Dispatches, October 2026

 GOP FRETS AS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DESPERATELY SPINS RECORD HIGH DIESEL PRICES. The price of diesel fuel in the US hit another record high on Sept. 5, as data published by the American Automobile Association showed the average cost for a gallon of diesel reached $5.88, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/5).

According to a report from Axios, incumbent Republicans are fretting about the impact that skyrocketing gasoline and diesel prices will have on the 2026 midterm elections, particularly since their own internal polling shows voters are placing blame for the price hikes on President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran.

“Diesel’s at an all-time high,” one GOP operative told Axios. “Gas is about $4 a gallon. We can’t message that away.”

Another Republican source told Axios that GOP candidates don’t even have the option of distancing themselves from the president and his unpopular war given the iron grip he has on voters they will need to turn out in crucial races.

“We have no choice,” said the source. “We’re stuck on the boat with him whether we like it or not.”

US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy tried to spin the record-high diesel prices as something outside the president’s control during a Saturday interview on Fox News.

“When you look at diesel, you have to look at Russia and Ukraine,” Duffy said. “Russia was a major exporter, the second-biggest exporter in the world, on diesel. They stopped their exports, so that puts pressure on the global market. But President Trump has pushed American energy dominance, we are producing more energy now than in the past.”

Duffy added that “it’s only President Trump who’s trying to drive these prices down,” even though the president’s war has been the primary reason they’ve been going up.

‘ABSOLUTELY BONKERS’ AND ‘UNACCEPTABLE’: TRUMP POSTS MAP SHOWING U.S. TAKEOVERS OF OTHER NATIONS. US President Donald Trump has spent his second term threatening takeovers of various other countries, from Canada and Cuba to Greenland, and on Sept. 7 he shared on social media a map that fueled fresh fears of his imperialist “Donroe Doctrine,” Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (9/7)

The map on Trump’s Truth Social platform showed the US flag over not only the United States but also Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, and multiple countries in Central America and the Caribbean.

The post was swiftly condemned across platforms, with Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) declaring that “this is unacceptable.”

“This man is unwell. 25th Amendment NOW,” Sisson said, cataloging posts on a range of topics, from Trump’s recent renaming of Lake Ontario amid tough trade talks with Canada, to the suggestion that New Mexico should be dubbed “New America.”

The latter was ripped by several Democratic officials, including New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), who responded that her state’s name “isn’t up for debate—it’s been ours since before the United States existed.”

“What is up for debate? Who’s showing up for working families,” she continued. “While the president tries to distract Americans from his disastrous war in Iran, gas prices keep soaring. Americans are also spending more at the grocery store, losing access to healthcare and wondering if they’ll ever be able to afford a home. Under Democratic leadership here in New Mexico, we’re providing families with free childcare and college, protecting access to healthcare, and investing in housing. While the White House wastes time coloring on maps, Nuevo México is busy doing the work.”

In addition to waging an illegal war on Iran, Trump this term has invaded Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and take control of the country’s oil reserves, become the US commander-in-chief to bomb the most countries, and killed over 225 people by blowing up boats allegedly smuggling drugs through international waters. He’s also threatened to seize the Panama Canal and possibly attack nations including Colombia and Mexico.

As Iran has responded to Trump’s war by restricting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the president has teased declaring the key waterway a US territory and naming it after himself. He’s also dubbed the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America” and fought to put his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

With the US midterm elections less than two months away, some Democrats in Congress have stepped up their critiques of Trump’s foreign policy—including a delegation of progressive congressional lawmakers and candidates who headed to Uruguay in August for the third Pan-American Congress.

Shortly after that gathering, delegation member Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) stressed that “progressives reject the violent, imperialistic Donroe Doctrine, and believe in a foreign policy rooted in cooperation, diplomacy, and sovereign equality.”

PLURALITY OF CANADIANS SEE US AS ‘ENEMY,’ THANKS ALMOST ENTIRELY TO TRUMP: POLL. A survey released Sept. 5 by polling firm Leger finds that a plurality of Canadians now view the US as an “enemy” nation thanks to President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on their economy and national sovereignty, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/5).

In all, the poll finds that 41% of Canadians now consider the US an enemy, compared with 22% who say the US is an ally, and 22% who say the US is a neutral country.

In a similar poll conducted in June 2025, Leger noted, only 26% of Canadians said the US was an enemy.

Trump’s trade war is a major driver of negative opinion among Canadians, as 63% of those surveyed say they expect the president’s tariffs to have either a moderate or major impact on their personal financial situations.

Additionally, 74% of Canadians say they agree with their government’s decision to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs, even while acknowledging such retaliation will hurt the economy.

