Can a Beer Brewer Defeat Susan Collins?

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Find Out podcast.

I am very excited about this episode today because it's going to be all about my home state of Maine.

We had a little talk about Maine last week, which I got a lot of friends from home saying how much they liked the bath talk.

So we decided to bring on one of the newest entrants into the Senate race against Susan Collins.

Dan Cleben is with us today, who is the owner of the Maine beer company and is now a candidate for U.S.

Senate.

So Dan, thank you for joining us.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Tim.

Great.

Well, let's just kick off with the why.

Or actually, let's step back from that.

Let's give our audience a little bit of your background because your story is actually really, really amazing Uh, as somebody who started a business from the ground and is now, you know, across the country, like, just give us a little bit about who you are and how you came to be a successful brewery owner.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the, I think my backstory is kind of intrinsically kind of intertwined with the why I'm doing this.

I don't know if I can separate the two, but I'll give it a whirl.

Um, you know, I was

I met my wife in uh 2000 in Maine, and she's a nurse from Lubeck, Washington County.

We got married.

I went to law school

in Boston.

We're lucky enough.

I found a job.

We wanted to start a family back up here in Maine.

So we moved back up here to Maine.

I started my first job in 2007 as an attorney.

The Great Recession hit, and I got laid off.

And, you know, my wife and I.

Sure, a lot of the listeners can sympathize.

We were, I think, almost $200,000 in debt after undergrad in law school.

And we had just bought our first home, kind of a starter home.

We scraped together all the money we could and

bought our home.

And we were thinking about having kids.

And I wanted to come home.

And

I don't know if anybody on this podcast or out there, I know folks out there have experienced what it's like to lose their job, but it was pretty humbling and humiliating to have to walk home or go home and walk in the door and tell my wife that I was unemployed.

And I was was angry.

The Great Recession had cost me my job.

I was pretty pissed off.

I played by the rules.

I did everything right.

And here I was.

And I looked across the state and across the country.

And there were, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that were in the same boat.

But luckily, here's where beer comes in.

I learned how to homeboo while I was an attorney.

And my brother and I on the weekends, just to blow off steam, would go out into my garage and make beer we did it just as a hobby and uh so after i lost my job my i remember my brother coming to me and being like hey dan um

would you rather be an attorney or do you want to start a brewery and i said that's a pretty easy question i want to be a brewer uh the hard part was going to my wife and saying you know hey beth i know you you worked your ass off as a nurse or to meet through law school and we have you know the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and we have a mortgage payment But yeah, me and my brother, we want to start a brewery.

And this was back in 2009 when craft breweries were not starting up.

There hadn't been a brewery that started in Maine in quite a while.

But in any event, we decided to start a beer company, but we wanted to show that business could be a force for good, just given what we were seeing going on around us.

In 2009, we thought it was bullshit.

A bunch of kind of reckless speculation on Wall Street and government deregulation cost folks their jobs, their homes, their retirement.

So we said, Look, we're going to start Maine Beer Company with a simple motto of do what's right.

And so to us, that meant we're going to take care of our employees.

We want to pay them a living wage.

We're going to

cover 100% of their health care.

We're going to provide for their retirement, whether they want to contribute or not.

And we're also going to contribute 1% of our top line revenue to environmentally focused nonprofits.

And flash forward 16 years, here we are.

Main beer company is successful beyond, you know, kind of

my wildest dreams.

And,

you know, that's, that's kind of the backstory.

Well, I want to give, sorry, I just want to give a little context to how unique the

success is that Dan has had.

Maine now, at this point, has, I think, one of the highest per capita of breweries in the country.

There are a ton of them.

And so, in order to stand out, it's a really difficult thing.

And I can even say in New York where I go, sometimes I go to these like bougie like beer stores and they all rave about Maine brewing companies so it's it's really amazing to have both a high quality product and also do right by your by your workers which is is a is a really important thing that most people don't do yeah I mean yeah I mean you know that the craft beer revolution like we got in at the leading edge of kind of the craft beer boom.

And I think when we started, we were like the 18th brewery to ever start in Maine.

So going back to like 84 when Geary's opened to 2007, only under 20 breweries had ever opened up.

And we've we've had over 200 breweries in the state of Maine.

I think we're number two or three per capita in terms of number of breweries.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, and now I think you're what, in, in, in 30, 30 states or something like that, which is

35 or 36 states in the districts.

Um,

yeah, it's been, you know, but it goes to show, Tim.

I mean, look, if you

If you just lead with your values, you tell people kind of what you think, you give a shit about your employees, you give a shit about your community and the environment.

You know, I think, I think orthodox business school um teachings would be like hey you have to pinch pennies uh squeeze wages externalize costs you know cut back on benefits that's how you make a profit um that's just my brother and i were like that that's not sustainable maybe in the short term you know people can bank a lot of money and then they they retire and die and don't give a about their kids or their grandkids but that's that's not the kind of world that i want to live in it's not the kind of world i want to leave for my kids yeah and and then you know you have obviously had a very very very successful business.

Why on earth would you want to put that aside and go to the United States Senate?

Yeah.

My wife asked for a thing.

So

after having to convince her that it was a good idea

to start a brewery, now you're leaving that?

From lawyer?

From lawyer to

beer maker to politics.

That's like the backslide of the century, right?

I'm turning to a brewer now on the politics.

That the hawk thor is kind of, yeah, kind of, kind of wild.

But no, I mean, obviously my wife is

a saint and is extremely patient with me and my crazy ideas.

But in all seriousness,

you know, just like 16 years ago, when I looked around after the Great Recession hit and, you know, government wasn't, no, it wasn't doing anything to make people's lives better.

