Two 2020 Democratic primaries illustrate a central paradox of Massachusetts politics, which is that politics in cradle of American democracy, the place where America began as an act of rebellion, is among the most establishment friendly in the nation. Bright blue Massachusetts is liberal in principle but conservative in practice. The recent primary victories of 1st District Congressman Richie Neal and Senator Ed Markey provide very useful insights into this paradox.
Richie Neal’s district is not competitive because the vast majority of voters are being both descriptively and substantively well represented by Richie Neal. An old white guy who sees his job as accumulating political power and using it to “bring home the bacon” is EXACTLY what most Western Mass voters are bargaining for. Neal’s opponents over the years (right and left) have attacked him as a “professional politician” who is “bought and paid for” by special interests. In other words, they have run moralistic reform oriented campaigns which fall very flat in a district where most voters see both economic and social justice crusades as somewhat removed from their daily lives.
Senator Markey was faced with an interesting puzzle in the form of his challenger, Congressman Joe Kennedy. No one was ever able to diagnose the fundamental difference between these campaigns, so each one had to fight on two fronts, resume AND reform. Most folks assumed than the old white guy would hammer away at the resume and the young white guy would try to mitigate that advantage with his record while posing as the champion of progressive reform. At the end of the day, Markey won on both fronts statewide giving him a big win on Election Day, and Kennedy ended up attracting the one segment of the progressive coalition more interested in tangible results than progressive principles.
Kennedy did very well with voters of color. He won 21 of the state’s 26 so-called “Gateway Cities.” What this seems to indicate is that one barrier to Massachusetts politics being as progressive as most of the rest of America thinks it is that minority voters are not unsympathetic to “bring home the bacon” representation and are less convinced that descriptive representation adds up to substantive gains. It is not a coincidence that Joe Kennedy beat Markey handily in Richie Neal’s district. At the end of the day, remember, Kennedy was Pelosi’s candidate while Markey and Morse were AOC’s candidates.
The national media is portraying the Bay State’s primary as an “empire strikes back” story, but, as usual, that’s wrong. The Massachusetts 2020 Democratic primaries illustrated that most Massachusetts voters remain (statewide and in key regions/ districts) satisfied with the results of transactional politics and professional politicians, even if they are sympathetic to moralistic, anti-politics reform and reformers in principle.