The DJ in charge of the music at Saturday’s Massachusetts Democratic Convention sure has a dry sense of humor.
Per the party’s livestream of the event, he or she followed up the announcement that Rep. Seth Moulton had easily cleared the 15% threshold for ballot access by playing the classic Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell hit “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
LOL. Perhaps there is some other explanation, but the song worked just fine as a commentary on the steep climb Moulton now faces.
Consider the case the congressman made for pink-slipping Sen. Ed Markey in his convention speech. Even before the obligatory strafing of Donald Trump (“a monster,” he called him) Moulton was executing his generational offensive. “The status quo playbook has failed us time and time again….we cannot afford to wait six more years for change…. It’s time for the generation that grew up with the internet, and will have to live for decades with AI, to lead our way through it,” he said.
And in his only explicit swipe at Markey, Moulton warned “this is not a time for Democrats to think small,” and thinking big “means I will not vote for Chuck Schumer for Senate leadership. You cannot promise next-generation leadership while supporting the same status quo establishment in Washington.”
Plenty of Massachusetts Democrats are sick of Schumer, including Markey’s prized 2020 re-election endorser, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yet judging from Markey’s official website, bulging with press releases in which Schumer is name-checked as an ally, he’s not about to chuck him under the bus.
But in his turn on the convention podium, Markey responded to Moulton’s jab with a carve job that made Uma Thurman’s bloodletting in “Kill Bill” seem tame.
“Massachusetts deserves better than a Senator who scapegoats trans kids to score political points…who trades stocks in companies with businesses before the very Congressional committees he serves on…who says universal health care is too much to ask for and that taxing billionaires is “class warfare” against the rich…. I don’t take corporate PAC donations. I don’t take money from fossil fuel companies. I don’t treat public office as a personal self-enrichment plan,” said Markey, without pausing to wipe off the machete between swipes.
Yikes. As Joe Kennedy, still smarting from his 2020 disemboweling at Markey’s hands, can attest, this is the type of onslaught Moulton can expect between now and September 1, a replay of the climactic scene in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” where the bad guy is stomping on Cary Grant’s fingers as he clings to Mount Rushmore.
Except this time, Leo G. Carroll isn’t handy to gun the perp down. Moulton has admirers, and there’s no doubt many voters are open to change. Calla Walsh can’t help Markey this time from her perch in Beirut. And independents have little incentive to take a GOP ballot.
But the primary is just 93 days away, buried in a week where folks are either squeezing out a last gasp of vacation or getting the kids back to school. Moulton’s odds of cashing in his puncher’s chance depend on both a Herculean effort to draw attention and a blunder by Markey.
Right now that looks like an awfully high mountain.