Canadians are also resentful of Trump’s demands that Canada become the 51st US state, with 85% saying they do not want to become part of America.

The disdain toward the US is driven almost entirely by Trump, the survey finds, with 64% of Canadians saying their opinions of the country would likely change if he were no longer president.

In an interview with The National Post, Leger vice president Andrew Enns emphasized the centrality of Trump in Canadians’ deteriorating views of their neighbor to the south, arguing that the US president “can move public opinion like nobody’s business.”

Brian Rathbun, professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, told The National Post that while Canadians aren’t letting their dislike of Trump tarnish their opinions of Americans as a whole, that could change in the coming years.

“At some point, I think Canadians will start to get frustrated if this persists, even if it’s not what the American public wants,” said Rathbun. “They can say, ‘Why is it that no one’s standing up to this particular bully?’ Then I think that you could get into something like a deeper problem that couldn’t be fixed by kicking this guy out.”

TRUMP’S WAR ON MAIL-IN VOTING IS HITTING A BRICK WALL — BUT THE DANGER IS FAR FROM OVER. President Donald Trump’s crusade against mail-in voting is running into a brick wall, although many critics are warning that the dangers to democracy are far from over, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/6).

The Washington Post reported Sept. 6 that Trump is “running out of options” to change mail-in voting rules that “don’t involve significant upheaval,” as states have already started sending out ballots to voters.

In March, Trump signed an executive order that instructed the U.S. Postal Service to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to its voter lists.

However, that order is currently tied up in court, and both Wisconsin and North Carolina have begun mailing out ballots to voters, the Post reported.

Don Millis, a Republican who chairs the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told the Post that “there’s no practical way for Wisconsin clerks to comply” with Trump’s orders, adding that the president’s schemes targeting mail-in voting are likely to “hurt the Republican turnout more than the Democratic turnout.”

The Trump administration has been pushing the US Supreme Court to intervene to allow the president’s executive order to take effect.

However, as noted in a Politico report published on Sept. 4, nine other states are set to send ballots to voters over the following two weeks, which would make a last-minute ruling by the court an unprecedented disruption in the democratic process.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect,” Ben Hovland, senior fellow for democracy at the Center for American Progress, told Politico. “It’s hard to even imagine ... It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

However, Hovland said that Trump’s election meddling effort could still do real damage to the country because it can “dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote” and “establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland’s concerns about the president’s intentions were echoed in a in The New York Times Sept. 6, which found voters across the country expressing confusion about the voting process and anxiety over whether their votes will be counted this year.

Pima County, Arizona Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly told the Times that her office has received a flood of calls from worried voters, and she said that the president’s relentless push to restrict voting by mail has left her unable to provide reassuring answers.

“I wish that I could tell my constituents to not worry,” said Cázares-Kelly, “and I can’t.”

Rich Cooper, elections manager in Clark County, Washington, similarly told the Times he has been unable to ease voters’ worries about what rules will govern this year’s elections.

“The biggest thing they want to know is if things are going to change,” Cooper said of voters expressing concerns. “We have to tell them we just don’t know yet.”

JD VANCE GETS SLIPPERY WITH LIES ABOUT OIL. JD Vance took his lie-a-palooza act to the White House briefing room on Sept. 3, where he not only lied about … everything … but also brazenly fibbed about recent history, pretending as if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine in 2022, sending energy costs skyrocketing, Walter Einenkel noted at DailyKos (9/3).

“We had for a very long time the Biden administration draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve purely for the purpose of lowering gas and oil costs,” Vance claimed. “There wasn’t an international crisis. There wasn’t a foreign nation that was trying to disrupt world energy markets.”

After inheriting a mismanaged, pandemic-ravaged economy in 2021, the Biden administration was able to keep the U.S. economy afloat, while corporate gouging greed capitalized on the opportunities the health crisis created. 

In 2022, President Joe Biden authorized the release of 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to stabilize markets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before leaving office, the Biden administration replenished the reserve by purchasing 200 million barrels at a lower cost.

On Feb. 28, US military forces began bombing Iran. Since then, oil prices have shot skyward, forcing the Trump administration to draw down the SPR so heavily that the stockpile is at a 44-year low. 

“Who needs former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt when you have Vance willing to lie this cynically?” Einenkel asked.

HEGSETH QUIETLY EXTENDS MIDDLE EAST TROOP DEPLOYMENTS INTO 2027 AS IRAN WAR DRAGS ON. The Pentagon has reportedly extended Middle East deployments of American troops, fighter squadrons, and warships into next year as the deadly, expensive, and deeply unpopular Iran war drags on with no end in sight, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (9/3).