It was actually being pretty destructive and reckless and enabling a lot of reckless behavior.

And I look down at DC now and I, you know, government, it's the same shit going on.

And Susan Collins, I'm sorry, she's just,

she's not doing anything to stand up for hardworking Mainers up here.

You know, it's, it's, I think if we had a little bit more of the, you know, our motto is do what's right, a little more of that do what's right mentality down in DC where, look, you know, representatives, you know, senators actually give a shit about their constituents and are focused on the issues that matter to them, which is they want off on a home.

They want to have access to quality health care.

They want to be able to send their kids to school and not come out drowning in student loan debt.

I mean, these are just like, I think common sense issues that government has lost, frankly, has just lost focus on.

And I think people are rightly pissed off.

And, you know, and I think we just need more folks that haven't been, you know, Susan Collins has been there for almost 30 years, you guys.

I mean, sure, you know that.

Yeah.

And, you know, and I think people are just they look around both parties and they're like, we just need change.

Let's bring some voices in who, you know, have started a small business or don't have a background in, you know, that they haven't been in DC for decades and kind of lost touch.

But, Dan, I have a question for you.

I'm not from Maine.

Unlike inexplicably half the people on this call, I'm not from Maine.

I don't know anything about Maine.

And so, from the outside, you know, Susan Collins, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.

She's a beloved moderate.

Tim, get yourself under control.

I can't.

I can't get through this bit, Tim.

God damn it.

She is a beloved independent, independent Republican who does not do Donald Trump's dirty work.

She is not a lapdog for Mitch McConnell.

She's like, Why are you trying to come after this truly independent senator who is trying to do the best for everybody?

Am I incorrect in my assessment?

Because that's what the headlines tell me about Susan Collins.

Yeah, you're straight out of her comm shop, aren't you?

I mean, look, I pay people, people up here.

I've been talking to them, you know, all across this state over the last several months as I've been exploring this.

And, you know, look, I'll be honest, you know, a lot of folks here at one point or another in Susan Collins, almost 30 years have voted her.

But people, they're just sick and tired of her kind of performative politics.

I always like to say she's kind of always there when you don't need her.

Yeah.

She'll pass the vote when she knows she's safe.

Yeah, she'll take the bold stand when she knows that her caucus has the votes.

I mean, look at the shitty fucking bill that they passed that's stripping Medicaid from Witmanos up here, taking food off their tables, is basically scrapping our transition to a clean energy economy and doubling down on the energy sources of the 19th and 20th century.

Look, she voted to let that damn thing to the floor saying, oh, I'm deferential to my leader, you know, Senator Thun.

And then once Shudi Murkoski was going to vote for the bill, she said, I'm out.

I'm taking a stand.

I mean, that's just people see through that stuff.

And they're right for the pit.

A stand that doesn't mean anything.

You, oh my God, these guys are laughing because

this is the stuff I say all the time that she is, I will say it, she's a fraud.

She's not a moderate.

The only times that she votes against the party is like you said, when Thun says that she can.

And she and Lisa Murkowski switch

who gets to say yes and who gets to say no.

And you are also correct that she voted to put this vote, this bill on the floor.

Tell us a little bit, because we've had some other politicians from other states talk about the damage to their states and what this is going to look like.

From your perspective,

what is this big bullshit bill?

How is this going to hurt Maine?

Because from my perspective, it is going to be quite devastating for communities that actually need more help, not less.

Could we zoom out and not just Maine?

How is it going to hurt beer?

Because I think a lot of our audience cares.

Everyone cares about beer.

Like, how is the big, beautiful bill going to hurt beer?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah,

this bill, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's just a raw kind of transfer of wealth from the people that need it the most, people that need help the most, to people that need help the least.

I mean, period.

And how do they fund tax cuts for billionaires?

They take away health care and food from the most needy folks here in Maine and across the country.

And, you know, and I talk to folks like, well, you know,

I don't need Medicaid or Maine care is what we call our state program up here.

So what does that matter?

Well, you should care because luckily we live in a country where we don't just leave people sick and dying on the streets.

People will get health care.

They're going to go to the emergency room, which is the most expensive and inefficient form of health care delivery.

The hospital is going to pay for it.

And if they can't collect money from the indigent patient, which they're not going to, they're going to pass it on.

It's going to be higher health care costs for everybody else.

I mean, it's just economic.

So it does.

It impacts everybody up here.

And in addition to that, if you like good beer, you better like, you better be a fan of clean water.

sources of clean water.

Like we're up here in Maine.

We're lucky to have great water, which is why we make great beer up here in Maine.

You better be a fan of stable climate conditions so barley growers and hop growers can make money growing those crops.

And what this bill did was

not only did it it completely scrap a transition to a clean energy economy, it's penalizing.

I mean, it's penalizing folks who want to invest in solar farms, wind farms, battery farms.

And it's doubling down and incentivizing folks who want to extract oil and natural gas, the energy sources of the 19th and 20th century.

I mean, it's a completely cruel, callous, and backward-looking bill that Senator Collins, again,

when she had the moment to stand up and use her power, the all-powerful appropries chairwoman, she didn't.

She only stood up in Gurusby and we didn't need her.

I think the prop, the thing that really should concern Mainers, I think, is energy costs related to this bill where they stripped stripped out all of the, like you said, the wind and solar and battery projects.

Maine in the winter, shocker to everybody.

It's cold.

It's cold.

Not as cold as it used to be.

It's cold.

It's really cold.

It's really, really cold.

I mean, I tell people all the time, like we have people in Maine have starters where they, like, like a blood, like a, almost like a,

for your, like, car garage, but it's for starting your car because it's so cold that you don't have to go outside.

