Joe Kennedy loses senate primary contest - and an American dynasty fades
- Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts defeated Joe Kennedy III in the state’s hotly contested Democratic Senate primary
- Kennedy the first member of his fabled political family to suffer defeat in a Massachusetts election for a congressional seat
The 2020 political season has delivered a lot of curve balls, and here’s another: for the first time in US history, a Kennedy has lost an election in Massachusetts.
Senator Edward Markey’s ability to beat back a challenge from Congressman Joe Kennedy III in the state’s Democratic primary Tuesday was a tribute to the incumbent’s skill at organising progressive activists behind him against a scion of a storied political family.
It was also a tribute to a broader political dynamic that reaches beyond Massachusetts and the Democratic Party: the loosening grip of family dynasties in American politics.
In both parties, the Old Guard has been challenged by the rise of populist movements: the white nationalism that brought Donald Trump to power in the Republican Party, and the multiracial progressivism that nearly gave Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders the Democratic presidential nomination.
With the rise of those anti-establishment forces, some of the most famous names in politics have been thrown to the sidelines in the last five years: Clinton. Bush. Romney.