GRANDPA’S GOT GAME: Markey vs Moulton asks Democrats: progressive or young moderate

Ed Markey is 80 years old, the oldest senator Massachusetts has ever sent to Washington. He’s been in Congress since before his primary challenger, 47-year-old Rep. Seth Moulton, was born.

On Tuesday, he proved that for Massachusetts Democrats, ideology matters more than age.

A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll showed Markey leading Moulton by 14 points, 52% to 38%, among likely Democratic primary voters.

The election saw him garner 65%, with moderate Democrat Moulton underperforming his polling number.

The numbers mirror Markey’s 2020 primary victory over Joe Kennedy III — and a rebuke to the notion that the party’s post-Biden trauma over gerontocracy will sink another octogenarian incumbent.

Moulton, a six-term congressman and Iraq War veteran, has made generational change the centerpiece of his campaign. He’s argued that a senator who confused Siri with Claude during a debate about AI regulation “has no hope of regulating these issues effectively.”

He’s called for new party leadership and said he won’t support Sen. Chuck Schumer as Democratic leader.

But voters aren’t buying it. Nearly half say Markey’s age “makes no difference” to them. More than 90% view Markey as the more experienced candidate.

The party’s push for generational change may hit a wall, as many progressives view Moulton as a product of Clinton-era “New Democrat” politics — a brand they see as corporate-friendly neoliberalism that abandoned working-class and minority voters.

The key differentiator, according to the Suffolk poll: 48% of likely voters consider Markey the more progressive candidate, versus just 22% for Moulton.

Markey had the backing of the party’s left flank — Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He co-authored the Green New Deal and champions Medicare for All.

Moulton supports “universal health care” but opposes single-payer, favoring a public option that competes with private insurers.

On transgender rights, Moulton has apologized for 2024 comments about not wanting his daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete” — a wound that progressives haven’t forgotten.

The congressman has outraised Markey by nearly $1 million, but his path is narrowing. In a Chelmsford bellwether poll that correctly predicted the 2020 presidential primary order, Markey leads by 19 points.

Veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake offered the diagnosis: “If you’re defending the system, then you’re showing your age. If you’re taking on the system, then you’re showing your ideology.”

Progressives see Moulton not as generational change, but as a representative of Clinton-era neoliberalism repackaged—corporate-friendly policies that betrayed the party’s base.

Markey, his supporters say, is taking on the system — at 80.