The Wall Street Journal reported that Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth—who, like President Donald Trump, insisted the Iran assault would be over swiftly—has decided that the US military will maintain a “presence of 50,000 troops in the region in part to give the president flexibility on next steps.” The Pentagon “could also keep elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the Middle East well into 2027,” the Journal added, citing a letter that military leaders sent to families.

The Journal also reported that Trump, who has falsely called Iran a “dead” country, is “having discussions with senior aides about whether to declare the Iran war over,” even as the bombings continue, American troops remain in the region, and the administration ratchets up economic sanctions.

“Trump administration seems to excel at bombing schools and weddings,” Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote Sept. 3. “Winning the illegal and unnecessary war with Iran—not so much.”

Hegseth has reportedly backed a plan that would involve “periodic” bombings of Iran in an attempt to keep ship traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategy that analysts say would lead to a “permanent state of war.”

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued earlier this week that Trump appeared to be leaning toward “maintaining a low-level conflict until the midterms—neither securing a diplomatic deal nor allowing the situation to deteriorate into full-scale war.”

“Iranian officials say, both publicly and privately, that they expect the U.S. and Israel to resume the war after the midterms regardless of the impact of the D-Day sanctions,” Parsi wrote. “Regional diplomats have largely reached the same conclusion. If sanctions weaken Iran over time while the global economy recovers and adjusts to the new reality in the Strait, a prolonged pause will work against Tehran. Iran may therefore decide to escalate dramatically, taking full advantage of Trump’s perceived vulnerability in the run-up to the elections.”

Thousands of Iranians — including hundreds of children — and at least 18 US servicemembers have been killed during the war so far, and the conflict has cost the average American household $1,200 in extra costs as gas prices remain at record levels. Trump has said he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation” when he makes decisions pertaining to the Iran war.

The war is fueling the Trump administration’s push for a record $1.5 trillion in military spending for the coming fiscal year—a budget demand that has intensified concerns of a “forever war” against Iran.

“Washington is betting that sustained military and economic pressure will eventually force Tehran to retreat,” the National Iranian American Council wrote in a blog post on Sept. 3. “Iran appears to be betting that it can survive long enough to force Washington to do the same. For ordinary Iranians, American servicemembers, and civilians across the region, the danger is that testing those two assumptions will require a much longer and more destructive war.”

ICE HIRED UNQUALIFIED GOONS AFTER ‘UNPRECEDENTED LOWERING OF STANDARDS’: WHISTLEBLOWER. A whistleblower is claiming that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dangerously lowered its hiring standards for new recruits, who were given final job offers without undergoing even preliminary vetting, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/3).

The New York Times reported Sept. 3 that the whistleblower, who has worked at ICE for 17 years, filed a complaint in August 2025 with the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security that sounded alarms about what he described as an “unprecedented lowering of standards” for hiring.

According to the complaint, applicants were offered jobs before they they even passed fingerprint and identity checks, which the whistleblower said created “grave national security risks” for the agency.

In an interview with the Times, the whistleblower said that ICE “chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough,” even though “there was a potential to put lives at risk and jeopardize national security.”

This is at least the second whistleblower complaint to raise concerns about the deterioration of standards at ICE.

In February, former ICE lawyer Ryan Schwank alleged in a complaint that he “received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant.”

Schwank also alleged that “the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” which he warned “can and will get people killed.”

ICE’s hiring standards came under scrutiny this summer after it was revealed that ICE agent David Brouillette, who fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, had a lengthy history of allegedly abusive behavior.

As noted by the Times, Brouillette was even rejected for a job at the police department in Hallowell, Maine because he had “too many red flags.”

The ICE hiring surge came shortly after passage of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated more than $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement operations. ICE last year said it would use some of the money to hire 10,000 additional agents, more than double the number of agents who had previously worked at the department.

ANALYSIS FINDS 10 MILLION PEOPLE LOST HEALTHCARE COVERAGE DURING TRUMP’S SECOND TERM. Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba Sept. 3 published a detailed report estimating that more than 10 million people living in the US have lost their healthcare coverage since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams (9/3).

In his analysis, Gaba brought together the most recent enrollment data for Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Breaking things down by program, Gaba estimated there are 5.9 million fewer people enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, as well as at least 4.5 million fewer people enrolled in the ACA, since Trump returned to power in January 2025.

These losses in coverage are somewhat mitigated by Medicare, whose enrollment has increased by around 1.6 million people during Trump’s second term.

