Ed Markey wins his Senate primary -- fending off a challenge from Joe Kennedy
Source: Vox
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) has won his primary, successfully holding off a challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, a scion of the famous Massachusetts political family.
Markey, a longtime US lawmaker, is known for being a stalwart champion of environmental policy including cosponsoring the Green New Deal, as well as landmark House legislation on cap and trade 11 years ago.
There had been a limited ideological case for Kennedy's run since the two lawmakers both identify as progressives, and Markey leaned heavily into his legislative work on both climate and tech to carve out an advantage. A robust digital presence bolstered by his social media team and some of his younger supporters on TikTok and Twitter also played a role in rebranding him as an accessible policymaker, despite his age. (Markey is 74.)
Read more: https://www.vox.com/2020/9/1/21405731/ed-markey-wins-massachusetts-senate-primary-defeats-joe-kennedy
Note - source changed from WBUR (NPR Boston) to Vox
George II
(67,782 posts)Susan Calvin
(1,649 posts)stonecutter357
(12,697 posts)question everything
(47,518 posts)Susan Calvin
(1,649 posts)I appreciate her a great deal, but this particular endorsement made me angry, especially after threatening to boycott contractors or whatever you call people who do campaign work if they supported Progressive primary Challengers. The way I took this endorsement was it's okay if you're a corporate Democrat. To be fair I don't really know that about him, I just assumed. Maybe it was it's okay if you have a family name. But I didn't like it.
kiri
(796 posts)Kennedy was very silent on the Post Office scandal.
Kennedy never supported protecting the fishing stocks and repeatedly voted to allow fisheries to kill the populations, preventing recovery.
Kennedy never supported criminal; justice reform; cultivated police union support.
Joe never disavowed his nutsy anti-vaxx cousin who insists that vaccines cause autism. Kennedy cannot be guilty of having a nuty cousin, but he could have raised his voice to support sound science; Joe said nothing.
Joe traded on his name. Markey is not perfect, but he has the seniority and convictions to support progressives.
question everything
(47,518 posts)not from MA.
Cha
(297,503 posts)People can support whoever they want, and our members do, Pelosi said during the interview Sunday. I support my members, and I have consistently, proudly supported my members in their re-elections and thats been consistent against any other people who are running against them. They can run against them, and members can support them. But I support my members, and I am so proud of Joe Kennedy.
She's loyal to her House Members..
https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2020/08/24/nancy-pelosi-endorsement-joe-kennedy-ed-markey
Congratulations to Senator Markey!
rpannier
(24,333 posts)They each endorsed their colleague
Cha
(297,503 posts)question everything
(47,518 posts)Last came the above interview.
I was really disappointed with her stand here,
Cha
(297,503 posts)about Senator Ed Markey.
George II
(67,782 posts)...for her endorsement.
As they say, "it is what it is".
rpannier
(24,333 posts)I wasn't surprised
Not sure why anyone would be
They supported their colleague
George II
(67,782 posts)The only people who seem upset are those who aren't "in the game"!
Susan Calvin
(1,649 posts)Fortunately it didn't matter anyway. And I still say from my limited observation it looks like different types of primary Challengers are being treated differently.
Response to Susan Calvin (Reply #26)
ahoysrcsm This message was self-deleted by its author.
question everything
(47,518 posts)Just curious
NNadir
(33,539 posts)The so called "Green New Deal" is not green, not new, and not much of a deal.
Enthusiasm for it in our party is our equivalent of creationism in their party.
This has been demonstrated by experiment. Worldwide enthusiasm for "Green New Deal" policies have failed to address climate change, and failed to reduce reliance on dangerous fossil fuels. In fact, climate change is accelerating, as is the use of dangerous fossil fuels. Trillions of dollars and vast amounts of material resources thrown at so called "renewable energy" have had no result. The environment is degrading faster, not more slowly.
So called "renewable energy" is not renewable and not sustainable, and will never be as clean as the form of energy Markey has so assiduously condemned, nuclear energy.
I hold Markey responsible for encouraging Obama to make his worst appointment, Gregory Jazko, tiresome fool.
Markey's generation, which is my generation, more or less, will pass soon enough, and much smarter people than we were will replace us.
If we can't lead - and clearly we have failed to do so - we should have gotten out of the way.
I have never voted Republican, and at this point, never will. The Republicans in the Massachusetts Senate race are about what one would expect from Republicans. So I'd have to hold my nose were I to vote in Massachusetts, but again, happily, I don't.
