Seth Moulton threw trans kids under the bus. Massachusetts ran him over by 30 points.

via The Advocate and WBUR and Washington Blade

Ed Markey is 80. Seth Moulton is 47 and ran on that gap for a year, telling voters to "learn the lessons of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden." On Tuesday, September 1, Massachusetts Democrats answered. Markey won the Senate primary by just under 30 points. With almost all of it counted, that was 572,595 votes to 310,365, or 64.9 to 35.1, a margin of 29.7 points.

what moulton said in 2024

The age argument was never really the story. The story is what Moulton did after Donald Trump won in 2024. A congressman who had co-sponsored the Equality Act and the Transgender Bill of Rights told the New York Times he didn't want his daughters "getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete." It was the first big Democratic defection on trans kids and it was meant to look brave. At Boston's No Kings rally in October 2025, the crowd booed him. Markey, wrapped in a trans pride flag, told the same crowd that "trans rights are human rights." That was the campaign in one afternoon.

Moulton tried to walk it back in an August debate, saying he recognized the "trauma" his words had caused. Markey said he had picked up "Trump's playbook" and thrown trans children "under the political bus." Then he went out and won every argument about it at the ballot box. He has a 100 percent lifetime score from the Human Rights Campaign. He did not moderate a syllable to get there.

what the margin means

Tyler Hack of the Christopher Street Project, which backs pro-trans Democrats, said it cleanly: "Massachusetts rejected the idea that attacking transgender people is a shortcut to political power." HRC's Kelley Robinson said Markey has "stood with us no matter what."

Moulton conceded on the night and pledged to "do everything I can to help him win re-election in November." Markey faces Republican John Deaton in November, in a state where the Democratic primary is usually the election. So the practical consequence is small. The signal is not. For every consultant telling a Democrat that trans kids are the thing to trade away, there is now a 30-point number to hand them.