So U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley is indeed considering a Senate run in Massachusetts, calling up allies to see what they think of a challenge to fellow progressive Ed Markey, the soon-to-be octogenarian incumbent, as Politico reports. … The NYT’s Jess Bidgood has a good piece on all the young-and-restless Dems, including U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who would love to replace Markey. … So what happens if Pressley gets into the race? The possibilities are fascinating: A.) Pressley galvanizes the left and beats out the two white males to win the Dem nomination B.) The two progressives, Pressley and Markey, cancel each other out, handing the nomination to the more moderate Moulton C.) Markey is forced under pressure to withdraw, setting up a Pressley vs. Moulton showdown, something the MSM will instantly frame as representative of the ongoing ‘civil war’ within the Democratic Party (while providing Pressley with fawning coverage) and D.) Markey beats the two insolent whippersnappers. …

… As a moderate, I’d obviously love to see Scenario B. unfold. Can you imagine the progressive outcry and the demand for ranked-choice voting, something they support whenever one of their own doesn’t win a crowded primary race? …

But first Pressley has to declare she’s running. And don’t discount the chances of Republican John Deaton, particularly if Pressley or Moulton win the Dem race and the general election comes down to a battle of newcomers.

Update – 11.13.25 – The Herald’s Joe Battenfeld has his doubts about whether Pressley will run and whether she can win. … Btw: I hadn’t heard of the UMass poll Joe cites in his column, which shows Pressley running third behind Moulton and Markey in a three-way race. I tend to agree with Joe that the poll actually shows Markey is vulnerable, with Pressley and Moulton’s combined numbers higher than Markey’s.

Damn. It turns out school committee candidates backed by local affiliates of the Massachusetts Teachers Association did much better in last week’s elections than previously thought, as Contrarian Boston’s Scott Van Voorhis reports. Sure, MTA-backed candidates in Newton got their clocks cleaned last Tuesday. But school committee candidates backed by a teachers’ union nabbed seats in Watertown, Cambridge, Beverly, Quincy, Waltham, and Gloucester, according to Scott. … Think about it: a union whose members’ revenues come 100 percent from taxpayers now have their favored candidates sitting on boards deciding how to spend taxpayer money. … And let’s not get into what this means for the radical curriculum agenda of the MTA.

It was once the pride and joy of the emerging robotics industry in Massachusetts. But now it’s facing bankruptcy, unable to find a suitor after its failed hook up with Amazon, as the BBJ reports. How did Bedford’s iRobot go from techno star to bankrupt bum? There are many reasons, as the NYT’s Liam McCabe lists. But I’d argue that iRobot’s ultimate problem is that it’s been a one-hit wonder in a very limited consumer robotics market. Beyond its famous Roomba vacuum cleaner, iRobot just hasn’t developed other hit products. And those that came close to being hits (at least in terms of techno coolness) weren’t within the narrow confines of the consumer robotics market, such as PackBot, which was part of iRobot’s defense and security business before the firm sold it off in 2016 to focus on home robots – even though the industrial robotics market is far bigger and more lucrative than the home robotics market. … 

Meanwhile, Roomba is losing market share by the day, due to a “glut of cheap, decent competitors” that offer  “largely indistinguishable” product quality, McCabe writes.

How much longer can a company survive with only one primary product in a narrow, highly competitive consumer market? My guess is not much longer.

Image above via Wikipedia.

Update — 11.14.25 –– Sounds pretty lame. But who knows? From the BBJ: “Robot manicure machine starts global rollout with Braintree Ulta.”

The Herald’s Jed Gotlieb has the scoop: Sarah Silverman may be performing “Something to Tell You,” perhaps the most moving ballad ever sung, at tonight’s Comics Come Home 29 at TD Garden. … The song definitely ranks up there with Cups and Cake.

— He’s backpedaling but hasn’t quite disavowed his trans-athlete comments (as far as I can tell): “Seth Moulton Challenged Democrats Over Trans Rights After The 2024 Election. Not Anymore” (NotUs)

— Oh, c’mon. For president? Really? “Could Michelle Wu crack the national ticket in 2028?” (Boston Herald)

— An interesting sale heading into the winter: “Owner of Jay Peak sells New England ski mountain” (BBJ)

— Larry Edelman tells it like it is: “Raise Up’s tax hike would stall progress on Massachusetts’ business climate” (Globe) 

— Good. And he won on Tuesday, so we’ll hold him to it: “Somerville Mayoral Candidate Opposes Davis Square Tower” (B&T)

— The group was effectively hijacked by fanatics: “The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart” (NYT)

— I used to be skeptical of such therapies as well. No more: “Why Harvard doctors are seeking out this natural remedy for themselves” (Washington Post)

— A nice nod to history by the governor: “Founding Father Samuel Adams gets new home in Gov. Healey’s office” (Boston Herald)

— An oversaturated market will do this: “Cannabis retail license surrenders surge to record high” (BBJ)

— They’re snapping up more pied-à-terres here than you may think: “When Helicopter Parents Touch Down—At College” (The Atlantic) 

— Does this make us hip? “Meet the micro influencers thriving in Boston” (WBUR)

