MA-SEN Megathread: Senator Markey wins

[Tiger08]

I am by no means an expert in Mass. politics, but is Springfield supposed to be going to Kennedy by this much?

[Tiger08]

Kennedy's loss, as noted above, means he is the first member of that family to ever lose an election in Massachusetts. And another thing-once his House term ends on January 3, 2021, it will be the first time in 74 years that no direct descendant of Joseph Kennedy Sr. will hold elected office anywhere in the United States. This doesn't count Amy Kennedy, Van Drew's opponent in New Jersey, who married into the family. Hopefully, the Kennedy dynasty will now find its way into the history books, like the Roosevelts and Tafts have.

We have George P Bush carrying on the terrible legacy of the Bushes. John Donley Adams tried running for office in 2017, but lost.

True, and I wouldn't be surprised if Bush ran for either Governor or Senator in Texas once Cornyn or Abbott retires. But we'll see what happens.

I can see that too, but I am near-certain Crenshaw will run for something

[Tiger08]

As to the thread topic, I'm obviously relieved that Markey won (and by a fairly convincing margin, too!), but I don't necessarily love that he cleaned up in MetroWest and behind the Tofu Curtain while losing Springfield, New Bedford, Fall River, Lowell, Lawrence, etc.

The general pattern seems to be that Markey won the wealthier, college-educated, upper class and middle class areas, while Kennedy dominated the poorer, minority heavy, working class and lower class areas. Why did this result happen? Does it provide evidence that upper-class Democratic voters are more "woke" and more deeply invested in progressive ideas, while working-class Democratic voters are less "woke" and more moderate? Or something else entirely? Given Markey's working class origins and Kennedy's status as the member of one of this country's most historically important political dynasties, it does seem to be an ironic result.

Kennedy stitched up a lot of union endorsements, using pragmatism arguments for the most part--see also the heavy union support for Biden in the presidential primaries. Downscale voters are also of course generally more anti-incumbent.

If you look at the 2013 Senate primary, Markey and Lynch split these types of communities between them (of the ones I listed, Markey won Springfield, New Bedford, and Lawrence while Lynch won Fall River and Lowell). So they're not ideologically hostile to Markey as such, but they're not especially ideologically friendly to him either.

This conversation reminds me.... I was thinking about the internal tensions within the Democratic Party between the "Old"/moderate wing of Democratic Party (WWC and older nonwhite voters) to the "New"/Progressive wing of Democratic Party (college educated white voters + younger voters of all races). That dichotomy doesn't totally represent what I'm about to mention, but is the Markey vs Kennedy primary a proxy for the wing of Democrats that near-perfectly fit the current left-of-center zeitgeist (I'm talking about the zeitgeist of the left-of-center side of the spectrum, not America as a whole) versus those who don't? I don't know if that makes sense, but the zeitgeist thing I'm mentioning has an "it" factor to it. Maybe "the "#Resist" wing versus the non-"Resist"wing is a good way to put it. I know Wasserman's obsession with "Whole Foods" voters can be kind of cringey at times, but it's a useful cultural signifier.