To quote Taylor swift, “There goes the last great American dynasty.” When Senator Ed Markey won his victory over Joe Kennedy this month, it showed the Left can flex muscle; it’s worth celebrating that an endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and support for the Green New Deal can win a Senate election. But what’s also sweet about this triumph is the fact that a Kennedy lost.

Political dynasties should have no place in a democracy. The Kennedys may not have been as nakedly vulgar in their pursuit of family advantage as the Trumps, but inherited political office is a feudal hangover, and voters should reflexively reject it. One of the beautiful things about the Left’s current electoral success is that we have been able to bring some of these family fiefdoms to an end; socialist Emily Gallagher, for example, beat Joe Lentol, a Brooklyn state assemblyman whose father and grandfather had also represented the neighborhood in the Assembly.

In St. Louis, Missouri, Bernie Sanders supporter Cori Bush defeated William Lacy Clay, a ten-term incumbent whose father had held the same seat before him. While Ed Markey was the incumbent in this case, deflating a rich family’s entitlement to public office and a taxpayer-funded paycheck is a sign of progress. There’s always been something pathetic and wannabe-monarchist about the American cult of the Kennedys — and I say this as a Bostonian.