That's a thing in Maine.

This bill.

and carriage up there all right luke all right yeah

yeah but heaters on your diesel engine yeah right so like yeah it's so like we have basically removed all the incentives for all of the types of energy that are being uh built right now which are wind and solar and you know i to me i don't know dan if you've seen it yet but my understanding is that home heating costs are going to go go through the roof this winter partially because there is just more demand than supply at this point

yeah i mean it's in the papers here it's in you know automobilical press polar and Presto, Bangladery News.

You see it every week.

The cost of electricity is going to skyrocket.

And again, instead of investing in sources of what will eventually be a much cheaper form of energy, we're disincentivizing that, penalizing that, and doubling down on fossil fuels.

And this might come as a shocker to folks, not to you, Tim.

We don't have oil and natural gas up here.

You know, we don't have an economy that's based on that.

What we do, what the potential for jobs up here is, is building out massive solar farms, wind farms.

Now, let me be careful here.

I love fishermen.

My brother-in-law's a fisherman.

He's fished for lobster, scallops, clams, urchin, everything.

So don't get me wrong.

I think.

Yeah, wind is a little bit of a third rail up here because of our fishing community.

But we could have both.

We can develop offshore wind projects and make sure that they're not in fishing waters.

I mean, I'll always have a fisherman's back, but we can do both.

both.

And I don't think we can let this kind of faux argument of, you know, we're going to put fishermen on a biscuit stop us from

building out this infrastructure and creating great jobs.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I think that's exactly right.

And, you know, Maine has

a lot of land.

So there's a lot of places you can do solar and wind and things like that, as long as it's, you know, with the community involvement and things like that.

So when you're talking to Mainers right now,

what are the biggest issues that they are talking to you you about?

I'm assuming prices is probably the biggest thing, but I'm just curious what, like, you're, you're probably hearing some consistent themes when you're out talking to voters.

Yeah, the cost of living is too damn high.

You nailed it, Tim.

I mean, that's issue one, two, and three.

It's not the social issues that I think dominate the social media landscape.

It's really not even foreign policy issues.

It's like people are,

they're fucking struggling.

You know, they're, I talked to so many

people that have have played by the rules like they they went through school they kept their nose clean they studied hard they went to school whether that's a vocational school or or a four-year double arts college doesn't matter and and they're like i just want to be i thought if i did all this i could graduate i could get a house uh i could start a family um but people it's just not people like they're giving up I mean, how do you even think about starting a family if you can't afford a home?

I mean,

it's, it really has gotten to the point.

And we wonder why, and you wonder why people have fallen into the hands of someone like Donald Trump.

I mean, we as Democrats have lost focus of what really matters in people's lives, and it's pretty simple and straightforward.

They want to know that if they make the promise of working hard and they have an idea or a talent, they want the government to reciprocate and be like, I've got your damn back.

That's the American dream.

You know, I mean, I've been, I'm one of the lucky ones.

I've, I've seen the American dream, I know it exists, but it's, it's on life support and people just giving up on it.

And I think all the Democrats have to retake that mantle because you know your choice how it's gonna be the Republican Party, it's not gonna be Susan Collins.

I mean, that party is authoritarian, destructive, divide, conquer, grift, shovel money out in the back duel to Donald Trump and his billionaire friends, it all under the guise of, you know, being the

savior of the working class.

It's it's all bullshit.

But we've let him get the world.

They'll do it all.

They'll do it all while they lie to you and tell you about how they're, you know, they got your back and that they're really looking out for the problems that you care about, but they're not.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

It's all

the world is correct.

100%.

So, so, what are, so, what are some of the policies that you would be promoting?

Obviously, probably a 180 from a lot of what this horrible Trump administration and what Susan Collins has been supporting, but like, what are some things that you, if you went to Congress and went to the Senate,

what would you, what would you put forward first?

Well, I mean, I think

people have to understand that what this Republic, the Shin Republican budget bill has done has hamstrung government's ability to really address any of the pressing issues that we're talking about.

Housing, education, healthcare.

There's no money.

I mean, the debt is going to skyrocket by all reasonable projections.

So, I mean, I think we can't even start talking about like things that are going to make people's lives better until we claw back.

some of that bill.

I mean,

we need to claw some of that back.

We need to take away those some of those tax cuts for people that absolutely do not need them.

We need to refund Medicaid and then we have to start talking about investing in, you know, because we show up the ACA.

I mean, that's been decimated.

I'm often enough talking about a public option for the ACA.

You know, I'm for competition.

If you want to have a government, you know,

computer in the marketplace against private insurers, great.

Talk about housing.

You know, we should be investing in.

methods of construction of that are, you know, there exist that we should be doing like in 2025.

Like I've built homes, I've built breweries.

We build shit today like it's 1925.

You know, it's completely inefficient.

And so, government should be out there looking for innovative ways to build homes.

And look, cutting red tape.

And you can't get a clean energy project off the ground, an affordable housing project off the ground.

I mean, the backlog, I just talked to someone the other day.

The backlog, it hard to get an affordable housing project off the ground is ridiculous.

We as Democrats,

we should be for cutting red tape

so that these projects can get off the ground.

We should be for expediting permitting processes.

And all of this needs burden stuff, including good paying jobs for folks.

So, I mean, I think it's step one,

like click, let's get, we got to dig ourselves

out of the ditch in step two, and then we can start to build.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

And the other thing that we wanted to talk about, because this has been in the news, obviously we had a jobs report last week that was terrible at 22,000.

And they actually

fake fake numbers, Tim.

Fake numbers.