Losing access to these programs doesn’t mean that the people who were on them have gotten well paying jobs and are receiving insurance from their employer, Gaba wrote. Given that the unemployment rate has risen during Trump’s second term, Gaba suggested it is highly unlikely that there are now more people who get employer-sponsored coverage now than in January 2025.

Depending on a number of variables, Gaba concluded, somewhere between 8.8 million to 10.3 million fewer people now have healthcare coverage.

Adjusting for population growth, Gaba added, “you get a grand total of between 10.27 million and 11.75 million more Americans not enrolled in a public healthcare coverage program as of May 2026 than in were as of January 2025.”

The healthcare analyst noted that “this isn’t quite the same thing as counting how many lost coverage, but not having healthcare sucks regardless of how you slice it.”

He also pointed out that the lost in healthcare coverage all came before the Medicaid work requirements from the GOP’s 2025 budget law are put into effect.

“Over half the provisions of the Big Ugly Bill have already gone into effect,” wrote Gaba, “and the negative results are already devastating.”

Gaba’s analysis was published days after the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families released a report estimating that nearly 2.5 million children in the US have lost access to Medicaid or CHIP during Trump’s second term.

Trump and congressional Republicans have taken a number of actions that have made healthcare less affordable.

First, they cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.

GOP lawmakers last year also refused to extend enhanced subsidies for insurance plans purchased through the ACA, even as insurers raised premiums on those plans by an average of 26% this year, according to an analysis published by KFF.

According to reporting by Politico, hospitals are sounding the alarm about new regulations being proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that they say would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue.

“If the rules are finalized and they lose hundreds of billions on top of Congress’ funding cuts,” Politico reported, “hospitals say they’ll be forced to reduce services, lay off workers, consolidate operations or shutter entirely.”

DEMOCRATS EXPOSE GOP’S DATA CENTER KICKBACKS. Republicans are lashing out after Democratic leaders singled out for criticism a provision in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that is being used to supercharge the construction of unpopular AI data centers in low-income areas of the country, Oliver Willis noted at DailyKos (9/3).

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke about the issue Aug. 31 during a press conference.

“Every single House Republican but one or two voted to unleash data centers on the American people in an unfettered fashion,” Jeffries said, calling Republicans “pro-data center without any restraints.”

The next day, Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts made similar comments on the House floor, chiding Republicans for “bragging about giving tax breaks to Big Tech in order to build data centers” when the bill was under consideration just over a year ago. 

McGovern added, “With November on the horizon, some House Republicans are acting as if they did not turbocharge the data center buildout.”

The Democrats are referring to the “Opportunity Zones” provision of the bill, which gives massive tax breaks to companies for projects that are placed in census-designated low-income areas. 

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” was opposed across the board by Democrats and became law via only Republican votes. In addition to helping data centers, the unpopular law cut taxes for the super rich and slashed Medicaid coverage for millions.

GOP Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, complained to Politico about the Democratic line of attack. He said it was a “huge stretch” to link that specific provision to data centers.

“Opportunity Zones control, like, everything—from child day care centers to manufacturers. Can data centers be used in them? Yes. But so can everything else,” Smith said.

Regarding data centers, Republicans are in a bind of their own making.

Public opinion polling from a host of sources finds strong, bipartisan opposition to data center construction, with even many Republicans opposing it. Voters have voiced concerns about how data centers use vital resources and affect electricity costs.

Undeterred, some leading GOP figures, like Trump, have been pushing the centers, no doubt because many of the party’s top donors and wealthy allies in Big Tech are major investors in data center construction.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”

This is not true. But the data center industry is using the law Trump signed to get what they want, and now his party is feeling the heat.

TRUMP ‘LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR ELECTION MEDDLING’ WITH DHS HUNT FOR NONCITIZEN VOTERS. The New York Times’ Sept. 2 reporting on a US Department of Homeland Security “blitz to find elusive voter fraud” by noncitizens is heightening fears that President Donald Trump will try to meddle in the country’s midterm elections, which are just over two months away, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (9/2).

The newspaper revealed that as part of a “hunt for noncitizens among the nation’s registered voters” internally called the Unlawful Voter Initiative, hundreds of DHS agents “are scouring voter rolls managed by the states, and are using personally identifiable information about individual voters, such as their dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers, to look them up on those rolls.”

“In some cases, investigators are effectively posing as individual voters by plugging their names and personal information into public-facing websites run by the top election official in each state. Some of these sites declare they are meant for individual use, potentially raising privacy concerns,” according to the Times, which reviewed related documents and training videos.

