Lynch fends off Massachusetts House primary challenge in battle over generational change

Stephen Lynch just beat back a 39-year-old with a Deval Patrick pedigree and all the right progressive credentials, and the story here isn't really about Lynch. It's about how thin the "generational change" argument turns out to be once actual voters show up. Roath ran on the idea that a 71-year-old had simply been there too long. Democratic primary voters in Massachusetts, of all places, said no thanks.

We've written plenty about the Democratic Party's gerontocracy problem, and it's real. Feinstein, Pelosi holding the gavel into her 80s, Biden himself. But this race is a useful reminder that the party's rank and file don't necessarily share the anxiety that its consultant class does. Lynch has a blue-collar, South Boston pipefitter's résumé that still means something in that district. Roath had think-tank polish and a former governor's blessing. Voters picked the guy who's been showing up for two decades over the guy promising a generational reset with no other real argument attached.

There's a lesson in that for Republicans too, honestly. Youth and credentials aren't a message. If you're going to challenge an incumbent, you need a reason beyond a birth certificate. Roath never really answered the question of what Lynch was doing wrong on policy, just that he'd been doing it a while. That's not nothing, but it's not enough either, and Massachusetts Democrats just proved it.