Right, right.

Well, but these ones came with the new the new guy that runs BLS from the Heritage Foundation.

So I don't know what they're going to say this time.

And we also found out that they did the yearly revisions where they reduced the whole job count by a million.

He lost jobs in June.

We lost jobs in June.

It was the first time in four years that we had lost jobs since COVID, since Donald Trump the first time

did that.

And now,

so everyone is talking about these tariffs.

I would love to hear from you, like, how are these tariffs affecting Maine?

Because I know when Trump did this in the first term,

the Chinese tariffs he put on really affected the lobster industry in Maine.

And I'm curious now this time, like, what are you seeing and what are you hearing from folks about these tariffs and how they're affecting small businesses in Maine?

These tariffs are so stupid and reckless.

I can't even begin to describe how just nonsensical the application.

We can have a side discussion about whether tariffs are appropriate in certain situations, and I would argue that they probably are.

But the way that the Trump administration is applying them, almost like

it's just a hammer to bend countries around the world over his knee, is it's injecting, I think at a very concrete level, what it's doing to small businesses across this state.

It's injecting a tremendous amount of uncertainty.

How do you possibly think about expanding my brewery or another brewery if you don't know what the cost of those materials that are going to that expansion are going to be?

You only have a certain amount of money.

So like you have to be able to pull out how big of a burden you're going to have based on your budget.

If you don't know what you're, what the cost of construction is, you're not, you're just not going to do the project.

which means small businesses aren't growing.

They're not adding more jobs.

You know, it's,

I think that at the most fundamental level, I think that's the most destruction is doing right now.

But we're also seeing it start to kind of, the price increases start to go through the pipeline.

You know, people back in the spring were like, you know, Trump and

Lutnik and whatever were like, oh, see, crises aren't going up.

But they know, they know better.

Serious people know better.

It takes a while for these price, for the prices to kind of catch up to the tariffs.

You know, companies were stockpiling inventory.

There's a whole bunch of things that were.

people were able to do were absorbing some of the tariffs to keep prices down.

But now we're starting to see prices starting to go up.

And we're going to continue to see that, I think, further exacerbating people's situation up here.

They can't afford shoot as it is.

And Trump's just making life worse.

He promised to come into office

basically on to lower prices.

And what's Susan Collins doing?

I haven't heard a peep out of her.

I mean, she looks to say that she's concerned, but again,

her theory is.

Deeply concerned, Dan.

She's deeply concerned.

More theory of the case in 2020 was send me back to the Senate because I am going to be the chair of a propes and I'm in the bird hunting the bacon for Maine.

I don't see any bacon.

Where is it?

I love bacon.

I don't see any bacon.

I see the cost of housing has doubled in the last decade.

We've lost 12 birthing, or I'm sorry, 11 birthing centers here in the state of Maine and rural communities.

My mother-in-law owned the mercing home in Lubeck and my brother-in-law was the administrator of it.

That had to shut down 10 years ago because reimbursement rates were too low.

You know, big deal.

What is a big deal?

If you're a resident, if you're an elderly person living there and you have to get shipped an hour or two away from your loved

that's all.

That's that's horrible.

And what has Susan Collins done?

Nothing.

Concern.

Express concern.

I think

people forget, I think, in these senate elections not to reduce

your candidacy or the job you want to two words, but it really does come down to two words most of the time, and that's yay or nay.

And a senator is a vote for or against whatever is in front of them.

And

there's so much noise, so much talk, so much swirl and chaos that comes from senators.

They have very polished ways of saying nothing.

And then the things that they do say that are fucking terrible, they have very polished ways of saying it so that it doesn't sound fucking terrible.

But for the average person,

You're voting for Susan Collins to go in and vote yay on 98% of Donald Trump's agenda.

You're voting for Dan or for the Democrat running against Susan Collins to say nay

to 98, 99, probably 100% of Trump's agenda.

I'm going to say it's Manu Night Point 99999.

Leaving the door open for if he decides to claw back some of those cuts to Medicaid on his own, right?

Yeah.

No.

So So in that sense, how do you think of our ability to claw back some of the,

I call it the big bloated abomination, but

borrowing Elon Musk's tweet on that one, but how do you think about that?

Because I know that they delayed the worst of the damage to take place after the midterm so that people wouldn't feel it.

Does that also mean that if we win in the Senate in the midterms, which like we absolutely can, if we flip these critical seats, If we win the Senate back in the midterms, can we head off some of this damage with a new bill that we, I don't know, either, either withhold funding for something else?

Like we have, we'll have some leverage, right?

We will be able to do anything good.

Oh,

you were right.

I mean,

if I'm in the U.S., if I'm in the U.S.

Senate, I am going to be a...

a burrass roadblock in front of Donald Trump and his agenda.

And Susan Collins is a pebble at best.

And yeah, I think every vote counts, but look, we have, we have, I mean, but we,

to say we, Democrats, we'll have leverage now.

You're, we've got a spending bill

coming up.

Yeah.

And goddammit, we better use our leverage.

We better not roar over like we did last winter.

You know, we better fight.

We better demand concessions.

And I don't mean just concessions.

We better have guarantees written in there in that law so that Trump can't just come and rescind

all of the promises that we make with Republicans.

So we do, we have leverage now.

We should use it.

But yeah, if we have the majority,

it's not just the budget that

we would have control over, at least leverage over, judges,

nominees.

I mean, Susan Collins voted for RFK Jr., quack scientists.

It's not just the budget that's at stake.

It's judges.

It's nominees.

It's the incompetent folks that are running these departments.

So, so

I agree.

