Trevor Currier hardly stands alone in this dissociative exercise. It’s worth remembering that our local Republicans—and here I’m thinking in particular of Senator Bruce Tarr, Micah Q. Jones, and Mike Minogue—eagerly present themselves as moderates.

Why not come clean and admit that they draw water from the same toxic institutional well as the rest of their party? Or, if they claim not to, run as “Independents”? There is no longer a moderate Republican wing in Massachusetts—there is an expediency MAGA wing whose representatives will tell you exactly what you need to hear to get them elected.

WE ARE DIFFERENT

Sure, we have expediency issues, too: among them, attempts to explain away Graham Platner’s failure to seize control of his means of (re)production and his overeager tattoo artist, dismal DNC finances, Fetterman, the lack of a congressional spine. I’m sure our usual circular firing squad can come up with others. But the difference between our Democratic local elected representatives and the Republicans is that we don’t have to twist ourselves into embarrassing pretzels to conceal our true colors and defend preposterous positions.

Platner might have sexually abused someone? The Maine Democrats dealt with it. (The same, of course, cannot be said of the Republicans—Trump is prima facie, adjudicated evidence of this.) Our party has a Democratic Socialist wing? A Progressive wing? A moderate wing? A corporatist wing? Great! We wish for solidarity, unity, and loyalty and try to hash it out; but unlike the current Republican party, no one in the Democratic Party is demanding top-down conformity or fealty. Nationwide or locally—there’s room for disagreement. We’re a big-tent party—and we get no marching orders from above.

I’ve never met Trevor Currier. He’s young, and young people do curious things and make mistakes—but his recent attempts at profiling himself as a normal Republican, divorced from the realities of DC in the current climate, seem particularly conspicuous.

Like many of the voters he seems to cater to—we’re sure—we’d like to be convinced that what we’re seeing is a return of the reasonable Massachusetts Republican. We remain skeptical that that person is Currier.