Ed Markey, 80, has been in Congress since 1976 and just won another Democratic primary in Massachusetts, proving the swamp always protects its own.
Markey crushed Rep. Seth Moulton 76-24, per the New York Post, despite not being able to explain what AI tools he uses and campaigning hardest on defending biological males in women's sports. The Democratic machine — from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which kicked in $62,000 less than three weeks before Election Day, to Bernie Sanders to AOC — closed ranks around a man who has spent nearly half a century in Washington.
Moulton, 47, a Marine veteran elected to the House in 2014, made the age question central. When asked at a debate whether he uses Claude or ChatGPT, Markey answered: "I use whatever is inside of my iPhone or my iPad — whatever comes up, and I don't know what companies my iPad may be using." Moulton pounced: "If you don't even know what you're using on your phone or your iPad, this is why we need a new generation of leaders to regulate these technologies."
It didn't matter. Markey's real closing argument was that Moulton "threw trans kids under the bus" — a reference to Moulton's 2024 comment that he didn't want his daughters "getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete." Moulton apologized during the campaign and walked it back, saying at a debate that transgender athletes should be allowed in girls' sports with "a discussion" about safety and fairness. That surrender wasn't enough.
NBC News reported that Moulton and his allies actually outspent Markey's side $7.1 million to $3.9 million on ads. The money didn't help. Commonwealth Together PAC, an outside group, hit Moulton for opposing Medicare for All and taxing billionaires, citing his 2019 presidential run. Moulton's own ads listed policies like "tax the oligarchs, abolish ICE, pass healthcare for all" — not exactly the profile of a moderate, but the progressive apparatus still branded him insufficiently pure.
Markey's platform — the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, taxing billionaires, opposing Trump's defense budget — is the standard progressive wish list. CBS News quoted Markey promising "to cut off this flow of defense money that Donald Trump is using to run an illegal unconstitutional war in Iran." He also pledged this would be his last term, according to CBS. An 80-year-old senator who has been in Washington for 48 years making a term-limit promise is quite the pitch.
Markey will face Republican John Deaton in November. He is heavily favored in deep-blue Massachusetts. If he wins and serves the full term, he'll be 86 when it ends.
The same man who arrived in the House the year America celebrated its bicentennial is still making laws about technology he can't explain and sports he doesn't follow. The voters of Massachusetts had a chance to move on. They didn't.
