In all fairness to Junior Joe, he might be the least reprehensible Kennedy in roughly a century. A teetotaling try-hard, Joseph Kennedy III’s resemblance to his womanizing and oft-inebriated forebears ends with his red mane of hair and lifelong fealty to the Democratic Party. So it’s sad that adulterers, drunks, and even a killer didn’t bring an end to the Kennedy dynasty’s rule over Massachusetts. Instead, it was the wholesome Icarus who aimed too high and earned the Kennedy name its first-ever loss in a Bay State primary.
Kennedy, currently a congressman representing much of southern Massachusetts in the House, decided to run a primary against incumbent Sen. Ed Markey from the center, capitalizing on Markey’s spectacular failure with the since-shelved Green New Deal. Despite earning late-breaking endorsements from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a slew of other high-profile centrist liberals such as Kyrsten Sinema and Hakeem Jeffries, Markey maintained dominant support from most of the Democratic Senate and leftist power brokers, including Planned Parenthood and MoveOn. Despite showing promise in some springtime polls, Markey secured a 10-point lead by summer. In the end, the septuagenarian career politician bested the 39-year-old heir to the nation’s most notorious ruling family, all but killing their reign at last.
And good riddance to that.
Don’t get me wrong — Kennedys will continue to pop up in local primaries and Page Six headlines every so often. Though Junior Joe said he won’t run for reelection should his Senate bid fail, there will be some other telegenic Kennedy spawn keen to ride his coattails. But the Kennedy family’s stranglehold over the party and, more importantly, the unwritten rule that Thou Shall Not Speak Ill of the Camelots are dead and gone.
Considering what the Kennedys have gotten away with, it’s about time. There are the well-known, Camelot-era exploits of womanizing, and, of course there was Chappaquiddick and the story of the Ted Kennedy-Chris Dodd “Waitress Sandwich.” And who could forget how, after a particularly drunken night with Uncle Ted, William Kennedy Smith was charged with rape? He was later acquitted after the judge in his case refused to allow other accusers to testify against him. The jury deliberated for a little more than an hour. Even in a court of law, the system has continued to bend for the Kennedys.
That is, of course, until now. Not even Pelosi, herself heir to another prominent political dynasty, could rig the game for Joe’s premature ambition. For once, Massachusetts stuck it to the Kennedys, and for the first time since 1947, there will not be one Kennedy serving at any level of government anywhere in the country. It’s a shame that one of the most decent and wholesome Kennedys had to be the collateral damage, but it had to happen sometime.