While DHS said in a statement that it “is committed to ensuring that only US citizens vote in US elections,” and Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin “have made the integrity and security of our elections a top priority,” the newspaper noted the “absence of evidence of widespread fraud,” and that the department “is pulling agents from their normal duties, which include investigating such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism.”

Trump infamously refused to accept his 2020 loss, launching various unsuccessful legal battles and even motivating some of his supporters to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since returning to power last year, the president has imposed a mass detention and deportation campaign that has killed both immigrants and US citizens while pushing various policies that critics warn are intended to limit legitimate participation in elections, from photo identification requirements to restrictions on voting by mail.

Sharing the reporting on social media Sept. 2, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: “In other words, hundreds of federal agents are being diverted away from their jobs going after serious criminals and instead told to find needles in a haystack—all to find evidence for Trump’s predetermined conclusions. It’s a great time to be a criminal in Trump’s America.”

Democrats on the US House of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee similarly declared that “instead of hunting terrorists and human traffickers, DHS is pulling agents away to investigate a conspiracy theory that has been debunked year after year.”

TRUMP LIES THAT MEDICARE FOR ALL WOULD COST ‘ENTIRE BUDGET OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.’ Donald Trump railed against Medicare for All during an Oval Office event on Sept. 2, falsely claiming the proposal would be prohibitively expensive and ineffective despite new research confirming it would save lives and cost significantly less than the corporate-dominated status quo, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (9/2).

The president’s remarks came during an event touting his limited, voluntary, and secretive agreements with leading pharmaceutical companies, deals purportedly aimed at lowering drug prices. Trump again lied by claiming that his efforts are “much bigger” than Medicare for All, which would provide comprehensive health coverage to every person in the US for free at the point of service, eliminating premiums, copays, and deductibles.

Trump said that Medicare for All, which has not been tried at a national level in the US, “doesn’t work,” falsely claiming a single-payer system would cost “the entire budget of the whole country” and send taxes into the stratosphere.

Nancy Altman, president of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works and author of the forthcoming book, “The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action,” told Common Dreams on Sept. 3 that “Trump is once again revealing that he lies about healthcare or is totally ignorant of it.”

Total federal outlays were $7.04 trillion in 2025. According to a study published in August by Yale University researchers, a single-payer system like the one set out in Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Medicare for All Act would save the US roughly $1 trillion per year in national healthcare expenditures, which totaled around $5.7 trillion last year. The finding was consistent with past research showing major savings under Medicare for All compared with the current privatized system.

“A universal healthcare system in the US would not require the country to spend more on healthcare,” the Yale researchers wrote. “It would require it to spend less. Our results indicate that the existing budget is more than sufficient to cover everyone at lower total cost.”

The study also found that Medicare for All would save more than 114,000 lives across the US each year by providing the tens of millions of uninsured and uninsured Americans with comprehensive coverage.

The researchers contrasted the life-saving impacts of a Medicare for All system with the deadly consequences of the unprecedented Medicaid cuts that Trump signed into law last summer. Experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania estimated that the sweeping Republican assault on Medicaid could cause more than 51,000 deaths annually as millions are kicked off the program.

PROGRESSIVE SEN. ED MARKEY BEATS SETH MOULTIN IN LANDSIDE. US Sen. Ed Markey, a champion of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, decisively fended off a Democratic primary challenge from his right on Sept. 2, defeating Rep. Seth Moulton by nearly 30 percentage points in a contest that focused heavily on the incumbent senator’s age. Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (9/2).

Markey, 80, and his supporters—including prominent young Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—rejected the notion that “generational change” necessarily means electing the youngest candidate in the race. Markey said in his victory speech Tuesday night that “generational change isn’t about compromising to do the small things better—it’s about fighting to do the big things best.”

“Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement,” Markey added. “It is a progressive movement fueled by young people, demanding more from their leaders, and it’s your voices that are the ones we need to hear right now.”

Moulton, a 47-year-old member of the conservative New Democrat Coalition, attempted to capture momentum that has propelled other younger candidates to victory over entrenched incumbents by making Markey’s age and lengthy tenure in Congress—rather than his policy agenda—a central focus of the Sept. 2 contest. In a recent interview with MS NOW, Moulton removed ideology and policy from the equation completely, lumping Markey in with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as well as elderly Democrats such as former President Joe Biden.

The Democratic representative, who opposes Medicare for All and attacked Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) from the right during his ill-fated 2020 presidential bid, also falsely claimed in a campaign ad that he and Markey “want the same things.”

Moulton’s age-centric message failed, according to Markey’s backers, because voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere are hungry for progressive politics, not just younger politicians.