It is a yay or nay at the end of the day, and she's always a yay, and I'll be a nay.

Well, and I think the judges is a really important thing because this is another one where I think that Susan Collins pulls the wool over people's eyes.

You know, she claims that she is a pro-choice Republican, and that is like the biggest crock of shit that I've ever heard.

First of all, she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.

But the other thing that people don't realize is how often she votes for anti-choice judges at the at the federal level that are the judges we always talk about like the Senate confirming.

But like if she like she is a fake pro-choice person because she has consistently over the years voted to push along all of these Trump judges.

And I think in the RFK thing is a great example too.

If you care about reproductive health or any sort of health, you would never vote.

for quite possibly one of the biggest morons in the entire United States.

And I think actually probably is something wrong with him.

If you look at those hearings last week, I didn't hear Susan Collins even doing her deeply concerned thing last week.

Like, where was she talking about him?

I mean, HHS has a huge role.

She was probably trying to find a COVID vaccine with her Senate influence.

Oh, yeah.

That's real.

I mean, like,

my mother, my mother-in-law lives with us.

And, you know, she's in her 80s.

And she really is concerned.

Like, can I get my COVID vaccine this year?

That's, I mean, we're, we're joking.

Like,

I want to take it.

I'll take it as it comes.

But like, this is her, her shenanigans have implications up here in maine and yeah the judges that the kavanaugh vote i mean don't even get me started um i mean that was a turning point i had many turning points in my relationship with susan collins but i mean that was certainly a nail in the coffin um when her she stood up in the well of the senate and with this you know she was margaret chase smith and she was gonna

the backbone uh And she said, oh, I'm going to vote in favor because he promised me that he respected respected the precedent.

He was, he respected precedent, basically meaning he would not vote to overturn Roe versus Wade.

Everybody knew every sensual

anybody had a brain knew that he would.

So she was one, she was lying or two, she's incredibly naive.

And I don't know which one's worse.

Right.

And that's the thing.

You can smell it from a mile away.

You know that they sat down in a room.

We all fucking know that this is what they do.

They sat down in a private room somewhere and they said, Say the exact words to me that I can then say,

Show that I asked the right questions.

So, and then, and then here's what I will say, and these are the exact words that will free everybody from accountability.

And then they come and they do it, and they say it, and they're just gaslighting us directly to our faces.

They, oh, the respect the precedent.

The fuck does that even mean?

I'm a cover attorney, it's a it's a really not bullshit,

It's absolute bullshit.

And they do this to our faces and they just think like, oh, you guys are so fucking stupid.

You're just going to take it.

And then we'll do whatever we want.

Like, you know, we're going to do.

What I want to see Democrats talk about is accountability.

That is like my big thing, right?

It's not just about being a roadblock.

It's about holding people accountable and imposing costs.

Now, you're not the house.

You know, you're not looking to join the house, so you can't begin in impeachment.

But would you encourage your colleagues in the other chamber to impeach people like RFK or Brett Kavanaugh or any of the other people that Donald Trump has unfortunately put into our lives in ways that affect all of us?

I just had a daughter.

She's less than four months old.

She's going to be going to

childcare for the first time.

And I'm worried about her ability to get vaccines or the ability of the community to get vaccines.

And, you know, there's measles.

I'm in New York.

There are measles outbreaks here.

It's So fucking with so ridiculous.

Are you?

Why are we talking that guy?

Why is that?

Is that going to be part of your

is that part of your candidacy to like to remove these people from office, not just simply?

I think off key needs to go.

I mean, he needs to, he needs to go.

He needs to go yesterday.

I mean, I write some nurse.

He's got to go.

And it drops.

He drives her up a wall.

Like, she's, I believe in science.

Yeah.

It drives me nuts.

I devoted my life to healthcare.

My butt in law, we're a nursing nursing home.

Like it's it is so infuriating to watch him

in his quack science

sit before the Senate.

I was kind of just dumbfounded listening to some of the shit that was coming out of his mouth.

I mean, he needs to go.

I mean, 100%.

I mean, you could go.

And he happened to be the one that Susan Collins voted for.

That's why I'm focusing on him.

But I mean, there's a whole panoply.

This is a this is a clown car of a cabinet right here.

And again,

Susan Collins, while, you know, she, she stood up and voted against, you know, a couple people here and there.

She, she basically gave a grew light to Trump and let him install all of these quacks.

Wait, Dan, are you certain it's hurting people?

Are you suggesting that the weekend Fox and Friends host should not be the Secretary of Defense?

Is that a rhetorical question?

I was expecting a big laugh from everybody, and I got absolutely nothing.

I got silence.

Oh, that's Tim's average joke.

If you haven't found it, Tim, I'm going to send it to you.

I saw it on, I don't know, I saw it on one of the social medias the other day of him doing pull-ups.

Oh, I saw it.

Oh, my God.

I mean, don't call it a push.

What was he doing?

Don't call that a pull-up.

Seizure on the pull-up bar.

I thought he was going to basically separate his lower body from his front.

The way he was like, I mean, I'm like, you're like really going to get hurt there.

Then he's got RFK next to him working out in jeans and whatever the hell that is.

Like, I just.

You each poster child RFK Jr.

Right.

But the point, like we're joking about it, but the point is Susan Collins did nothing to stop any of this.

And she, like, this is the thing that I don't think people understand.

Being the chair of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, it can be an incredibly powerful position.

Like she could basically, if she wanted to, she could grind everything to a goddamn halt.

and say, I'm not putting any appropriate budgets through bills through until you do these things.

And I think what the most infuriating thing for me, and I'm sure you will agree with me, is that I cannot remember one time in 30 years, one time where she was the deciding vote on anything.

