of the day or a chance to assess how accurately the mainstream media covers those kerfuffles. But now, suddenly, I do.

A lot of folks are understandably discombobulated by the departure of Graham Platner from the Senate race. Many are also anxious. The media is especially anxious—not so much about Democrats winning the seat—I doubt they care—but about how screwed up things allegedly are in Maine. Calling Democrats inept and predicting their failure is one of the legacy media’s favorite sports. As The Atlantic put it: “Platner just made things harder for Democrats.”

So the first thing I would say I have learned these last two days is that the so-called experts in the punditrocracy have no idea what they are talking about. They don’t know Maine, and they don’t know Maine politics. When they say that the selection process is a “mess,” that is just plain wrong. Given the exigencies of the need for a selection and the cramped time frame, the logistics are difficult, but I get no sense of chaos. The process, as it is being formulated and described, seems orderly to me, or as orderly as any can be under these circumstances. The process also sounds fair: A whole lot of Democrats (I sincerely hope to be among them) will gather at a “convention” to make a selection. This isn’t a bunch of pols in a smoke-filled room.

Second, the so-called experts tell us that there are deep divisions in the party here, that same old cleavage between progressives and moderates, and that schism will likely affect the selection and the prospects for a November victory. The problem with this assessment is that I sense almost no divisions here, especially now that Governor Janet Mills, who did rile her fellow Dems, is basically off the scene. Platner may complain, rightfully in some sense, that the establishment tried to sink his chances. But the establishment he should be accusing is not the state establishment, which is solidly, almost uniformly, progressive, but the national Democratic establishment, which did everything it could to defeat him (with Mills), and the legacy media, which hated (not too strong a word) Platner. They gave him the treatment they should be giving Trump. His beef is with them,........

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