Seth Moulton Makes the Only Play Left on the Board

The vultures have long been circling for 79-year-old Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey, and now one has finally decided to swoop in to hasten along his expiration: Representative Seth Moulton, of the state’s northeastern Sixth District, has taken the plunge, yielding up his House seat for an opportunity to primary the geriatric progressive. Moulton, only 46 years old, is explicitly making his (relative) youth a selling point in his campaign. He has received encouragement from many social media quarters, and even the New York Times — with its youth obsession — is buzzing about his candidacy.

Color me skeptical. As a conservative who has long since written off the hopes of Republicans ever winning a Massachusetts Senate seat in the Age of Trump, I would actually greet someone like Seth Moulton as a (marginal) improvement over a fossil like Markey, whose House career first began in the Seventies and whose politics calcified somewhere around then as well. And that, of course, is precisely why I think he will have trouble knocking off Markey: Moulton isn’t competing for my vote, he’s competing for the votes of Massachusetts Democrats in a primary. All the wrong people are rooting for him.

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.

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The vultures have long been circling for 79-year-old Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey, and now one has finally decided to swoop in to hasten along his expiration: Representative Seth Moulton, of the state’s northeastern Sixth District, has taken the plunge, yielding up his House seat for an opportunity to primary the geriatric progressive. Moulton, only 46 years old, is explicitly making his (relative) youth a selling point in his campaign. He has received encouragement from many social media quarters, and even the New York Times — with its youth obsession — is buzzing about his candidacy.

Color me skeptical. As a conservative who has long since written off the hopes of Republicans ever winning a Massachusetts Senate seat in the Age of Trump, I would actually greet someone like Seth Moulton as a (marginal) improvement over a fossil like Markey, whose House career first began in the Seventies and whose politics calcified somewhere around then as well. And that, of course, is precisely why I think he will have trouble knocking off Markey: Moulton isn’t competing for my vote, he’s competing for the votes of Massachusetts Democrats in a primary. All the wrong people are rooting for him.

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.