And like, how are you a moderate in a party and you never buck the party?

It is a complete lie.

It drives me crazy every time I hear it.

I'm like spinning myself up even thinking about it now because it's just so absurd.

But like, has she ever been the deciding vote on anything?

And that's why people up here are sick and tired of it because people are hurting.

There's consequences to all of this like this this you know you know which way should i vote oh you know i don't want to yeah upset any upset anybody i have to you know i have to bow to my leader in and bow to you know fear trump you know like it's like are you kidding me I mean, the people are hurting.

I mean, Trump is trampling.

He's sending, you know, mass agents into cities,

in, you know, in the military, into our cities.

She's just, I think she's, that's what happens when you've been in D.C.

for 20 years.

Right.

Yeah.

Isn't it?

I mean, isn't that what happens?

Yeah.

I mean, I lived there for a while.

I was in the Obama administration.

And yeah, I mean, I think some of these people, you know, I think she actually spends more time in D.C.

than she does in Maine.

And it shows.

And, you know, she, I mean, I think there was a big story about her receiving all this Wall Street money the other day.

Like, you know, she's going to find cash from like big donors and people who benefited from the BBB because they know that her being there is much more helpful than having you there.

They don't want, you know, the Wall Street guys don't want you there.

Like they want her.

And I don't think that that is something that Mainers are particularly interested in.

And I, you know, and I want to transition this to a little bit of a political question for you.

So

six years ago, we thought we had Susan Collins cornered when we, you know, with our candidate who was Sarah Gideon.

And obviously Biden was on the ballot.

And we lost big time.

So what do you think is different this this time?

And what will you do specifically that I think is different?

I mean, I don't know, Sarah, so I don't want to talk too badly.

I don't think that campaign was particularly well run, but I'm curious, like, what can you take from that and do differently this time to ensure that we finally end the Susan Collins nightmare once and for all?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think first and foremost, what's different between 2019 and 2020 and today is I think Susan Collins is different too.

I mean, she has,

you know, her politics may not have been sufficient in, you know, a George W.

Bush or an Obama administration, and maybe even in the first Trump administration.

That's a stretch, but I'll give for the benefit of the doubt.

But it's completely inappropriate, completely insufficient, I should say, in a second Trump administration.

She's promised over and over that, again, to your point, Tim, like the chair of appropes is a pretty damn powerful position.

And she promised if we put a semblance back to Washington, she would use that position to help make people's lives better.

We've gone over this before.

That hasn't happened.

And almost everybody up here would agree.

And we're looking at a second Trump administration this time, which is, I don't know about what you guys think.

It's even worse than what I thought it was going to be.

I'll be honest.

I'll raise my hand.

It's worse than what I thought it was going to be.

And her kind of...

performative politics is sitting on the fence and not standing up when it matters.

It's just, it's not meeting the moment.

To your point earlier, Tim, of, you know, has she ever taken a vote when it like really mattered?

I think no, but there are, like, we used to have readers.

And I'll use, like, say, John McCain.

John McCain and my politics are extremely different.

And I remember he went on to the floor where they were trying to kill the ACA and gave the old thumbs down.

Like, let's have that thumbs down on them.

Susan Collins is a thumbs down moment.

She's never had one of those.

Well, and so I looked this up because I wanted to be fair because we are a fair team of journalists.

Fair and balanced.

Fair and balanced?

Is that your your fair balance?

Fair and balanced.

Fair and heavily imbalanced.

Susan Collins, in her defense almost 10 years ago, was one of the three Republicans who voted against that.

They called it the skinny repeal of Obamacare.

That was the one example I found.

So Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and then John McCain voted to kill that repeal.

And so I'll give her credit for that in 2017.

But to your point, has she changed?

She voted to advance Trump's budget budget bill before it actually went to the vote, which I think she then voted against, right?

As

a performance.

She voted for that.

She voted for the Supreme Court justices who all repealed Roe v.

Wade.

So Susan Collins at her best seven, eight, eight years ago.

God, how has it been that long?

Susan Collins at her best eight years ago was still not good enough.

And now she's significantly worse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's the verdict.

yeah that that's that's the verdict again she's just she's just been there too long and the people up here are

i think and not just up here i mean i think there's a national um uh

appetite for change for folks and especially within the democratic party um folks that just aren't career politicians um folks who are rooted in their communities who I you know, I'm up in my office right now and my tasting room's down below.

I, you know, I often have to work, we'll go downstairs and just sit across the bar from folks who might be strangers.

They might be friends of mine and just shoot the shit.

That's how you order like what's on people's minds.

What do they care about?

What are they worried about?

What keeps them up at night?

What kind of ideas to no off to make Maine better?

And you just don't, DC's, it's a bubble.

And I get it.

You're there for 28, you know, going on 30 years.

You lose touch.

And she's, she's clearly lost touch.

So, Dan, is this a campaign promise that if you are elected, you will maintain your presence in the tasting room?

Because I think that's something you ought to get excited about.

I'm being serious.

It's a like I, that is, that is like one of the best lines I've heard from, from any candidate.

Like, you sitting down at a tasting room, in your tasting room, talking to your neighbors, that is something that nobody in the fucking Senate has any equivalent of.

No one does anything like that.

No clue.

Yeah.

Oh, heck yeah.

I mean, it's one of my favorite spots.

I can't talk about how awesome it is.

Like,

it's one of the most rewarding things about

operating with this brewer is going into night tasting and seeing people drinking something that you made or you inspired and having a good time sitting with their families, laughing, not talking about politics, just talking about their life or

what they're going to do this weekend or talking about

their kids Friday night football game.

