It’s Not Age

Friends,

Some are characterizing this primary season as a time of generational change in which young insurgents are winning against old farts.

Wrong. Progressive populist fighters are winning against the moderately flatulent establishment.

Case in point: today’s Massachusetts Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, in which 80-year-old incumbent Ed Markey defeated 47-year-old congressman Seth Moulton.

Markey is a progressive who’s been in office for fifty years and was an early proponent of a “green new deal.” Moulton is known as a moderate who has questioned transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports.

To be sure. youth has helped some challengers around the country. In Colorado’s June primary, Diana DeGette, a 15-term incumbent, was defeated by 29-year-old Melta Kiros. DeGette took office four months before Kiros was even born. But I doubt Kiros’s youth was the deciding factor. She came through as being a fighter on the side of average working families.

Last month in Connecticut, 78-year-old Rep. John Larson was defeated by by former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, age 47. Again, Bronin’s age certainly helped. But voters seemed to have responded more to his willingness to take on the establishment.

The big takeaway from this primary season isn’t one of “generational change.” It’s the growing power of progressives, along with voter’s increasing suspicion of giant corporations, Big Tech, and the billionaire class.

The pattern is clear in the Democratic primaries but is also emerging in Republican ones. We’re in a populist age. Inequalities of income, wealth, and power haven’t been this wide since the first Gilded Age. Voters don’t trust the establishment — and with good reason.

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