— Technically it’s an obit, but it’s really an amazing story of a Hollywood legend’s beyond-diva personal life. What a great read: “Maria Riva, Dietrich Daughter who Demystified the Legend, Dies at 100” (NYT)

Now that Tuesday’s off-year elections are ancient history, it’s time to turn our attention to 2026. And the Herald’s Peter Lucas has it right: Gov. Maura Healey’s administration is definitely showing cracks these days (the Lamar Cook fiasco, Tibbits-Nutt turmoil, Plaza-gate, cabinet turnover etc.) but combined they’re probably not enough to seriously endanger her re-election chances. Yet, she is making her re-election more difficult than maybe it should be, especially if her general-election foe turns out to be GOP megadonor Mike Minogue, who’s already pumped $1.5 million of his own money into his campaign and launched TV ads a full year before the 2026 election, as the Globe reports. … Not to discount the other two GOP candidates (Brian Shortsleeve and Mike Keneally) but it sure looks like Minogue, a businessman and Army veteran, is the early odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination, based mostly on the wads of cash at his disposal. … Minogue’s greatest liability if he ever goes one-on-one against Healey: Donald Trump, as more than a few readers have noted in the Globe’s comments section.

Btw: WBUR reports Healey was recently in Miami raising funds from, among others, Florida-based lawyers at Morgan & Morgan, the personal injury law firm headed by the billionaire old guy you can’t miss on TV. Does Barry Feinstein know about this?

Contrarian Boston’s Scott Van Voorhis reports that three Newton school committee candidates backed by the local chapter of the teachers union everyone loves to hate went down to defeat on Tuesday. It seems a lot of Newton voters remembered that illegal teachers strike of 2024. … We can only hope future candidates backed by the radical Massachusetts Teachers Association also bite the dust. It’s bad enough the MTA has inordinate influence over Beacon Hill pols via campaign donations and campaign field support.* This past summer the MTA announced it was getting more involved in local school committee and mayoral races as well, as the Globe reported. Just what our body politic needs: big-time polarized politics even at the local school-committee level. … Anyway, Newton voters on Tuesday obviously weren’t impressed with the MTA’s stamps of approval. Fig City News has more on the Newton elections.

* Note: To be fair, Beacon Hill lawmakers occasionally do stand up to teacher unions.

The NY Post’s cover this morning. What more can you say? … Btw: Here’s preliminary evidence that Mamdani is nothing more than the second coming of Bill De Blasio, something I’ve mentioned previously.

Clearly, it wasn’t a big anti-incumbent night across Massachusetts, not with Mayor Michelle Wu cruising unopposed to victory and Boston voters re-electing four at-large city councilors yesterday etc. But there was something stirring out there, with incumbent mayors losing in Everett and Gloucester and mayoral allies in Quincy getting pummeled. Even school committee members in Cambridge were getting the boot. … It doesn’t seem tied to any ideological or partisan shift per se. Just an old-fashioned fed-up, throw-the-rascals-out sentiment, tied to arrogant spending and pay raises and incompetent leadership. Hopefully, it will keep our one-party incumbents on their toes heading into 2026. … Fyi: WCVB has an excellent roundup of election results from around the state.

Update – From Michael Jonas at CommonWealth  Beacon: “Competitive mayoral races abound, just not in Boston.” … I like the old Barney Frank quip at the end of Michael’s piece. It’s so true about small-city politics

Update II – 11.6.25 – From Contrarian Boston: “Massachusetts mayors caught behaving badly with sneaky pay grabs and other controversies sent packing by fed-up constituents”

Update III – 11.6.25 – And in related post-election day news, from the Globe: “Quincy mayor, already facing controversy, took thousands of dollars in illegal campaign donations, state says”

I was all set to come out guns blazing at Fox News for overemphasizing Zohran Mamdani’s victory last night, as part of the network’s never-ending quest to whip the faithful into a lather over its latest Red Scare. So what did I see this morning? A shocking modicum of balance at Fox (see screen capture below) and an absurd overemphasis of Mamdani’s victory at the NYT (see below). Doh! … OK, it’s the Times’s home turf, so they’re playing up the big NYC mayoral election. But to me the big election story from last night was Democrats’ “extraordinary sweep of battleground districts,” as one sane Times reporter puts it, and that was largely accomplished via moderate Dems, not democratic socialists, winning tough gubernatorial elections in NJ and Virginia.

From PBS on the victories by Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey: “Both actively distanced themselves from some of the Democratic Party’s far-left policies and emphasized what Spanberger described in her victory speech as ‘pragmatism over partisanship.’”

The unmistakable loser last night: Donald Trump. It was a solid, early-term, across-the-board rebuke of the president. … Now on to 2026! ….

Update – Some welcome common sense from the Globe’s David Scharfenberg, who writes that the Democratic Party can only win moving forward if Dems remain united, with some key adjustments:  “It has to accommodate both the centrists of Virginia and the leftists of Manhattan. It has to be elastic. The trick is not stretching too far in one direction. And in recent years, the party has done just that, reaching way out to the left and damaging the Democratic brand in the process.”