It's like, it gives me hope.

You know, like there is hope, there's humanity here, but we just got to, we got to get rid of these

DC folks that have just been there for too damn long.

I'm glad we're talking about this because there is another statistic that I heard the other day, and you can, you know, tell me if I'm right or not.

My understanding is that Susan Collins has not had a town hall in 25 years.

Is that correct?

She has not had a town hall in over 20 years.

Like we can safely say that.

And the fact that there's no record of when her last town hall was tells you how long she's fucking been there.

Because you know, if there's smoke dollars that exist before the internet, there's a record of her last town hall.

But I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what.

I will find if she's having a hard time, maybe she's having a hard time finding a place to hold it.

I will find a place for her to hold it.

I will host it for her.

I know she's going to get beat up and I'll buy her a beer afterwards.

I'll make that, I'll make that

right now.

Seems fair.

She wasn't talking about constituents.

I think she live streamed her last town hall on Friendster, if you guys remember.

Well, it's literally before the iPhone was like the iPhone did not exist when she had her last town hall.

It did not exist.

Yeah, maybe not.

Actually, Luke might have.

Yeah, Luke probably did not have existed.

When people say things like 20, 20 years ago, I think like, you know, it doesn't really hit people.

20 years ago, I was in Iraq.

That was the beginning of the war.

That was a long, fucking time.

The world has changed

so much since Susan Collins has talked to a regular person.

That is fucking crazy.

That is insane.

Yeah.

It's, it's bothering me.

Why is why

where I think about it, I'm like, why do you have this job?

To me, like, the reward, it's like me walking into the tasty room and seeing people enjoying my beer.

That's the reward.

Like, that's for all the hard work.

You know, that's one of the most rewarding things.

I would think for someone who goes on the public service, and I do this as as public service.

It's not a job.

This should be thought of as public service going to serve your state and your country.

I think some of the rewarding things should be going out and talking to your constituents and having some positive feedback.

But I guess if you don't have much positive feedback, maybe that's why you don't have a town hall.

So maybe that's the answer.

I don't know.

Exactly.

Got a paycheck, though.

So,

yeah.

Yeah.

But she won't be in stock trading in Congress.

Right.

What is this?

That's a layup.

Right.

What's the rationale full for voting to be be on the other side of this issue?

I mean, whether you're playing, whether you actually believe that he was playing politics, like to me, it's a no-brainer.

Well, clearly, they just haven't made out a plan yet.

You shouldn't be able to day trade if you're in the Senate or a representative.

Put your stuff in the blind.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's crazy to me.

Well, I have one more political question, and I know Rich has got a beer question or two.

So obviously,

the race has a few candidates in it already.

There is one other potential i think significant uh entrant that could be coming who is uh governor janet mills right now uh is weighing um will her entrance uh sway you anyway or are you in it to win it or like yeah yeah i'd love just look to hear yeah but i'm we're in it to win it you don't get into a race like this to to preemptively like consider balling out like hell heck no you this this is this this takes a ton of effort to get started um it's like I go back to when I started the beer company.

Like, if you believe in yourself, you can't go into starting a company thinking that you're going to fail.

I don't want a U.S.

Senate race thinking I'm just going to bow out.

You know, I am a Mr.

Rinner.

Right.

And I think I'm the best candidate to be Susan Collins, no matter who gets in this race.

I bring someone who's not a queer politician, someone who started with small business, started it the right way by taking care of their employees.

and the environment, who's given back a ton to this state, who has created jobs across this state, someone who's led by state and national trade organization.

And I know what it's like, unfortunately, to kind of work inside Augusta and Washington, D.C., to cut red tape and make lives, you know, make small businesses more successful.

And I'm a dad.

I'm a father.

I have twin 14-year-olds.

I know the anxieties that parents, you know, to your point, Chris, like it's, you have your kids younger, obviously, but we'll all have the same anxieties.

Hey, at the end of the day, we just want to, we want to know that the world that we're leading to them is better than the world that we live in.

I don't feel that way right now.

I don't know about any of you guys, but

that's a shame.

We are mortgaging our kids' future for just wall like greed and grift.

That's that's that to me is just it's unacceptable.

I completely agree.

Well, I'm going to kick it to Rich because I think he has a very important question for you.

That was the most brutal segue set up into a beer question ever.

We're all hopeless.

So let's drink.

No, so the question is,

why is IPA the best type of beer?

And why is everybody who doesn't like IPA wrong?

That would be me.

Oh, why?

Well, you know,

obviously

I'm a homer here.

And

I think Tim's had our beer before.

We're known.

We're known for IPAs.

Lunch IPAs is our bestseller.

It's the style of beer that got me into homebrewing.

And eventually obviously the styles of beer that main beer company focuses on but i i don't know why but it is ipa and then to a lesser extent pale ale has if you just look at the data has far outpaced in popularity any other style of beer and it's not even close um but i think the queer thing about like american style hoppy beers is it is really made

US, the U.S.

like craft beer industry the rendezvous of the world.

It used to be the other way around.

Like we Americas Americas used to, you know, be, we used to envy Germany or England.

And us scrappy craft brewers, we kind of flipped it on its head because we showed that you can create different styles of beer.

You can be experimental.

You don't have to live inside

a strict set of brewery rules.

You can kind of let your fruit flag fly.

And look

over like 9,000 breweries in the country today, all over the country.

You know, it's such an economic success story that again, I mean, just having exposure to that and having that kind of experience and being able to take that to DC and know like what kind of these scrappy upstarts have done and what's possible, like the potential of America.

I think that's a, I think it's a pretty spa, a pretty strong perspective to have.

