The contrasts between Kennedy and Markey are not nearly as stark as those between Bowman and Engel. But Markey, viewed as progressive champion in the Senate who coauthored the Green New Deal with Ocasio-Cortez, has sought to cast his decades-younger primary rival as too green to be a senator and not progressive enough, tweaking a conservative slight in a debate Monday with the attack, “Congressman Kennedy is a progressive in name only.” Kennedy, meanwhile has sought to make the argument that Markey is absent and Massachusetts needs an energetic coalition builder who can do more than, as he quipped Monday, sign “the right bill.”
But as far as the two lawmakers’ collective congressional endorsements go, they run the ideological gamut and, sources I spoke with say, have more to do with personal relationships than policy. For instance, Mark Pocan, a cochair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, backed Kennedy over Markey in part, he told the Huffington Post, because of his “strong personal relationship” with the Massachusetts congressman. The congressional aide made a similar assertion about the Markey–Kennedy matchup. “It’s totally the relationships. You work with the people in your chamber a lot more than you do working across the Senate and House. You see your colleagues every day you’re in D.C.—on the floor during votes, you might be on the same committees, and you always know what things they’re working on,” this person explained. “I haven’t seen a list of House members who endorsed in the Senate race, but in our case, Kennedy asked for my boss’s support and he got it. I know a lot senators have done the same for Markey regardless of where they are on the progressive-moderate spectrum, so I’m sure it’s the same dynamic over there.”
This is not lost on progressives, either. “Basically it just all comes down to relationships. And that has been the thing that has just been really disgusting to me,” a progressive activist supporting Markey told me. “It’s fine if you have a good working relationship with Joe Kennedy and he’s been a productive member of the congressional progressive caucus. But that doesn’t mean that he is better than Ed Markey, just because you have a friendly, chummy relationship with him.” There, too, is the added layer of Kennedy being a Kennedy in the era of Trump. “If we’re going to be a party that stands against dynastic politics and spends every day talking about the nepotism of the Trump family, then why are so many in the party spending so much time and resources trying to continue one of the longest-standing dynasties in American history?” a Democratic strategist, told me.
Progressives see a deck stacked against them in many ways. They largely lack the donor base, the connections to the right firms to boost their campaigns—particularly given the DCCC blacklist policy, and face difficulties in garnering national media attention and legitimacy. Not to mention the personal relationships a Kennedy can leverage that translate to real power in Washington, that an outsider like Bowman could never dream of. “Each one of these things individually are not debilitating. But I think in aggregate, when all of them are true—which they often are for a lot of progressive challengers—what it does is it has the effect of just making it really, really hard to get any traction,” Ganapathy explained. “The whole system is sort of slanted against progressive challengers.”
The role national political organizations, like the DCCC and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in primaries only exacerbates this, progressives I spoke with argue. And that this often results in is Democratic general election candidates who don’t necessarily reflect or represent their districts. For instance, Bowman has racked up a number of key local endorsements—from the New York State Nurses Association, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, and state senators Gustavo Rivera and Alessandra Biaggi. Or perhaps an even more poignant example is in Kentucky in the Democratic primary for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat. Amy McGrath was quickly anointed the chosen challenger by the national powers that be. But in Kentucky, her progressive opponent, Charles Booker, has gained many endorsements from Kentucky state representatives. (Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders notably endorsed Booker Tuesday.)
“It’s just a really broken system that makes it really hard for people who aren’t already in it to participate,” Ganapathy told me.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Trump Whines About His COVID-19 Victimhood as Campaign Flails
— In Photos: Protests and Rage in Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and More
— James Clyburn on the Floyd Killing and the Role of Race in the Coming Election
— Journalists Become Targets While Covering America’s Unraveling
— Documents Expose FDA Commissioner’s Personal Interventions on Behalf of Trump’s Favorite Chloroquine Doctor
— Why Trump’s New Campaign Slogan, “Transition to Greatness,” Sends a Disastrous Message
— From the Archive: Inside Unspeakable Police Brutality in a Brooklyn Precinct Once Nicknamed Fort Tombstone
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.