{"id":969,"date":"2026-09-02T15:12:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=969"},"modified":"2026-09-02T15:12:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:12:38","slug":"old-and-on-the-way-how-ed-markey-dispatched-seth-moulton-in-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=969","title":{"rendered":"Old and On the Way: How Ed Markey Dispatched Seth Moulton in Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton was the last 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to speak at the Iowa State Fair \u201cpolitical soapbox\u201d in August 2019, and I got to see him there. He delivered a lackluster speech before a relatively small audience. Hilariously, he told the crowd that \u201cI had people talking to me at the urinal in the restroom, saying that they\u2019re here to hear my speech.\u201d My friends and I joked that we could feel the \u201cMoultmentum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump Can\u2019t Stop the Populist Uprising Against Data Centers<\/a><\/p>\n

To no one\u2019s surprise, Moulton left the primary race six days later\u2014months before any votes were cast. In 2018, he had been a leader in a small centrist Democratic movement to block Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker if Democrats took the House back in the midterms. After the party did, that Moulton campaign also went nowhere.<\/p>\n

Moulton\u2019s 2026 primary challenge to Democratic Senator Ed Markey met the same fate Tuesday night, when the progressive incumbent beat him by nearly a two-to-one margin. The Boston centrist, 47, tried to make the race a generational challenge against the 80-year-old Markey. But in fact, Moulton locked himself into the role of the old and out-of-touch guy, when two days after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in 2024, he unburdened himself to The New York Times<\/em> and announced that he disagreed with Harris and many Democrats\u2019 progressive views, including staunch support for trans rights. \u201cI have two little girls,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I\u2019m supposed to be afraid to say that.\u201d Markey quickly denounced him for throwing trans Americans \u201cunder the bus,\u201d but Moulton insisted he was only speaking hard truths to a complacent progressive establishment. \u201cI think that our refusal to engage in this debate, to answer the Republicans\u2019 attacks, did a great disservice to the trans community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

These efforts to play to anti-trans sentiment within the Democratic party fell flat in Moulton\u2019s Senate bid. At an October \u201cNo Kings\u201d rally in Boston, Markey drew cheers, wearing a sheer trans scarf in pink and light blue, while Moulton was booed. As his trans-baiting ploys failed to gain any traction in his Senate bid, Moulton apologized to anyone who was hurt by his remarks and said he broadly supported trans rights. Still, he never took back his slam on trans athletes\u2019 playing in women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the only reason Markey won, but it was one of them. The larger reason Moulton lost is that he is a career centrist opportunist who kicked Harris while she was down, tried to take the gavel from Pelosi, and consistently blamed the party\u2019s left for Trump\u2019s two victories. Challenging Markey, he also tried to revive the broadly shared Democratic discomfort, especially in hindsight, with Biden running for reelection at 80, when he was clearly hobbled in speech and physical movement by his age (and diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer once he left office.)<\/p>\n

Sadly for Biden, there\u2019s no comparison with Markey, who is well-spoken, witty, and agile. The incumbent senator also put together strong support from progressives, including fellow Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Presley, and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all of whom joined him for a late rally on Sunday. Years ago, he backed Ocasio-Cortez when the Green New Deal was considered radical (it later drove some Biden policies), and he also backs Medicare for All, expanding Social Security, and higher taxes on the wealthy.<\/p>\n

Read more Why AOC Made Her Egg Freezing Public<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the greatest gathering of progressive voices on one stage,\u201d Markey told the crowd on Sunday. \u201cOur progressive-palooza. That\u2019s what we have put together.\u201d But the real excitement came with Tuesday\u2019s vote-a-palooza, when he won back his seat 65\u201335.<\/p>\n

Moulton drew progressive ire for linking Markey to the late sex-abuser Jeffrey Epstein, charging him with \u201cmeeting with a lobbyist on behalf of\u2026Epstein.\u201d Markey angrily denied the charge, which was eventually disproven. Another supposed point Moulton scored in a debate with Markey\u2014a gotcha exchange that had Markey confessing that he wasn\u2019t sure he\u2019d ever used artificial intelligence\u2014also turned out to be a nonissue. \u201cI use whatever is inside of my iPhone and my iPad, whatever comes up,\u201d the senator said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know what company my iPad might be using.\u201d It was an honest and fair answer: None of us truly know what kind of software our devices employ. But the absolutely correct answer would have been that the Big Tech companies are putting so much AI slop in their devices and apps, it leaves users adopting AI whether they want to or not.<\/p>\n

Despite Moulton\u2019s slaps at Pelosi and Harris, in this race he wanted to be known as a progressive. His campaign website features a \u201credbox\u201d\u2014a ploy that campaigns use to skirt campaign rules against coordinating with outside groups by placing approved messaging for other advertising initiatives or social-media promotions to adopt within a notionally unaffiliated red frame on their websites. Moulton\u2019\u2019s redbox said, \u201cVoters under 40 on the go need to see that Ed Markey willfully doesn\u2019t understand AI<\/strong> and is clinging to power while AI companies go unregulated, destroying our planet, our jobs and our mental health\u2026. [They] need to see that Seth Moulton is a next generation progressive fighter who supports abolishing ICE, taxing the rich and health care for all.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that sort of appeal comes off as desperate opportunism, that\u2019s because it is. Just last year, Moulton told The Boston Globe<\/em> that progressive populism is \u201cgreat for Democrats if we want to continue losing.\u201d Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Mass, denounced Moulton\u2019s 2026 moves. \u201cSeth has done a fascinating job of trying to rebrand himself as progressive this cycle,\u201d Cohn told The Lever<\/em>. \u201c[Moulton] doesn\u2019t ever really actually hit on the big problem over the past few decades of the Democratic Party\u2019s movement away from thinking about how the government can positively intervene to improve people\u2019s everyday lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Markey\u2019s victory surprised some people, but I wasn\u2019t one of them. I have never considered Moulton any kind of progressive, and I remember when Markey beat former representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, scion of Massachusetts\u2019s most powerful political dynasty. No member of the Kennedy clan had ever lost a race there before. In November, Markey faces Republican John Deaton, who in 2024 lost badly to Elizabeth Warren.<\/p>\n

Read more Dolly Parton Was More Than an Icon<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nOld and On the Way: How Ed Markey Dispatched Seth Moulton in Massachusetts - Atlas Living Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=969\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Old and On the Way: How Ed Markey Dispatched Seth Moulton in Massachusetts - Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Nation Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=969\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Atlas Living Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-02T15:12:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=969#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=969\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6233854b1f92a6d21147fe5d5e58abc\"},\"headline\":\"Old and On the Way: How Ed Markey Dispatched Seth Moulton in Massachusetts\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-02T15:12:38+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=969\"},\"wordCount\":1124,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=969#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/2126fa72561097d18f1d37020b916ce5.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=969#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=969\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/atlaslivingmedia.com\\\/?p=969\",\"name\":\"Old and On the Way: How Ed Markey Dispatched Seth Moulton in Massachusetts - 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