Good News, and Bad News

The Massachusetts primary was today, and Ed Markey beat Joseph P. Kennedy III in the Senate race:

Senator Edward J. Markey, who rebranded himself from dutiful career politician to fierce progressive warrior over the course of a volatile 11-month campaign, won the Democratic primary for Senate on Tuesday, fending off a challenge from a much younger Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, whose increasingly bare-knuckled offensive failed to capture the imagination of Massachusetts voters.

Kennedy called Markey to concede around 10 p.m. and the Associated Press called the race soon thereafter.

The Malden native had achieved a singular feat: He beat a Kennedy in Massachusetts.

Kennedy was significantly more conservative than Markey, and had little to run on beyond the family name, but he was leading by double digits for much of the race.

On the downside, the three most conservative members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, including the Dem's biggest opponent of Medicare for All, and biggest supporter of the Carried Interest Loophole in Washington, DC, Richard Neal won their primaries:

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, held off Democratic challenger Alex Morse in Tuesday’s primary after an acrimonious campaign that included allegations of sexual misconduct leveled at his younger opponent.

The contest was one of four in Massachusetts where U.S. House candidates were competing Tuesday for the chance to represent their party in the November general election.

In the 6th Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran who saw combat in Iraq and mounted a brief campaign for president last year defeated to fellow Democratic challengers — Jamie Belsito and Angus McQuilken.

………

In the state’s 8th Congressional District, which stretches from portions of Boston south to Bridgewater, Robbie Goldstein, a 36-year-old South Boston resident, lost a challenge to longtime incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch. 

Molton is a member of the corporate stooge New Democrat caucus, and Lynch is an anti-abortion conservative.

While progressives did not win every primary challenge, they won some big ones, and none of the incumbent progressives so far have lost a race, so I'll call the glass half full.