I don't know much about the Kennedy lad, but our party could do better than Markey that's for sure.
cloudythescribbler
(2,586 posts)You seem to suggest that these forms of energy should not be pursued full throttle. Every sign scientifically and every major movement around the world to stave off (impending) runaway global warming supports doing so. You cite no linx or sources to suggest that "so-called 'renewable energy' is not renewable & not sustainable.
On nuclear energy, which as someone long concerned w/climate crisis I oppose and most but not all climate activists do (Jim Hansen, who is a climatologist and not an energy production scientist, as an activist supports nukes, but the arguments against them, aside from those many powerful ones familiar to those who like myself have opposed nuclear energy for more than 40 years include that (1) nuclear is NOT cheap & NOT getting cheaper, as solar & wind are (2) nuclear takes enormous input of energy to produce capacity, for a LONG time before generating even the first kilowatt of energy and (3) nuclear is almost impossible to see being produced globally on the scale that are quite possible for wind and solar
It IS true that the crisis has been getting worse, and MOST but not all nations are falling short, but that only requires MORE investment in solar, wind & geothermal, and in storage & transport for these as well as other intermediate forms like hydrogen (massive solar in places like the Sahara cd be used to produce hydrogen from seawater, which hydrogen as a fuel cd power cars, and much else, and is readily transportable even w/o huge cable construction across continents
at any rate your opposition to the Green New Deal (I think it doesn't go far enough but is a major step forward from where we are) seems to be based more on inclination and presumption that the pursuit of renewable energy has had 'no' result rather than 'insufficient' result from insufficient pursuit!
NNadir
(33,539 posts)When I was a child, I also opposed nuclear energy, but then I grew up by reading science books.
You know something? Facts matter.
If solar and wind are so cheap, how do you account for the fact that the highest consumer electricity prices in the OECD belong to Denmark and Germany?
Is it because they hate poor people or is it because it's fun to charge everyone a lot of money because everyone is rich, or is because they need to have redundant systems, each requiring the expenditure of vast material resources to do what one system could do cheaply without robbing the shit out of all future generations?
How come Denmark remains an offshore oil and gas drilling hellhole?
Oil and Gas, Danish Energy Agency
Frankly, I have spent more than 30 years in the primary scientific literature reading about energy and the environment.
I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed by rote dogma.
Again, here are some facts, my standard response to antinuke nonsense, frankly anti-nuke nonsense that kills people, because nuclear energy saves lives and because I insist facts matter.
Context: Why not go full Trump?
To wit:
Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 19902015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.
It works out to between six to seven million people per year.
This means that in the last decade, while we wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana, more people have died from air pollution than died in World War II.
We have spent, in the last ten years alone, more than two trillion dollars on solar and wind energy, more than three trillion dollars in this century, this on a planet where 2 billion people lack access to basic sanitation:
The amount of money "invested" in so called "renewable energy" in the period between 2004 and 2018 is over 3.036 trillion dollars; dominated by solar and wind which soaked up 2.774 trillion dollars.
Source: UNEP/Bloomberg Global Investment in Renewable Energy, 2019
How much energy has this grand investment produced, and how does it compare to the growth of the use of dangerous coal, dangerous oil, and dangerous natural gas?
In this century, world energy demand grew by 179.15 exajoules to 599.34 exajoules.
In this century, world gas demand grew by 50.33 exajoules to 137.03 exajoules.
In this century, the use of petroleum grew by 34.79 exajoules to 188.45 exajoules.
In this century, the use of coal grew by 63.22 exajoules to 159.98 exajoules.
In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 9.76 exajoules to 12.27 exajoules.
12.27 exajoules is slightly over 2% of the world energy demand.
2019 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38] (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)
And yet we hear from people who have obviously never looked in their lives at read data, and who supply no references that solar and wind are means of addressing the growth in the use of dangerous fossil fuels, and that anyone who looks at data, is engaging in "talking points."
When confronted with hand waving airheads who have no interest in the fate of humanity, I often point to this paper, co-authored by one of the world's most famous climate scientists, Jim Hansen, about how many lives nuclear energy saved, and how many billions of tons of carbon dioxide it prevented from accumulating in the atmosphere, by his calculation (in 2013) about 31 billion tons:
Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 48894895)
Maybe there are people with solar cells on the roofs of their McMansions who "know more than the scientists" about climate change, and can confidently say that this paper, published in one of the most prestigious Environmental scientific journals in the world is "propganda."
Of course, I feel differently about what propaganda might be. To me, "propaganda" usually consists of slinging nonsense invectives by people who have no information at those who do, say like, um, "much misinformation, lack of context, and propaganda, with just enough facts to make it plausible."
