Way back in December and January I was able to do a bunch of reporting on the upcoming Democratic congressional primary in Massachusetts’ 1st district, which includes my hometown of Springfield. After many moons the piece was published at the end of last month in the Ideas section of the Boston Globe. More than just a campaign piece, it’s a bit of a meditation on what kind of politics the long-suffering district needs right now and for the future.
The race is another front in the battle between the party’s left flank and its centrist establishment. It’s also a moment of reckoning for a region that has never recovered from the deindustrialization of the last few decades, one of the left-behind and wounded places in America that Trump’s campaign in 2016 brought to the foreground and promised to heal.
It’s not Trump country yet. It’s safely blue, and will elect a Democrat in November, but it has been trending red over the last few elections, and it poses a challenge that Democrats would be wise to heed, particularly in the face of the pandemic and the economic damage it’s causing. Is there a politics that will enable the small towns and cities of western Massachusetts not just to regroup on the other side of disease and recession, but to be revitalized?