(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)

LAST WEDNESDAY, in an interview with Fox News, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) accused her Democratic challenger, former state Senate President Troy Jackson, of being soft on crime. She warned viewers that months earlier, Jackson had “welcomed the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America” while running in the Democratic primary for governor.

Then, in a Thursday-night debate aired on Maine’s PBS stations, Collins didn’t breathe a word about the DSA. Instead, she distanced herself from Donald Trump’s policies. Emphasizing her clout as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she claimed that she had used that position—along with her access to administration officials—to compensate Mainers for some of the costs imposed by the president.

By Friday night, Collins was back on Fox News. And, suddenly, she was back to fretting about socialism. “It’s interesting to me that Bernie Sanders has been to Maine to campaign with [Jackson]. Elizabeth Warren’s coming this week. AOC is coming next week. I think that tells you a lot about where Troy Jackson stands,” the senator told Sean Hannity. She concluded that Jackson had “gone far left on a lot of issues.”

This is Collins’s re-election strategy. To Trump voters, her message is that she’ll stand up to the left. To everyone else, her message is: If you’re unhappy with Trump and the GOP, only Susan Collins—by being powerful, and being a Republican—can reduce your suffering.

It’s a bleak pitch. Collins essentially concedes that the pain inflicted by her own party will go on, and that all she can do is lessen it. The question her candidacy presents to Mainers is whether they’ll settle for that grim bargain, or whether they’ll give her seat to a party that will take on Trump for real.

DEMOCRATS HAVE TRIED TO UNSEAT Collins for many cycles. They’ve always come up short. That’s because her formula—presenting herself as a moderate lawmaker who delivers for her constituents—has proved persuasive to Maine’s voters. But this time, her shtick about legislative efficacy might be overwhelmed by voters’ anger at Trump. At a minimum, his destructive presidency has prompted far greater scrutiny of her go-along-to-get-along approach.

In recent months, Collins has given three interviews that illustrate how she thinks about her job. In June, Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked her about her three decades in the Senate. “In 1996, you said you would only run for two terms,” MacCallum noted. “And yet now you’re running again [for a sixth term]. Why is that? And did that break a promise that you once made?”

Collins said she had changed her mind and decided to stay when she realized how much power she could accumulate. “I underestimated how much seniority, experience, and knowledge matters in the Senate,” she told MacCallum. “When I look at what I could do as a freshman senator, versus what I can do as chair of the Appropriations Committee, the most powerful committee in the Senate, there’s a huge difference.”

But what has Collins done with that power? In April, at a forum hosted by Semafor, she bragged about