On Tuesday, Sept. 1, the Massachusetts Senate primary finally came to an anticlimax. In a result that surprised no one but his most vituperative supporters, moderate Congressman Seth Moulton lost his long-shot bid to unseat Senator Ed Markey, an 80-year-old progressive stalwart, by almost 30 points. Markey now advances to the general election, where he will almost certainly defeat Republican challenger John Deaton.
In this election year, Massachusetts has received less national attention than purpler, more contested states like Michigan and Maine. Those states also featured bruising Democratic Senate primaries that saw energetic progressives triumph over stodgy establishment picks. In the Wolverine State, physician Dr. Abdul El-Sayed overcame over $30 million in spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to clinch the nomination; just up north, oysterman Graham Platner trounced a sitting governor in their primary before sexual assault allegations drove him out of the race.
At first glance, this gulf can be easily explained: El-Sayed and Platner’s progressive replacement, Troy Jackson, are in competitive races that could determine who holds a majority in the Senate; Markey is not. But I have another theory: Markey’s win is highly inconvenient for pundits who have framed the Democratic Party’s current identity crisis as a mere generational conflict.
According to this narrative, Democrats nationwide have grown restless with an older generation of politicians who appear unwilling or unable to resist the authoritarianism of President Donald Trump. To that end, the base has staged a revolt against its superannuated incumbents in favor of younger candidates. Crucially for centrist Democrats, this mutiny is not a progressive uprising against decades of moderation, but a simple question of generational change.
It’s true that age was a centerpiece of Moulton’s campaign. At 47, he’s a spring chicken in comparison to most senators, though his politics were anything but fresh.
But when the voters met Seth Moulton, they saw anything ranging from a bland centrist to a flagrant opportunist. Just two days after Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election, Moulton seemed to blame her loss on transgender Americans. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,” Moulton told the New York Times. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” (Moulton apologized for his comments by announcing that he no longer believed them.)
So here’s what I took away from that episode: if Seth Moulton is willing to betray trans Americans just days after the nation elected a raging bigot who accuses his enemies of wanting “Transgender For Everyone,” then who won’t he sell out?
Recognizing that the political temperature had shifted leftward since Trump’s victory, Moulton vainly tacked to the left on a wide range of issues for his Senate run: backing the Equality Act and Transgender Bill of Rights, and returning past donations from AIPAC. But Massachusetts is perhaps the most reliably Democratic state in the country and by extension, arguably the most left-wing, so Moulton’s clumsy attempts at splitting the difference between his beliefs and the voters’ fell flat. By contrast, Markey has been one of the most prominent elected progressives for years. A coauthor of the Green New Deal endorsed by his legislative partner in that project, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Markey was even something of a youth icon in his last reelection bid.
Unfortunately for the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, Markey’s victory proved that credibility still matters in American politics. Honesty is not just a Seth Moulton problem. If an umpire couldn’t call balls and strikes in Double-A, we wouldn’t elevate them to the majors (I am of course talking about Ángel Hernández). And if our elected officials can’t call genocides what they are, no wonder voters suddenly don’t trust them on healthcare or the cost of living.
That faction of the Democratic Party is in total freefall, and good riddance. Democratic partisans like to call their party a big tent, but clearly the tarp ends where challenges to corporate power and militarism begin. When Democrats sign onto resolutions denouncing their own party members, when they declare undying allegiance to a genocidal ethnostate that slaughters with impunity, when they shrug their shoulders to the construction of data centers that poison our air and pollute our minds, and when they insist on a new cold war with a nuclear-armed superpower, they’re telling us fair Verona isn’t big enough for Montagues and Capulets.
For once, I agree with them. This party can’t go on trying to resuscitate the banal cruelty of Clintonism or the squeamish cowardice of the Obama years, because those policies hand-delivered us Donald Trump on a garish gold plate. Perhaps Seth Moulton’s real flaw isn’t that he lacks principles, but the imagination to conceive of a real alternative to Trumpism.
Lest I end on that dour note, let me remind you that you, reader, possess this creative power. If you can imagine a better country—humane healthcare, clean water and air, a safe home for all—it can become real, because the only extreme proposition in the wealthiest country in the history of civilization is the notion that only some deserve all of its blessings. If you accept that, I daresay you’ve done more than Seth Moulton in 12 years of political life.
Aspiring high school history teacher. Some of my opinions are OK
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