As for context, the data on the accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide speaks volumes. I've analyzed it extensively, for several decades. But any asshole interested in humanity could do the same, if they gave a shit, which clearly they don't.
The data pages of the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Web Pages, with data going back as far as the 1950's are here: Data: The complete Mauna Loa CO2 records described on this page are available.
We hit 417.43 ppm of CO2 in the planetary atmosphere this spring, in the week beginning May 24, 2020.
In the 20th century the average rate of increase in the dangerous fossil fuel waste was as follows:
1961-1970: 0.898 ppm/year on average.
1971-1980: 1.339 ppm/year on average.
1981-1990: 1.554 ppm/year on average.
1991-2000: 1.541 ppm/year on average.
In the age of the rise of "renewable energy will save us" beginning with Germany:
2001-2010: 2.038 ppm/year on average.
2011-2018: 2.418 ppm/year on average.
The 20th century average annual increase overall: 1.31 ppm/year
The 21st century average annual increase overall: 2.12 ppm/year
The last 5 years annual average increase: 2.55 ppm/year
Are we tired of so much winning yet? Do we care a shred for the planet we are leaving behind for our children, our grandchildren and their great grandchildren?
Well, I think the data speaks for itself, even this superficial evocation of it. Of course, if one isn't lazy, one can dig really, really, really, really deep into data, the chemistry of silicon refining, lanthanide mining, child slaves digging cobalt in the Congo for lithium batteries for "green" energy storage, the use and source of methylethylketone electrolytes in those batteries, leaching from lead mines, well, it goes on and on and on and on, but one would have to give a shit to look.
There are two kinds of Trumpers in my view:
One of course consists of those who believe and support his lies, for the most part poorly educated racists. Everyone who writes here is well aware of these types.
The second, somewhat more subtle sort are those who "reason" like Trump, who believe that if they simply make stuff up and repeat it over and over and over in contradiction of the facts, it should be believed.
Anyone, I do mean anyone, who embraces the obvious lie that so called "renewable energy" is doing a damn thing about climate change or about the growth in the use of dangerous fossil fuels is engaged in Trumpism of the second kind.
Facts matter. They are clear, and they are unambiguous. Little bourgeois brats crowing about the solar cells on their roofs don't cut it if the issue under discussion is the most critical of our times, climate change.
Note that I cited Hansen's famous and much cited paper. If you read it, you will see that the irrefutable data in it is not about nuclear engineering - about which I am an expert - but about data concerning human lives and carbon dioxide.
Stating that he is not an engineer is not relevant to the case. I have yet to meet a single anti-nuke who has a respectable appreciation of nuclear engineering. They carry on endlessly about so called "nuclear waste" without having evidence that it has in storage, in more than half a century, killed as many people as will die in the next four hours from air pollution, dangerous fossil fuel waste that is not contained, because it can't be.
If one really understands used nuclear fuel, one will understand how valuable it is, how it is a key to addressing dire environmental issues that no one bothers to understand.
Now, here's another fact: In order to govern well, it is not sufficient merely to push aside people who are very, very, very bad at governing. Rather it is incumbent on people to well, govern well.
To me - if not for all the people who want to tear up the planet to build wind turbines that will be landfill in 20 years for future generations to clean up, this on a scale of hundreds of millions of tons, and engage in rather nasty industrial chemistry to generate hundreds of millions of tons of electronic waste, which is what solar cells become within two decades - this means building a sustainable world.
This means something other than consuming all of the world's best resources in a pixilated orgy of stupidity that robs all future generations of a chance to live remotely decent lives.
The physics of energy clearly show its sustainability is a function of the energy to mass ratio. The reason that people use dangerous fossil fuels, the waste of which kill 19,000 people per day (see above) is because the energy to mass ratio is higher than it is for wind turbines, batteries, solar cells, blah, blah, blah. There is a reason that humanity abandoned so called "renewable energy in during the 19th century. The reason is that most people - in a smaller population - lived short miserable lives of dire poverty, even more so than today.
Fossil fuels proved to be unsustainable, and they must be banned, not as in Greenpeace parlance that claims future generations will do what we have been unable to do ourselves, "by 2050" or "by 2075" or other "by such and such date." We need to stop using them as close to now as possible. The amount of uranium and thorium already mined, and in many cases dumped, can be shown to offer sufficient energy for centuries in a "breed and burn" setting, as developed by Sekimoto and many others in Japan and elsewhere.
