What Will Joe Kennedy Do After His Congressional Career Ends Tomorrow? A Biden Sub-Cabinet Position?

Tomorrow is primary day in Massachusetts and the more progressive of the two candidates, incumbent Ed Markey, is ahead of Joe Kennedy III in the Senate race. Every public poll this summer has shown Markey ahead and the latest-- an Emerson poll released yesterday-- has him beating Kennedy 56-44%, The RealClearPolitics polling average has Markey ahead 52.0% to 40.8%, an 11.2% gap. That's some turn-around since the first poll taken a year ago that showed Kennedy beating Markey 42-25% (a since evaporated 17 point lead for Kennedy).

Much of the national coverage of the election has been about endorsements. One way of looking at it is that the entire progressive grassroots movement-- from MoveOn (92% of whose Massachusetts members opted for Markey), Daily Kos, NARAL, Sierra Club, HRC, Peace Action and the Working Families Party to DFA, Indivisible, Our Revolution, Sunrise, Justice Dems, PCCC, PDA and Blue America-- has come out for Markey. But the media is also looking at this as a battle between Pelosi-- who hypocritically endorsed Kennedy, probably doing him more harm than good-- and AOC, who validated Markey as the progressive choice. Kennedy was probably further harmed when the only sitting U.S. senator to endorse him was the most right-wing Democrat in Congress, Arizona crackpot Kyrsten Sinema. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, is backing Markey. All the massachusetts members of Congress who have weighed in, have weighed in for Markey. And another major progressive validator, Ro Khanna endorsed Markey. Two other widely mistrusted members of Pelosi's leadership team-- Hoyer and Hakeem Jeffries-- have also come out for Kennedy.

Kennedy's congressional endorsement roster is a good signal to not support him. Some of Congress' most loathsome Wall Street-owned New Dems-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- are on Team Kennedy, from Filemon Vela, Conor Lamb and coke-freak Pete Aguilar to worthless conservative Dems like Gil Cisneros, Juan Vargas, Elissa Slotkin, Xochitl Torres Small, Sharice Davids, Sean Patrick Maloney, Derek Kilmer, Blue Dog chair Stephanie Murphy and David Trone the crooked Maryland businessman who spent a horrific $31,327,397 of his own cash over 2 cycles to buy a seat. Many are hoping to build relationships with the Kennedy Machine-- and it isn't only conservative Dems in ye ole tit-for-tat, transactional camp. Establishment progressive Mark Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who imagines himself running for Senate in 2022, has led a number of progressives into the Kennedy tent, putting them in opposition to their own grassroots supporters-- terrible mistake for a movement Pocan has never given a shit about.

Meanwhile, Gabe Debenedetti reported for New York Magazine that Bernie"has not endorsed Markey-- who backed Elizabeth Warren for president-- and shows no signs of planning to do so, despite pleas from Markey and plenty of his advocates... Markey and Sanders served together in the House for 16 years, and in the Senate-- where Warren also serves-- for six.)"

National coverage of the race has tended to focus on two big issues: Markey’s position in the progressive firmament and persistent questions about why, exactly, Kennedy is running if he has few substantive complaints about the senator. “I have been a fan of Ed Markey’s since he led the fight to reform the state’s judiciary when I was governor and that was a long time ago,” 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis told me this week. “I am also a fan of Joe Kennedy’s, my congressman, but I can’t for the life of me understand why he is putting us all through this to defeat a fine U.S. Senator. He should be in Iowa digging up votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.” Together, these arguments appear to have made Markey a slight favorite.

Largely inspired by the endorsements and ongoing involvement of Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise Movement (a group of young environmental organizers), national progressives have joined Markey’s cause. In a year where the presidential race has offered few clear opportunities for the left flank of the Democratic party to push back against the center-left, this race has seen more vicious intra-party brawling than it might have in a different political context. “Kennedy is a really good release valve when you know you can’t go after Biden,” said one national progressive leader backing Markey.

“What the progressive movement is saying-- particularly the young progressive movement-- is they’re trying to make clear that what happened in 2018 is not just a bunch of women of color knocking off a bunch of old white guys,” Markey’s campaign manager John Walsh told me, explicitly comparing his candidate to Charles Booker, who fell short in Kentucky’s Senate primary in March, and Cori Bush, who defeated longtime congressman William Lacy Clay earlier this month. “When a 74-year-old almost-50-year veteran defeats-- if it happens-- the Mt. Rushmore legacy of Massachusetts politics, maybe national politics, it’s not about how old you are. It’s not about the color of your skin. It’s actually about the policy.”

Everything Kennedy does-- every breath he takes, every move he makes, every bond he breaks, every step he takes, every word he says, every game he plays-- is all about the presidency. It's revolting because it's based on absolutely nothing but his bloodline. He hasn't accomplished a single thing and hasn't distinguished himself in any way other thinly a disgusting display of naked ambition. He's going to lose tomorrow because he never managed to explain why he's running against Markey. In the age of Trump, Massachusetts doesn't have enough low-info Democrats for JK-III to win.

Yesterday Politico reported that "Kennedy’s campaign believes Markey has an advantage among voters who have already cast ballots by mail-- namely white, well-educated voters in the suburbs-- but that high turnout on voting day would lend itself to Kennedy... Pelosi also provided a financial bump for the congressman. Kennedy raised $100,000 within a day of Pelosi's endorsement, according to his campaign. But Markey, who’s assembled a potent small-dollar fundraising operation, says he raised four times that amount-- $400,000-- in the 24 hours after Pelosi weighed in, much of it from progressives frustrated with Pelosi’s decision to intervene."