The Guard That Won’t Be Changing

M any Democrats of a certain age took the same message from the party’s 2024 debacle: Voters are sick of the old guard and craving younger, more aggressive leaders.

Better to retire on your own terms than suffer the fate of Joe Biden, forced to stand down from his reelection campaign after a public humiliation.

Nancy Pelosi, the 86-year-old former speaker, announced her exit from the House, as did her longtime lieutenant, 87-year-old Steny Hoyer.

Senators Dick Durbin (81) and Jeanne Shaheen (79) passed up reelection bids this year, and so, too, did two senators merely in their late 60s.

Senator Ed Markey, 80, heeded no such warning, and evidently, he didn’t need to.

The Massachusetts Democrat is one of just two current senators whose tenures in Congress date to the presidency of Gerald Ford.

But tonight the oldest Democratic senator on the ballot in 2026 trounced his much-younger primary opponent, Representative Seth Moulton.

The Associated Press called the race a half hour after polls closed, with Markey leading by nearly 50 points.

In a race that pitted ideology against age, Massachusetts Democrats opted for a progressive stalwart who will be 86 at the end of another six-year term over a more moderate 47-year-old challenger.

Moulton, an Iraq War veteran who is concluding his sixth term in the House, moved left to appeal to a statewide primary electorate.

But he could not hope to outflank Markey, who won support from Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Instead, Moulton urged voters to embrace “a new generation of leadership” and argued that he could more effectively fight for liberal causes than an incumbent in the twilight of his career.

Markey had already faced that kind of challenge before, and won .

Six years ago, he handily defeated then-Representative Joe Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F.