Don't tell me about "cheap?" OK? In about 20 to 30 years, the United States built over 100 nuclear power plants while providing the lowest electricity prices in the industrial world. Now we hear that what has already happened is impossible. The finest minds of the 20th century built the nuclear infrastructure that has been mindlessly destroyed by appeals to fear and ignorance. This was not wise; arguably it was a crime against all future generations.
There is not enough steel (which requires coke made from coal heated by burning coal), aluminum (made using petroleum coke anodes) or copper to make the so called "renewable energy" scam a significant form of energy, which it isn't despite half a century of mindless cheering. I'm not even going to talk about neodymium for neodymium iron boride magnets, or dysprosium additions to them.
Just because there are people whose moral level insists that one death from radiation outstrips 19,000 deaths every damned day, year after year, decade after decade, doesn't mean that they have a shred of ethics.
Clearly they don't.
Nuclear energy need not be perfect; it need not be without risk; it need not satisfy the concern of people who hate it without understanding a damned technical thing about it to be better than everything else. It only needs to better than everything else, which it is.
I've heard this crap for many decades now.
I'm a traditional Democrat. For me, liberalism includes human development goals, which is a concern for eliminating poverty and disease. It is not even remotely ethical in my view that we have spent three trillion dollars on so called renewable energy - nearly double the annual GDP of India, a nation with almost 1.5 billion people living in it - for no result, this while 2 billion people lack even basic sanitation.
We cannot meet human development goals, we cannot address poverty without energy. There is one, and only one form of sustainable energy, proved by nearly half a century of experience, despite catcalls from the ignorant: Nuclear energy.
I live in a broader world, not some bourgeois fantasy that some people seem, like Markey for instance, to think is so damn cool.
It's not cool. It's delusional and denialist. It's ignorant. Ignorance kills people. So called "renewable energy" didn't work. It's not working. It won't work. The reason is physics.
The planet is dying. If we want to have a chance to save anything for future generations of that which remains to be saved, we have to stop chanting slogans and think anew.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
greenjar_01
(6,477 posts)who sound like ranting lunatics...
NNadir
(33,539 posts)....than considering facts and data is the real reason that history will not forgive us .
Next year wear we're going to hit 420 ppm CO2 at Mauna Loa.
There will be the usual people who'll offer the same tiresome dogma, calling themselves "stable geniuses"
Reality couldn't care less.
Response to greenjar_01 (Reply #23)
ahoysrcsm This message was self-deleted by its author.
thucythucy
(8,086 posts)to build solar panels and wind equipment?"
Not off hand, no. But then, how many metric tons of fossil fuels are burned in the construction of nuclear power plants? All that heavy equipment which has to move to and from the sites, all those earth movers and cement mixers, all of them running on petroleum. And all the aluminum and steel which must be produced--how much petroleum and coal are burned producing the tens of thousands of tons of metal needed for each plant? You can't seriously believe that the construction of multi-billion dollar nuclear plants is carbon emission neutral.
And how much carbon will be spewed into the environment when every nuke ever built will someday have to be decommissioned?
Every time nuclear waste is moved burns more carbon, at least at present. And have we developed a carbon neutral way to construct the long term waste facilities needed to store and monitor these by-products?
Then too, there's the carbon cost of dealing with nuclear related disasters. Do you think the evacuation of tens of thousands of people after the tsunami in Japan didn't require burning fossil fuels?
Finally, there's the petroleum being burned by all the people who have to travel to and from each plant to ensure they are being run and run safely. If I put solar panels on my roof, it will require a couple of workers for a couple of days, after which the petroleum cost to safely produce that power will be minimal. It certainly won't require a large staff working in shifts to monitor those panels 24-7 for the rest of their productive life.
At present no source of energy is entirely carbon neutral, though some sources are better than others. But to do a realistic evaluation of the costs versus the benefits requires we take all factors into consideration, soup to nuts. For nuclear energy that means ALL the carbon costs associated with their construction, their running, and their decommissioning.
I would suspect that these carbon costs are not insubstantial. Whether these costs will be less or more than other alternative energy sources is a question that needs to be closely examined.
Response to thucythucy (Reply #41)
ahoysrcsm This message was self-deleted by its author.
GoneOffShore
(17,340 posts)immediately think that 'nuclear energy' is a 'bad thing' and will continue to drive their Honda Priuses and feel virtuous.
NNadir
(33,539 posts)Perhaps 95%, maybe more, don't get it, but if a few people can change their minds - probably over 30 years I may have encountered a few hundred, it's worth it.
