Congratulations are due to to Senator Ed Markey, who won his primary in Massachusetts on Tuesday night … does “handily” properly convey a 30-point whooping? He beat out Sean Moulton, a centrist pretending to be a progressive who thought all he had to do to beat Markey was to be younger than he is. Turns out, that was not actually the case, because people actually do care about the issues. This also means that Markey is among the Top 10 longest-serving members of Congress in United States history, because Republican nominee John Deaton has no chance.
Markey ran on the Green New Deal and Medicare for All and proudly said that he would protect the interests of trans kids. Meanwhile Moulton, while still claiming to be just as progressive as Markey, had in 2024 published an op-ed in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post (not even a Massachusetts paper!) about how he would not be beholden to “Democratic purity tests” like letting trans kids play sports, and should listen to what people think instead of telling them what to think. As it turned out, Massachusetts voters very much thought that they didn’t want to elect a senator who would use people’s bigotry towards trans kids as a means to propel himself into office.
From the Washington Post:
Two days after Donald Trump’s victory, I gave an example of how Democrats spend too much time trying not to offend anyone, even on issues where most Americans feel the same way. Speaking as a dad, I said I didn’t like the idea of my two girls one day competing against biological boys on a playing field. My main point, though, is what I said next: “As a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
The blowback, which was swift, included the chair of a local Democratic committee calling me a Nazi “cooperator” and about 200 people gathering in front of my office to protest a sentence. My unimpeachable record of standing up for the civil rights of all Americans, including the trans community, was irrelevant.
Gee, maybe that’s because we’re all aware that it’s a fucking nonissue that Republicans are using to stir up hatred against trans people because literally all they have is the red meat of giving people another group of people to hate and fear, and playing into that is not helpful and has never been helpful. It is, however, pretty harmful to trans kids who are just trying to live their lives and be children.
He also complained about this in regards to immigration:
Often when Americans think differently, or raise concerns we don’t agree with, we go straight to denial. Two years ago, I asked a House colleague who wanted to lead our messaging strategy how we should address the southern border. “We should not talk about immigration!” I was told. Republicans are just “weaponizing” the issue, so, if we respond, we are “playing into their hands.” Another version: Trump is “just tapping into fear and resentment.”
But it turns out that voters knew better, and wanted answers. When 94 percent of Americans said they worried about the border crisis, Trump said he’d fix it.
He was, in fact, tapping into fear and resentment. He wasn’t exactly disagreeing with his colleague to say “no, we should defend immigration, because immigration is a positive good”! He was ceding the border and its “crisis” to Donald Fucking Trump. And has anyone’s life materially changed for the better since Trump started his purge? Not really! Though many people’s lives have certainly changed for the worse. Especially those who no longer have them.
Moulton also ran on the “Ed Markey is old” platform, pointing to Markey not knowing the names of apps he had on his phone as proof that he is no longer “with it” enough to be in the Senate. That didn’t seem to work, probably because a lot of people, regardless of age, don’t know the name of every app on their phone.
This particular race has been something of a reversal of many other recent primaries, in that it was a younger centrist challenging an older progressive who has been in Congress for (not shitting you!) coming up on 50 years, rather than the other way around.
I think the thing I like best, personally, about Markey’s win is that it really demonstrates that the current shift in the Democratic Party is, in fact, about ideas. It’s not just about change “in general,” it’s not about youth, it’s not about the more progressive candidates being cooler or more charming or in touch with the current cultural zeitgeist, it’s not about them being “celebrities” as so many have claimed. It’s not about style, it’s about substance. And that is probably really disappointing for a lot of people (and, let’s be real, donors) who wanted to believe they just got dumped for a stupid, shallow hot piece of ass, not a hot piece of ass that also happens to be super funny and smart and kind. There’s no longer any chance that anyone is going to take off the Third Way glasses only to discover that they’ve actually been secretly hot all along and then take them to prom, whereupon they will do a coordinated dance with their entire class that no one practiced for.
Okay, I seem to have lost the plot here. But you get what I’m saying!
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Ed Markey is one of the few names we can always be sure to see on the list of senators who voted the right way, and someone we have always been able to count on to do the right thing. And as much as I do think that we need younger people in the House and Senate, even if for purely logistical reasons, we have far more need for people with the right values and ideas, people who care more about improving people’s lives, people who won’t roll over on whichever demographic the Right has decided to demonize.
Hopefully, the next person going for his seat, whenever he decides to retire, will be someone like that and not someone like Moulton (or that ginger Kennedy twin who tried last time).
OPEN THREAD!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Gimothy the goose update.
It sure seems like Gimothy’s neck is improving, if you watch the first video I made nearly 2 weeks ago you can see the difference. And Gimothy has friends now! There are always 2 geese that seem to stick by Gimothy’s side, one seems to have a wing problem.
Maybe 2 weeks of good food replacing some of the junk that people tend to feed the geese and ducks is actually helping, wry neck can be caused by a nutritional deficiency.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-328353722?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
Link to original video with the backstory:
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-319187226?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
More Brain Klezmer Tmie!! Simba chills on Timeshare Chair as Clark Monster has another bathing fit.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FRxJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fmedia_upload%2Fcomment%2F2dfa7e91-4a31-4874-8c54-7da7c2cd6da8%2F12b0f852-fe0b-4419-8c42-febaddf0b233.jpeg