There’s nothing surprising about a well-established incumbent who has been in Congress since Carter was elected making short work of a primary challenger who ran a terrible campaign without any discernible reason to vote for him other than, “I am the grandchild of a famous person.” But WaPo would really, really like it if you thought it was a shocker:
Sen. Edward J. Markey, recast as the insurgent liberal after more than four decades in Congress, made history Tuesday as the first politician to beat a Kennedy in a statewide election in Massachusetts.
Markey secured the Democratic nomination for the Senate, turning back a challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, a scion of the political dynasty long seen as a rising star. With 43 percent of the precincts reporting, Markey led 55 to 45 percent when the Associated Press projected the incumbent as the winner.
The outcome was a coup for the liberal wing of the party, which rallied its resources behind Markey, even as some establishment Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), endorsed Kennedy.
The win for Markey, who is now heavily favored to hold his seat in November, is the latest victory this year for the increasingly powerful liberals in the party. Markey latched on to his partnership with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — who was more than a decade from being born when he was first elected to the House in 1976 — on their environmental Green New Deal plan to bolster his progressive bona fides.
The liberal wing has scored a series of upsets in House primaries, knocking out decades-long incumbents and claiming open seats.
The article gives the incorrect impression that Markey made some of sudden about-face in his policies - it makes it sound like he “latched on” to AOC to create the Green New Deal, and not, y’know, the other way around. It also uses a term that in political coverage is normally reserved for sudden, abrupt change - “coup” - to describe … the maintenance of the status quo.
Meanwhile, it uses spurious football-color-commentary “records” - this team has never lost on a Sunday in October with the wind at their backs and a gibbous moon - to make it sound like Kennedy should have been a shoo-in. Hint: maybe the reason no Kennedy had lost a statewide election in Massachusetts before is that no previous Kennedy was stupid enough to primary a popular incumbent with no compelling reason to unseat him?
It’s not until graf 16 that the story mentions the real reason Kennedy lost:
Some voters questioned why Kennedy would challenge the incumbent when their policy stands were so similar.
“I just think it’s unnecessary,” Sean Dacey, a 44-year-old chef whose restaurant job was eliminated by the coronavirus pandemic, said after seeing Markey speak last week. “I think it might have a bit to do with ambition and looking and seeing an opportunity than with a chance to distinguish himself on the issues. They’re pretty close on the issues. So why bother?”
But that doesn’t fit the “liberals are scary new ‘insurgents’ who are taking over, not part of the American political tradition since forever, especially in Mass” narrative, so “coup” and “insurgent” go to the top, and “it was much ado about nothing, so the incumbent stays” goes to graf 16.
