Incumbent Ed Markey, 80, defeats Seth Moulton, 47, in Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary

Ed Markey just won a primary that was explicitly, openly about whether he's too old for the job, and he won it going away. Seth Moulton made age the whole pitch, and Massachusetts Democrats looked at an 80-year-old man who will be 86 if he finishes another term and said, more of this, please. That's not an accident or a fluke. That's a party telling on itself.

We keep hearing that this cycle would be different, that Democrats learned something from watching Joe Biden's decline play out in real time on a debate stage last year. Apparently not enough was learned in Massachusetts. Voters had a younger, telegenic alternative right in front of them and a sitting senator whose defining argument was seniority and incumbency, and they chose the guy who'll be pushing ninety by the time his term is up. If the lesson of Biden was "actuarial tables matter," nobody forwarded the memo to Boston.

None of this is really about Markey personally. He's been in Washington since the Ford administration, and whatever you think of his politics, he knows how to win a primary. The real story is that the Democratic base still isn't willing to prioritize age and vigor over name recognition and ideological comfort, even after the closest call imaginable. They'll spend the next four years telling America that competence and stamina matter in the Oval Office while re-upping octogenarians down the ballot without blinking. Voters notice that kind of thing eventually, even if the party leadership refuses to.