Joe Kennedy III is more progressive than AOC, but not progressive enough for Maskachusetts

by philg

“The age of incrementalism is over,” Markey said. “Now is our moment to think big.” (Boston.com)

Ed Markey, who might be running to replace President Harris in 2028 when he will be a young 82 years of age, defeated Joe Kennedy III in the Maskachusetts Senate primary by declaring that Kennedy was not progressive enough and winning the endorsement of AOC. Yet ProgressivePunch says that, during the 2019-2020 session, AOC had a “Progressive Score” of only 94.94 percent (based on her votes). Kennedy, by contrast, voted correctly 96.2 percent of the time.

In other words, a candidate who was actually more progressive than AOC lost the election here in Massachusetts.

(This was the only race on my Democratic primary ballot in which there was a choice; all other candidates were running unopposed.)

From Newburyport, MA yesterday, a multilingual Hate Has No Home Here message that welcomes migrants right next to a No Trespassing sign. The owner is also apparently an Ed Markey fan:

Related:

  • “It is the duty of the revolution to put an end to compromise, and to put an end to compromise means taking the path of socialist revolution.” (i.e., the age of incrementalism was also over in 1917; V.I. Lenin)

4 thoughts on “Joe Kennedy III is more progressive than AOC, but not progressive enough for Maskachusetts”

  1. Somewhat related for the spirit of Lenin’s quote: this morning on NPR I was listening to the debate over the overtime-wage law in upstate New York pertaining to farm workers on the farms up there. Last year the NY Legislature passed a law requiring the farms to pay their workers overtime starting at 60 hours per week. During the pandemic, a lot of these farms have been under financial duress and are at the breaking point with the overtime requirements. Now the legislature wants to lower the threshold to 40 hours per week.

    Opponents of the change say that there hasn’t even been enough time to collect financial data for the change as it exists in a year. They also point out that they haven’t had a full season of planting and harvesting in several years. They say they will be forced to lay off workers, close their farms or spend money on robotics and automation in order to make up the difference.

    This doesn’t deter the legislators in NY from pushing for the change. They give some lip service: “We want you to know that we feel for the plight of these farms.” What’s their answer? More public funding for agriculture to make up the difference. So they want to spend more tax money as subsidies to farms that can’t make ends meet and lower the threshold anyway.

    Their idea, as far as I can tell, is to make as many people as possible completely dependent on the government for their survival. If the farms effectively have to become state-supported businesses, and all taxpayers in New York, and elsewhere (because they federal money for the subsidies) have to pay to keep them open, that’s a feature, not a bug.

  2. Well I’m 2 for 2 in predicting yesterday’s races. I thought both Markey and Richard Neal were going to win. It’s really not difficult to predict these things in Massachusetts. We knew Alex Morse was going to be destroyed once it went public that he was sleeping with undergraduates while he taught at UMass Amherst. He didn’t break any laws, and he says all the relationships were consensual as a young, gay man, but apparently Richard Neal isn’t ready to give up his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee just as America is on the cusp of going full commie. There’s going to be so much for him to do!

  4. Here’s a helpful map and analysis from WBUR. You can see that the votes for Markey and Kennedy were clustered and it was the hardcore Warren/Sanders supporters that put Markey over the top:

    “Markey racked up victories in municipalities that favored Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic presidential primary six months ago. Sanders and Warren were widely regarded as the most progressive candidates vying for the White House, and they won 78 Massachusetts cities and towns, combined.”

    https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/09/01/markey-kennedy-senate-primary-results

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