SOUTHIE. DORCHESTER (WHERE I was baptised). West Roxbury. Quincy. Milton (where I grew up). Braintree. Norwood. Weymouth. To many readers, these Boston city neighbourhoods and nearby suburbs are familiar. You may have lived there in the 1980s and 1990s; you may have American cousins in one or more of them and visit the territory regularly; or you may have resisted the allure of the Celtic Tiger and stayed, following in the footsteps of the now elderly emigrants who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s.

This Irishness, though not as omnipresent as it was, is prevalent and visible in my home turf. And it is here where a congressional primary can be seen, in some ways, as a microcosm of the much-heralded divisions within the Democratic Party. Voters will make their choice on Tuesday, 1 September.

The internal wrangling is often cast as the “establishment” vs the progressives. The latter grouping is fuelled by righteous anger at President Donald Trump’s policies and persona. They reject central tenets of hyper-capitalism in the United States, which has engendered extraordinary income inequality. They have come to resent seasoned stalwarts, such as the Clintons, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who have long controlled the party and are perceived to have veered in a corporatist direction in pursuit of campaign cash.

This is an oversimplification of the state of play. In truth, grassroots Democrats would equally support and have reservations about aspects of what both rough factions have to say. With most primaries having transpired at this stage, the party’s task in the weeks ahead is to unite around one goal: getting as many Americans as possible to vote for their standard-bearers in the midterms.

While nominating some individuals with ideological outlooks that are out of the mainstream in........

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