Ardis Cameron is professor emerita of American and New England studies at the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of several books and articles on labor and women. A 2001 recipient of both a NEH Senior Research Fellowship and a John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Fellowship, she is currently writing a memoir.

It was the mystery writer P.D. James who first put into words my own childhood doubts about a famous nursery rhyme.

“Why” a reporter asked James, “did you start writing crime fiction?” The author grinned, “As a child,” she confessed, “I was convinced that Humpty Dumpty had been pushed.”

Doubt made life more exciting, but so much more complicated.

Consider Graham Platner, whose fall may not be as shattering as Humpty’s, but who still has a of bit egg on his face. By now, every reader of America’s newspapers knows the story: a fairy tale rise to fame, then a smash down from 1,800 comments on Reddit and one really strange and ugly tat.

I don’t think Platner is racist, misogynist or homophobic. Nor do I agree with the conspiracy theories suggesting he was pushed off the wall by the Mills campaign. Platner tripped over his own ugly words.

But what remains a mystery for me is how to think about him as a candidate for the United States Senate. As a long-time socialist/feminist and historian of labor, I feel deeply torn — attracted in many ways to his progressive determination yet caught up by his previous vitriol and total lack of judgment.

I’ve spent a lifetime listening to male politicians apologize — for adultery, graft, bad language — you name it and, boy oh boy, are they sorry.

We could write a history of modern American politics and call it “Sorry Times.” Platner has also apologized. Well, kind of.

“For those of you who have read these things and been offended … I am deeply sorry.”

Presumably the unoffended don’t need an apology. The guy’s a mystery.

There’s no mystery, however, about the state of this nation: it’s a mess. Health care, food and housing are all dangerously out of reach for millions and millions of people. And the numbers keep rising.

In many states, homelessness is a crime, understood as personal failure rather than the collective indifference of politicians too busy apologizing to craft decent social policy. In Utah, conservative politicians are building Trump-styled “accountability centers” where people without homes will be relocated and forced to undergo “treatment.”

While Maine’s rates of homelessness have taken a dip, the price of housing has soared. Households need to make over $100,000 a year to afford the median home price. And ICE. In America! I can’t even go there.

Wage workers, retirees, the disabled, immigrants, refugees,and asylum seekers are all falling off the wall, and like Humpty Dumpty, they did not jump; they were pushed.

How to push back? It is early days yet and much is yet to be revealed before the Democratic primary. I will continue to watch and listen to Graham Platner and I hope he pushes the national Democratic Party to the left of its sad, ineffective center. He certainly embodies the frustration and anger many of us feel toward the DNC, not only for its feckless leadership in the face of Trump, but its limited vision and short sightedness.

No longer bold and meaningful, the Democratic Party has grown flabby, narrow and self-satisfied. Hear it yawn!

Some also like Platner because he represents a generational change. At 41 years old, they argue, he will bring young people into the fight. This, of course, was Charlie Kirk’s appeal too. I’m less convinced that young people are inherently more capable of solving our problems. I think we are all in this together, young, middle, old, the sandwiched and the marginal. I would be fine with a Senate full of Bernie Sanders clones.

I will also listen again and again to Janet Mills, who has been a steadfast advocate for women, the LGBTQ community, the poor, the environment, the rule of law and for wage-earners, not only rural white men, but for women and men of all backgrounds be they Black, Hispanic, urban, gender-neutral, trans, old, young, immigrant, new Mainers or people of any color.

Mills does not walk on water. I disagree with some of her positions. But her record of achievement is no mystery. Indeed, it has made life better for many of us who live in Maine. And, let’s face it. She can push. Just ask Trump.