Ranting On...Ed Markey

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about Marie Newman, a woman challenging Rep. Dan Lipinski from the left, particularly on the issues of abortion and LGBT rights.  I talked about how, while I don't normally support challenges against incumbents, particularly when we have a majority to win in both the White House & Senate, it's still occasionally important to get out and support a challenger if there is going to be a meaningful difference between what the challenger's voting record is compared to the incumbent.

Today, though, I'm going to talk about a different potential challenge, one where I'm supporting the incumbent (though not monetarily, and we'll get to why in a second), and that is the challenge to incumbent US Senator Ed Markey (D-MA).  Markey is currently being challenged by motivational speaker Steve Pemberton, and there have been rumors that he might be challenged by a more serious candidate like Boston Mayor Marty Walsh or Attorney General Maura Healey.

Markey's record in Congress is, by most means, pretty hard to run to the left toward.  According to 538, he has a "Trump Agreement Score" of 15%, which puts him to the left of liberal icons such as Mazie Hirono, Kamala Harris, and Tammy Baldwin.  There's really no spot on his record one could point to as an obvious place to run to his left, whether it be social or economic issues, and quite often he's not only falling in line with progressive orthodoxy, he's a leader on it.  He's been a vocal left-leaning challenger of even his own party's stances on gun control laws, he is the chief cosponsor of the Green New Deal, and has repeatedly stood up to Mike Pompeo when it comes to LGBT rights.  By all accounts, Democrats should have nothing to complain about here.  He's not someone like Lipinski where there's an easy place to run to his left, and there's not even someone like Seth Moulton where he's taken a controversial stand against a more progressive leader in Congress.  With the potential exception of impeachment, there's really no spot where you could run to his left, and honestly I wonder if Markey would probably support impeachment at this point if asked.

It feels, therefore, that Markey is vulnerable because of one of two reasons: rhetoric or age.  Focusing on the former, Markey is not what you'd consider a particularly flashy senator.  From a state that has brought out liberal headliners like Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Elizabeth Warren, he's more of a behind-the-scenes senator, getting his name on legislation, a workhorse rather than a showhorse.  This, plus his relatively short tenure in the Senate (he was first elected to the body in 2013), is probably at least the initial reason why he's vulnerable-he has not established a longtime brand for himself, and that could make him vulnerable in the same way that Joe Crowley and Mike Capuano were vulnerable in 2018 to primary challenges-no one really felt that they weren't replaceable.

But I feel that it's the second reason as to how people are going to run their primary campaigns, and that makes me nervous, and quite frankly it reeks of ageism.  Markey, at 72, is not the oldest member of Congress, but he's not a young man and it'd be fair to call him, after over 40 years in Congress, a "career politician."  This shouldn't be a bad thing, on the face of it, unless someone has grown complacent, which he almost certainly isn't.  If anything, he's been more active recently as a US Senator thanks to the Democratic House majority.  The juxtaposition of a DC fixture with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's fresh perspective has been one of the key ingredients to the success of the Green New Deal-they represent both the old-and-the-new looking at a vitally important issue together.  He could have been a quiet supporter of this bill like many of his colleagues, but he isn't-he's been at the front lines of climate change legislation, and though he might be decades older than his chief co-sponsor, that doesn't mean that his voice hasn't been important and well-needed.

Throwing out important, tenured members of Congress simply for the sake of "youth and fresh perspective" isn't a strong recipe for success.  If you don't believe me, look at the Republican Party, where they repeatedly lost our credit rating nationally and have simply become the party of "no" even on common sense issues like raising the debt ceiling in a post "Tea Party" world.  Valuing extremism in rhetoric over tangible, consistent results is the stuff that idiots do.  There likely would be little-to-no difference in terms of voting records between Markey and a challenger, but I think you're putting your head in the sand if you assume that simply picking someone younger is going to fix America's problems.  And primary campaigns cost money, which is a limited resource.  The money that Markey and his Democratic opponents will spend could be spent on, say, getting Susan Collins or Thom Tillis out of office rather than on taking down someone who will have almost no tangible difference in terms of substantive output in their voting record, and might well be less-prepared & ready to get actual legislation out-the-door.  It's for this reason why I'm not giving any money to this race even if I support Markey, but I am lending my voice because Ed Markey is certainly not the enemy of progressive causes, and is in fact one of their more ardent defenders.

I have stated on this blog before, and will again, that I think the voices of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & Ayanna Pressley have been quite welcome in Congress.  They did, admittedly, take down people who had very similar profiles to Markey, and perhaps I'm showing my age a bit here by not wanting to go with someone newer or flashier.  But I think that what Ocasio-Cortez & Pressley proved is that we should question whether or not leaders are standing tall enough for issues and their constituents, not to assume all incumbents are lesser than challengers by virtue of their youth.  There are a number of figures like Lipinski, Moulton, Tulsi Gabbard, & Henry Cuellar who are in safely-blue districts and where it's easy to see a challenger running to their left, giving us a better progressive leader in Washington.  But Ed Markey has shown himself to be a true champion of the left, someone who has changed with the times and is a vital workhorse on Capitol Hill.  Instead of supporting the challengers to his left, why not make a real difference and support someone like Marie Newman, or better yet, someone like Mark Kelly, Sara Gideon, Theresa Greenfield, or Doug Jones who might actually get a Democratic majority in the Senate, and turn all of these progressive ideals into legislation.