The dynasty is a dinosaur.
Camelot finally out of business last night, much like the end of T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men.
“This is how the world ends/ Not with a bang, but a whimper.”
The last of the Kennedys, carrying the name of the patriarch of the clan, Joseph P. Kennedy, went down hard to, of all people, Sen. Ed Markey, who spent his entire lackluster career aping the Kennedys, but now ends their 75-year reign over Massachusetts politics.
Markey rolled in the state’s upper-middle-class lily-white suburbs. Kennedy was reduced to carrying the cities, but not by nearly enough, as well as a few working-class towns inhabited by blue-collar Trump voters who took a Democrat ballot yesterday and don’t much like Markey and his limp, wimp persona.
Markey spent the campaign reprising the role of Fred Astaire, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Ginger Rogers, and that’s a clue for the future of the Democrat party, not only in Massachusetts, but in New York. (Are you paying attention, Chuck Schumer?)
JoJoJo Kennedy had the endorsement of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who once had a picture of herself taken in high school with his great-uncle, JFK. That’s how old she is – 80 — and last night showed how much her endorsement meant, compared to AOC’s.
And then Pelosi got busted yesterday for flouting California’s lockdown regulations – Madame Speaker had the worst day of any politician in America.
Except for JoJoJo Kennedy.
He seemed like a shoo-in when he announced last year. He’d never had a real fight. And so he assumed that Ed Markey would fade like everybody else.
One problem: Ed Markey wasn’t perceptive enough to know that he was toast. And what were his alternatives? Return to Malden, after 48 years in Congress? What was he going to do – go back to his prior career, driving a Mr. Frosty ice-cream truck, dishing out Hoodsies to the street urchins of Malden?
Mr. Frosty had nothing to lose.
JoJoJo needed to get into the Senate so that he could run for president in 2024. He was running for the same reason that JFK ran for the Senate in 1952, because he was just one of the ants, as JFK described the rank and file members, on Nancy Pelosi’s anthill.
And he couldn’t wait. It’s getting harder and harder to be a straight white male in the Democrat party, even if you’re a Kennedy. In four or six years, he might have had Ayanna Pressley sizing him up as the next Mike Capuano.
Or maybe Rachael Rollins, who surely didn’t seem to like him. (She tipped off Rayla Campbell to the fact that Kennedy was holding a press conference with the horrible Monica Cannon-Grant.)
Down the road, it might be good for Rollins to have JoJoJo out of the way. Ditto, Michelle Wu. So the woke mob took him off the board, just like the Kennedys used to knock off their potential future Democrat rivals – Joe Casey, Foster Furcolo, George Bachrach etc.
For JoJoJo, 2020 was up or out, and now it’s out.
JoJoJo tried to paint Mr. Frosty as hopelessly out of touch, which he was, but Ginger Boy was even more clueless. Trying to justify his candidacy, he was more incoherent than his other great-uncle, Teddy, when Teddy was asked by Roger Mudd why he was running for president against another Democrat incumbent in 1980.
JoJoJo didn’t know that four small towns in Worcester County had been flooded by the Quabbin Reservoir back in the 1930’s. Hell, his campaign didn’t even know how to spell Worcester in the Worcester Telegram.
His only platform? “I’m not 74.” Unlike his father, he didn’t say, “Do you know who I am?” because everybody knew who — and what — he was.
A privileged white boy, with a bunch of grainy black-and-white TV ads about his ancestors who’ve been dead these two generations.
The irony? Ed Markey was one of the original “K-Mart Kennedys” – the hacks who grew up worshiping the family and trying to establish their own mini-dynasties. (Remember Mr. Frosty’s younger brother, John, a failed Congressional candidate?)
All those K-Mart Kennedys – the McCormacks, the O’Neills, the Timiltys, the Flahertys, the Connollys, the Iannellas and all the rest. They just wanted to become liegemen, to bask in the reflected glory of America’s First Family.
They never dreamed of overthrowing them. And now one of the least of the lesser K-Mart Kennedys, Ed Markey, has dethroned the last heir.
This is our Bosworth Field, which was the final battle of the War of the Roses. The nobles could only take so much from the dueling dynasties, and they finally rose up and killed the king, Richard III.
The dynasty was ended.
In the old days, these Senate races were such a cakewalk for King Teddy that Fat Boy could have his worthless nephews serve as “campaign managers.” JoJoJo’s daddy, JoJo, took a turn. So did Michael, the babysitting rapist uncle who killed himself skiing into a tree in Aspen.
The numbers yesterday show just how far the family’s political fortunes have fallen. Kennedy could only manage 41 percent of the vote in Boston. I know Mayor Marty Walsh was with Mr. Frosty, but I still don’t think Hizzoner should take any solace in these numbers. He’s going to have his hands full next year.
Here are JoJoJo’s numbers in some of the other larger cities: Fall River 76 percent, Lawrence 68 percent, Springfield 63 percent, Holyoke 54 percent. He only took 52 percent in Worcester, or as Joe’s campaign spells it, “Worchester.”
Kennedy Country yesterday seemed to be Bristol County, and not much else. On the Cape, the compound is in Hyannis Port, which is Barnstable. JoJoJo only took 52 percent in Barnstable.
And look at the numbers for Markey in the chi-chi suburbs – Lexington 75 percent, Lincoln 76, Weston 65 percent, Wellesley 62 percent.
Say what you will about Ed Markey though. He’s a worthy successor in the seat once held by another JFK – John Forbes Kerry. Markey’s been around so long he’s been on almost every side of every issue.
On every issue, like Kerry, he was for it before he was against it. Or vice versa.
But now he’s got six more years, after which, the deluge.
This is how the world ends….
As for the other races, we still don’t know how Rayla Campbell did in the Ayanna Pressley district – she was a write-in, and they aren’t counting until this afternoon. She needs 2000 write-ins/stickers to make the November ballot, and I’m told there are 3200 uncounted ballots out there.
In other words, it may be close.
In some of the local Boston races, it appears that it was a good day for, dare I say it, “normal Democrats?” (As my old state rep, Vinnie Piro, used to call Reagan voters.)
Anyway, in Hyde Park, where Rep. Angelo Scaccia is retiring after about 100 years, the primary was won by Rob Consalvo, a former city councilor who we used to call “Mini-Me,” to Mumbles Menino’s Dr. Evil. A failed candidate for mayor, Mini-Me was preferable to the alternative, and he won by 2200 votes – a lot in a state rep’s fight.
Rep. Dan Ryan prevailed in the Chelsea-Charlestown district. The Globe is pissed. Rep. Kevin “Ho Ho” Honan hung on in Allston against yet another woke warrior.
Bottom line: it could have been worse.
There’s an old joke about primary voters. The couple wakes up in the morning and the wife says to her crusty old spouse: “Now who do we hate today, dearie?”
That’s how I vote in primaries. Who do I hate today?
And apparently I’m not the only one who feels that way. Dr. Shiva was crushed by Kevin O’Connor in the Republican US Senate primary. This is a direct quote from his concession speech last evening.
“Bleep Charlie Baker! Bleep Kevin O’Connor… They’re scumbags!”
Well, as long as you’re not taking it personally, Dr. Shiva.
He also mentioned me in connection with the 2014 Republican state convention, which I didn’t attend and had absolutely nothing to do with me. He lumped me with another WRKO host, Jeff Kuhner, and said:
“These people are the not-so-obvious establishment of the white working class.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I think I do have an idea who he’s hating today.
In honor of the end of an era, I am running a special on my Kennedy Babylon series.