So we've started experimenting with a new, a new segment called hot takes.

Last time we talked about Taylor Swift and Luke and I got beat up by everyone who listens to the talk.

I'll take this one, Chris.

I got beat up.

I'm just going to go and jump on this grenade and say that

I think that everyone is wrong about IPAs.

And and the only reason you like them is because you successfully hazed yourself into believing you

successfully ruined your taste buds nope that is

i've never i've never met anyone that's never met someone that

the first time ipas were invented for their antiseptic qualities because they would

stay in britain and they'd go all their way around africa into india they'd pass the equator twice

yeah you're factually correct that's a true fact true fact however

uh we have completely modernized and and revolutionized the IPAs of the 16th and 17th century that were shipped on polls from London to India.

Completely different, Bierre.

And I think you're disputing fake news.

So what I'm hearing is Dan's saying

it is

pro-American to like IPAs because they created an entire industry from scratch, which then

you have to then understand that the opposite is also true.

Anyone who doesn't like IPAs hates America and hates small business and hates growth.

So

you're anti-amoric or anti-business.

Yep.

Yep.

Luke is just going to leave me fucking hanging here.

Dare I agree with it.

I said that he fucking fucking could be used for four cleaner.

What are you talking about?

Leave me hanging.

I am so glad that we proved Luke and Chris wrong.

And so we're going to pivot.

I have a couple of main questions for you, Dan,

that only a true mainer would answer correctly.

So I'm going to ask, yeah.

So we're going to, I'm going to put you on the spot and we're going to start number one.

Is Moxie good or bad?

I do not like Moxie.

That may cost me some bullets.

Oh, that's the wrong answer.

What is Moxie?

That's a dog's name.

What is Moxie?

What's a drink?

Moxie is a

Dr.

Pepper-ish, but more bitter.

Soft drink that was made in Maine.

Okay, well, you're all for one.

We're going to go to the next one.

If I was a panding politician, Tim, I would have said I loved it.

That would have been you always.

No, that's what I think's the right answer.

No, we, that is the right answer.

That is the right answer.

Okay.

Number two:

lobster roll with butter or mayonnaise.

Butter.

Oh, interesting.

I like the answer.

Okay.

Okay.

How many can you

top stab them?

Okay.

Lobster done.

Okay.

Can you sing the 16 counties song?

No.

I can't sing.

Well,

I had to learn it in fourth grade, and I've completely lost it at this point.

And now the fourth, the fourth and final question.

And there is only one answer to this one.

Where are the best shipbuilders in the world?

Hands down.

There we go.

You got it right.

That is correct.

I think there's a sign that says, like, through these doors go the best shipbuilders in the world.

It is absolutely the correct answer.

And Dan, last week, these guys were yelling at me about maine so i was like defending bath and uh bath doesn't get a lot of uh doesn't get a lot of coverage on podcasts so i had some friends that were very happy so we got to bring it in twice so um can we can we get one more dan i i want to know what your favorite brewery is outside of maine uh favorite brewer outside of maine um sierra nevado

good choice good choice

they do have some little little far off areas i remember the first beer I ringed the first beer, tasting the first beer that wasn't just Lil O'Light or Bud Light or Milwaukee's Best or Natty Light.

That I'm like, holy shit, like beer can be actually interesting and flavorful.

It was a Sierra Bada Pale Ale.

And to this day, it kind of

was kind of the inspiration for the kinds of beers that we make here at Maine Beer Company.

Yeah, I mean, I assume like many Mainers,

you might have tasted some of those macro brews maybe in a field with a bonfire when the parents didn't know where you were, maybe.

But maybe you don't want to admit that.

I'll admit admit that I might have done that once or twice.

Never, never.

Never.

Another good answer.

Screaky cool.

And Dan, okay, so before we wrap up, where can people go to learn more about you?

Danfomaine.com is the website

that they can find out about the campaign.

They can chip in.

They can learn how to volunteer.

But

I hope to follow it.

I'd be able to head out and

get out across the state and start listening to folks.

I think politicians like to hear themselves talk too much.

So I'm going to start listening.

But I would love people support of this campaign, danformaine.com.

Great.

Well, Dan, thank you very much.

We actually were planning to do 30 minutes, but we just kept going.

And maybe because I just can't stop talking about Maine because

we got some extra time.

But, Dan, thank you very much for joining us.

I really appreciate it.

And I want to also, I'm going to say one thing, Tim.

I know where we're on the show, I refer to Donald Trump as the Fuhrer, and people are going to exquiriate me on social media.

It is in jest, but holy shit,

is he awful?

Yeah, yeah.

No, and I think people listening to this will definitely agree with you on that.

So Dan, thank you very much.

And then before we wrap, just everybody, as a reminder, we have our merchandise on our store where you can all make fun of my face again.

If you want to own it, it's the most popular shirt we've got.

You can go to findoutpodcast.com.

And if you want to subscribe and support us that way, you can go to findoutpodcast.subsec.com.

Rich has also got one of our shirts on today.

So like you got all kinds of options.

They're union made in the USA.

And oh, what was that?

Did you have a, was that a book that I saw?

It's an American made.

Have we not talked about the American made, Union Made?

You could use them to hit somebody.

They're pretty dirty.

Perfectly sized for a can, too.

Okay, well,

TikTok doesn't like to see the can itself.

So that's right.

That's true.

So, well, anyone's, thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Dan, once again.

Everybody have a great weekend.

Yeah, we had a great time with you.

And hopefully we'll have you back soon.

We'll come back sometime.

Yeah,

awesome.

We'll do.

All right.

Thanks, Dad.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

We'll talk soon.