周六晚上，波特兰到处都是僵尸，而我并不确定这只是万圣节的缘故。
Zombies were everywhere in hyper-liberal Portland, Maine, on Saturday night, and I’m not sure it was just Halloween.
进酒吧10分钟后，一位和蔼的老嬉皮士好几次主动给我免费“烟卷”。
I was offered a free “doobie” several times by a kind old hippie after being in a bar for 10 minutes.
波特兰的大麻是合法的，就像纽约和其他蓝州城市一样，这些城市长期面临街头无家可归问题，不过掌权者绝不会承认这与提供“安全”注射场所和免费注射器的放任社会政策有关。你可能已经猜到，这里绝非苏珊·柯林斯的地盘。
Pot is legal in Portland, as it is in New York and other blue cities with chronic street homelessness, not that those in charge would ever admit a connection to laissez- faire social policies that provide “safe” injecting sites and free needles. You may have guessed it’s not exactly Susan Collins territory.
尽管难以捉摸的柯林斯对MAGA共和党人极不合群，并被特朗普视为RINO麻烦制造者，但波特兰居民会告诉你，她是总统的傀儡。他们对攻击其民主党对手特洛伊·杰克逊的广告感到厌倦，原因之一是杰克逊娶了自己的二表亲。
Despite the fact that the elusive Collins is aggressively uncollegial to MAGA Republicans and regarded as a RINO nuisance by Donald Trump, Portlandians will tell you she is the president’s puppet. They are fed up with ads trashing her Democrat opponent Troy Jackson for, among other things, marrying his second cousin.
在竞选中，柯林斯一直保持极低调，以至于杰克逊的团队在他的活动现场摆放了一个巨大的牛奶盒，上面印着她的照片，写着“失踪人员”启事。
She has kept such a low profile on the campaign that Jackson’s team displays a giant milk carton at his events featuring her face on a “missing persons” ad.
周日在斯卡伯勒的一次市政厅会议上，杰克逊几乎插不上话，与他同台的马萨诸塞州气候狂热分子、参议员埃德·马基占据了主导。
At a town hall in Scarborough on Sunday, Jackson barely got a word in over the Massachusetts climate zealot, Sen. Ed Markey, with whom he shared a stage.
“总统是腐败的自助餐厅，”马基调侃道，他频繁的特朗普抨击赢得了房间内100人的掌声，而他对柯林斯的攻击却遭到沉默。
“The president is an all-you-can-eat buffet of corruption,” quipped Markey, whose frequent Trump jibes drew applause from the 100 people in the room, while his Collins attacks were met with silence.
杰克逊只有在抨击像“伊隆·马斯克及其一群无赖……”这样的富人时才变得活跃起来。“七年级时我遇到了第一个亿万富翁，那可不是什么好事，”他神秘地说。
Jackson only became animated when railing against rich people like “Elon Musk and his merry band of scumbags …” “I met my first billionaire in seventh grade, and it wasn’t good,” he said mysteriously.
两人将高能源价格归咎于特朗普对伊朗的“非法”战争。虽然他们准确诊断出缅因州人最大的烦恼，但他们的解决方案是一个虚假的承诺。
The pair blamed high energy prices on Trump’s “illegal” war in Iran. While they accurately diagnosed Mainers’ biggest bugbear, their solution was a false promise.
马基声称，解决缅因州结构性能源问题的办法是联邦政府的绿色能源补贴。
Markey claimed that the way out of Maine’s structural energy problem is green energy subsidies from the federal government.
他承诺，杰克逊——一位自称是第五代伐木工——将在参议院成为“我们的气候冠军”。
He vowed Jackson, a self-described fifth-generation logger, would be “our climate champion” in the Senate.
如果柯林斯落败，很可能要归咎于缅因州家庭取暖油价格在过去一年几乎翻了一番。
If Collins loses, it will likely be blamed on the fact that the price of home heating oil has almost doubled in Maine in the past year.
《纽约邮报》专栏作家米兰达·迪瓦恩每周在“空军一号播客”节目中，与华盛顿最具影响力的颠覆者们进行独家而坦率的对话。点此收听！
这种抱怨在这个州引起共鸣，因为这里大多数人冬天用取暖油而非天然气或电来给房子供暖，而几乎所有的取暖油都是从加拿大跨境进口的。
Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington on ‘Pod Force One.’ here! It’s a complaint that resonates in a state where most people use heating oil to keep their houses warm in winter rather than natural gas or electricity, and almost all of it is imported across the border from Canada.
但还不要对柯林斯下定论。她了解自己的州，而且总是比民调表现更好。
But don’t count Collins out yet. She understands her state and always outperforms the polls.
她知道沿海地区（“北马萨诸塞”）与缅因内陆自给自足、森林茂密的地区是两个世界，也知道那里与昔日磨坊镇——白人劳动阶层的残余与索马里移民比邻而居——不同，与她长大的东部土豆农场也不同。在生活艰苦的地方，左派的童话行不通。
She knows the coast (“northern Massachusetts”) is a different world from the self-sufficient, deeply wooded parts of inland Maine, or the former mill towns where the remnants of the white working class live alongside Somali immigrants, or the potato farms of the east where she grew up. Where life is rugged, leftist fairy tales don’t fly.
正因如此，柯林斯在参议院坚持了30年，策略性地搞猪肉桶政治，守口如瓶，并在每次选举中让唱衰者无话可说。
It’s why Collins has hung on for 30 years in the Senate, pork-barreling strategically, keeping her counsel and defying the naysayers at every election.
如果共和党多数席位被参议院最怀疑特朗普的成员所拯救，那将是多大的讽刺。
What an irony if the Republican majority is saved by the Senate’s most Trump-skeptical member.