The infighting inside the Democratic Party is more about ideology than a generational change in leadership. That’s one key takeaway from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), 80, winning his primary in a landslide over 47-year-old Rep.
Page A2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 2 September 2026
Ed Markey’s landslide, called youth rejection, celebrated as progressive win, reported as primary result
Three stories, three faces for the same event: Ed Markey's blowout primary win. One outlet calls it a rejection of youth, another hails it as a progressive triumph, and a third just states the result. The rug-pull is in the language, not the numbers—Markey wins big, but the story gets spun as a warning shot against the young left, even as Common Dreams frames it as proof the movement's power. Meanwhile, CBS just prints the outcome. If you track the party line, the left is always either too young or too radical, but the receipts show the same old progressive winning by a landslide. The lesson is in the count: the ballot doesn't discriminate between a threat and a testament, but the pundits do. The stakes are whether the movement is named as the problem or the proof, and the headline depends on who files it. The column gaps like that turn up when the outcome is unspinnable, but the story still tries. Read all three, and you get the full picture: the left wins, the spin shifts, the receipts land.
“They tell you the left is too young or too radical, but the receipts say the old progressive wins big. The pundits spin it, but the ballot counts every vote the same. The stakes are whether the movement gets called a threat or a testament, depending on who reports it.”
“It's not that the party's choosing age over youth—did I say that?—it's just, you know, experience matters, and sometimes people want someone who knows the ropes, even if the ropes are a little frayed. The enthusiasm is fine, but let's not get carried away. Did I mention the margin? Oh, I did.”
The receipts
Incumbent Sen. Ed Markey has won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.
Progressive US Sen. Ed Markey, a champion of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, decisively fended off a Democratic primary challenge from his right on Tuesday, defeating Rep. Seth Moulton by nearly 30 percentage points in a contest that focused heavily on the incumbent senator's age.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.