MERRIMAC, Mass. – Rep. Seth Moulton, 47, finds plenty of ways to say it: Sen. Ed Markey, his Democratic primary opponent, is old.

He has a respectful version: “There just comes a time to pass the torch.”

And adirectversion:“I just don’t believe Sen. Markey should be running for another six-year term at 80 years old.”

At campaign stops in community town halls to backyard fundraiser barbecues, Moulton is dragging the Democratic Party’s quiet family conversation about age into the light of day, arguing to voters that the stakes of the race are bigger than ideology and speak to the future of the party itself.

“Why does this race matter, beyond Boston or Newburyport?” Moulton asked a crowd of about 200 at Newburyport’s City Hall. “Because it’s a referendum on the future of the Democratic Party. In fact, it’s the last Senate primary before the November midterms. So people are either going to look at the Democratic Party and say: Oh, there they go again, reelecting the same establishment gerontocracy that we just voted against two years ago; or they’re going to say, no, it looks like the Democratic Party is changing. It’s listening.”

Markey isn’t alone. Elderly incumbents across the country who’ve won endorsements from colleagues, labor unions, and progressive organizations are not scaring challengers away. Instead, they’re drawing them – in the form of younger Democrats willing to say the uncomfortable part out loud to voters, whose harsh memories of Joe Bidendoomingtheir 2024 campaign – and offourDemocratsdying in their House seats since that election – are still fresh

In Connecticut, former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, 46,wonthe local party’s endorsement at a Monday convention, over 77-year-old incumbent Rep. John Larson, who suffered a “complex partial seizure” that caused him tofreezeduring a 2025 floor speech.

“There’s a reason that so many Americans are starting to support age limits, because it’s just good and healthy to get renewal every once in a while to get some new voices and new perspectives,” Bronin told Semafor. “I’m running because he’s been in elected office for almost half a century, and in Congress for almost 30 years, and he’s part of a Democratic establishment that keeps doing the same thing despite the fact that the world has changed.”

Moulton and Bronin are both military veterans in their 40s, like Maine’s Graham Platner, who effectivelysecuredthe nomination for U.S. Senate in his state after 78-year-old Gov. Janet Mills dropped out. To the frustration of Democrats who recruited her, Mills could not overcome Democratic angst about her age, even after she pledged to serve only one term.

Moulton and Bronin are seeing some of the same angst in their parts of New England – a non-ideological worry that their party has too many senior citizens in power, and that they should have retired after Donald Trump’s comeback.

Source: Drudge Report