The headline at The Boston Globe on Wednesday was incredulous: “Could 3 people from Massachusetts really run for president?” Yet it was a question the hometown paper had to ask this week, with news that Barack Obama is urging former Governor Deval Patrick to consider a White House bid and that Representative Seth Moulton plans to attend an Iowa steak fry this September. If either Patrick or Moulton wants to take on President Donald Trump in 2020, they could be entering a Democratic primary field “the size of an Iowa cornfield,” as New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore put it. They could also be facing a fellow Bay Stater who’s a national leader of the ascendent populist-progressive movement: Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But if Warren, 68, is a natural heir to the Senator Bernie Sanders wing of the party—if he stays out of the race—both Patrick and Moulton represent different stylistic and substantive paths the party could take. Each also has vulnerabilities that mirror those of other White House hopefuls on the left.

Patrick, who turned 61 on Monday, is a stirring speaker who had a solidly liberal record as governor, but his work in corporate America and private equity will turn off some on the left. He has executive experience, but not a particularly extraordinary legacy from his time in office, and it remains to be seen whether an Obama-esque inspirational message would be the right tack against Trump.



Moulton, 38, is a Harvard-educated Marine veteran who got to Congress by unseating an incumbent Democrat, former Representative John Tierney, in 2014. He’s continued to buck his party’s establishment in Washington, backing Representative Tim Ryan’s failed bid to replace Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader. Moulton’s political fearlessness and decorated service in Iraq could make him a formidable candidate, but his emphasis on bipartisanship in our hyper-partisan era could alienate the left.

That is, Massachusetts has become a microcosm of the divisions within the Democratic Party and the battle over its future.