EdMarkey taps a fountain of youth inMassachusetts
Tuesday’s Massachusetts Democratic primary, in which Sen. Edward J. Markey thrashed Rep. Joe Kennedy, was decided 19 months ago.
On Feb. 7, 2019, Markey introduced a resolution outlining the Green New Deal, sponsored in the House by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Suddenly, an old warhorse had transformed himself into a cause, a hero to younger voters, maybe even a political hipster.
The campaign’s killer sound bite belonged to AOC: “It’s not your age that counts,” said the politician born in 1989, 13 years after Markey was first elected to the House. “It’s the age of your ideas.”
Thus did the 74-yearold Markey do what many thought was impossible: He defeated a member of the Kennedy clan after its string of 26 Massachusetts primary victories going back to 1946.
So strong was the Kennedy magnetism in days past that for a Gillette stockroom supervisor named John F. Kennedy — no relation to the wealthier lot — simply getting himself on the ballot for state treasurer in 1954 was enough to win him three terms. (Charisma by association finally failed him when he ran for governor in 1960.)
But fascination with the Kennedy Mystique should not cloud the important message out of Massachusetts: The progressivism of the young is now dyed deep green.
It’s been clear for a while that the word “socialism” is no longer a dealbreaker for younger voters. If the old associate it with the oppression of the Soviet Union, the young think of it as describing Denmark or Norway — lovely, livable places with decent social programs. And the young left, as AOC knows, sees climate change as a decisive voting issue because it’s the existential challenge of our time. This is also increasingly true among older Democratic middle-class suburbanites and city voters living in the rehabbed neighborhoods of lofts and exposed brick.
Markey’s victory follows the spectacular rise in the fortunes of Green parties in Europe, particularly in France and Germany. Green politics is displacing the politics of the older left -- one reason the ailing French Socialist Party is looking for survival through an alliance with environmentalists.
Polling suggested that Markey, who won a special election in 2013 held after Sen. John F. Kerry was named secretary of state, had not made a particularly strong impression on the state and seemed to many voters as more Washington than Malden, his working-class hometown. Kennedy promised a whirlwind of energy and pledged to pay close attention to local and constituent needs. Other longtime incumbents had been knocked out. Why not Markey?
Yet, beyond offering vigor and a voice for the future, Kennedy never provided a clear rationale for why he was running or why Markey should be fired. In the meantime, Markey made a powerful case that he has been an anti-establishment figure since his days as a rebel in the state legislature. And he built a record as a longtime ally of environmentalism and other causes associated with the youngfrom the nuclear weapons freeze in the 1980s to net neutrality.
Don’t count Kennedy out forever; bringing the legacy down a peg may, paradoxically, increase his popularity. But Markey’s triumph really was, as he proclaimed in his victory speech, “a celebration of a movement.” He’ll now always be known for working a political miracle — and for making clear, to borrow from JFK, that saving the planet is this generation’s long twilight struggle.