Most of the time I get these little sullen responses like the one I got in the other response, but again, these people don't matter. Even on our side of the political isle there are people who embrace dogma over facts; we should not pretend we are totally immune from them.
I put a lot of hope in the up and coming generation, the young people in their 20's. They are very smart, and although we have selfishly left them with a vast mess, they may have the right stuff to undo a significant portion of the tragedy with which we have cruelly saddled them.
They won't forgive us, nor should they, but I do think they can and will do better when we get out of the way with our fears and ignorance.
rpannier
(24,333 posts)PatSeg
(47,560 posts)for a couple more terms and then try for the senate. I just don't understand why he ran against Markey in this race. As far as I can tell Markey has been popular with MA Democrats.
beachbumbob
(9,263 posts)obviously the "new" progressives do not offer the appeal they think they do
Susan Calvin
(1,649 posts)That's a serious question. I just know I was annoyed that he ran against Markey. And it seems to have turned out to be a stupid move
beachbumbob
(9,263 posts)Susan Calvin
(1,649 posts)I'm serious,. Maybe I haven't been paying attention but I don't know which group this is.
PatSeg
(47,560 posts)I'm wondering as well. I haven't heard of the "new progressives".
FailureToCommunicate
(14,020 posts)likely more conservative...areas of the state where Scott Brown did well in the past.
Mostly, when Markey and Kennedy debated, Kennedy's ideas and plans just sounded half baked.
PatSeg
(47,560 posts)I think Kennedy has a lot of talent and potential, but clearly he is still a bit green. Perhaps all the praise he's received the past few years went to his head or its possible he got some really bad political advice. Its also likely he is trying to follow the same path of his great uncle to the White House.
IronLionZion
(45,496 posts)Now our party can come together in 2 months to win the general election in more competitive races in other states. We need to take back the Senate majority from Moscow Mitch McConnell.
summer_in_TX
(2,744 posts)He was a leader on efforts to get legislation passed that would allow non-profits to apply for low-power FM community radio licenses. After media consolidation reduced how responsive stations were to their communities, a lengthy effort began to create and license that class of stations. Markey was on the forefront. Finally in 2010 the Local Community Radio Act was passed as almost the last act of the Democratic-controlled Congress during the lame duck session after the tea party swept into dominance. Obama signed it into law.
Our town had long wanted to have a station because it's in a flash flood alley, plus it's subject to flooding. But previous efforts went down the tube. Finally, that law enabled us to get our own radio station, KWVH-LP.
So I'm extremely grateful.
I learned of his work as he and Mike Doyle (who also had worked hard on that) were speakers at the National Conference on Media Reform 2005, along with other media heroes of mine: FCC Commissioners Michael Copp and Jonathan Adelstein. They forced the Michael Powell-led FCC to start holding public hearings on media consolidation and succeeded in rousing the nation on the issue.
BlueMTexpat
(15,370 posts)I was disappointed in Kennedy for mounting this primary challenge.
As for those who are put out with Pelosi, please chill!
Susan Calvin
(1,649 posts)I'm with any sitting Democrat, or any Democrat running in the general. And I can see that she was backed into a corner with that interview. But although I haven't been keeping statistics I just have this feeling that some primary challengers are treated differently from others.
BlueMTexpat
(15,370 posts)Tracer
(2,769 posts)I was a bit resentful of Joe for running against Markey. It was unnecessary and wasteful to do so in a 100% safe seat.
Joe's career has just taken a hit. I'm sorry about that for him.
Voted for Markey too. But reluctantly. Personally, from hearing him on several interviews, mainly on WBUR, he always seemed rather sauced and Kennedy held the promise of a new face but too out of touch with how progressive politics was changing.
mahina
(17,692 posts)The single best loved politician in Hawaiis history imho, Senator Daniel Kahikina Akaka. He lost. Sen Akaka was much older than Markey. This was 2006 so he would have been 82.
It took Ed Case many years but he finally got his house seat back. He was loathed for it. Senator Akaka was reliably liberal and a great heart for the people. We all miss him and in fact the 2006 campaign people get together once a year.
Ed is not liberal but he does the right thing sometimes
Mazie and Brian are great except Mazie helped force Al Franken out of his seat.
Read three articles looking for the breakdown in percentages and I havent found it yet. How much did Markey win by? And congrats
marie999
(3,334 posts)I am not sure if there is anything that can be done. There are too many people in this world and the population keeps growing. The human race will not end, but it will be considerably smaller by the end of the century. I am not saying things shouldn't be done, I am saying things won't get done.