Lipinski Finds Another Champion Besides Cheri Bustos-- The Editors Of The National Review

On Monday, Vox published a strong piece by Tara Golshan about the establishment Democrats' uncomfortable dilemma over Lipinski: The Democratic Party is protecting one of its last anti-abortion members in a safe blue district. "Lipinski," she reminded her readers, is "one of the last remaining anti-abortion Democrats in the House. He has voted to defund health clinics that offer abortion services, and to ban abortions at 20 weeks. He opposed the Affordable Care Act and its mandate that employers cover birth control. He speaks at the annual March for Life and attends fundraisers for anti-abortion groups."

Marie Newman's primary battle for the seat Lipinski holds is "one of the most competitive Democratic primaries in 2020. And already, Newman is encountering some roadblocks. Though the district leans heavily Democratic, the national party has erected rules to protect incumbents like Lipinski. Newman says she can’t find a pollster who will work for her. Four political consultants have left her campaign because of a policy, made public in April, that the official campaign arm for House Democrats won’t do business with political vendors-- like direct mail companies or political consultants-- that also work for candidates challenging incumbent Democrats. Party superstars like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez oppose the rule; she also managed to topple an incumbent in a primary challenge. But the DCCC isn’t budging. The DCCC says it’s committed to incumbents, a loyalty to dues-paying members, that it believes represent the party’s best chance of keeping control in the House. And the DCCC’s chair, Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, is a big proponent of “big tent” politics. Progressive lawmakers in Congress are still railing against what they see as a “divisive” policy that effectively “blacklists” groups and candidates. The Democratic Party may need ideological diversity to regain national power, but already, Lipinski’s side of the 'big tent' is looking sparse. Newman came within 2,200 votes of beating Lipinski in 2018. She’s running again, already picking up endorsements from progressive groups like Emily’s List and NARAL, as well as from 2020 presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and Gov. Jay Inslee. In a year when Democrats are newly energized around abortion rights, the Democratic apparatus protecting an anti-abortion candidate in friendly territory is raising eyebrows."

It's not just Bernie and Jay Inslee. Even a relatively conservative senator like Kirsten Gillibrand, once a dues-paying member of Lipinski's right-wing Blue Dog Coalition, has endorsed Newman. If you'd like to help Marie replace Lipinski, please click on the Blue America Primary A Blue Dog thermometer above.

Democrats have tolerated some anti-abortion lawmakers in their coalition, but the numbers are dwindling in a party that’s adopted a pro-woman mantle. Only three sitting House Democrats regularly vote against abortion rights; Lipinski; Rep. Collin Peterson, who represents a conservative Minnesota district; and Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar. Everyone else has moved on the issue or left. Even Joe Biden, the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, recently revised his position, saying the ban on using federal funds for abortions, which he used to support, should be overturned.

The issue has taken on new urgency in the 2020 primaries as Republican state legislatures pass stricter abortion laws explicitly designed to be brought before an increasingly conservative Supreme Court and unravel Roe v. Wade. Bustos was pressured into canceling her fundraiser for Lipinski in light of the Alabama state law banning abortions at six weeks, without exceptions for rape and incest.

But in the liberal stronghold of Illinois’s Third Congressional District, the anti-abortion Lipinski family has been in power for nearly 40 years-- first Lipinski’s father, William, held the seat before passing it on to Dan-- and they’re fighting against the current.

Once known for its conservative pockets, the area-- surrounding Midway Airport, which spans parts of Cook and Will counties-- is more diverse both socioeconomically and politically than it once was. It’s younger and middle class; the median age is 37, with a $65,000 household income, according to the most recent census estimates. There’s a growing Latinx population. Sanders beat Hillary Clinton here in 2016 by 8 points. Clinton went on to beat Donald Trump by an even bigger margin. Interestingly, Lipinski, who was a superdelegate in the 2016 elections, pledged his vote to Sanders.

But between Newman and Lipinski, only one has adopted Sanders’s worldview.

“I’m a real Democrat,” Newman likes to tell voters. “To be a real Democrat, you have to believe in the platform,” she said to Vox. She, like Sanders, identifies income inequality as the root cause of American suffering. At a Saturday morning Pet Parade in Chicago’s Garfield Ridge neighborhood, Newman led a procession of staffers and volunteers-- and their dogs-- with signs supporting Medicare-for-all, a $15 minimum wage, and a Green New Deal. Newman supports abortion rights, the Equality Act, and free college and thinks Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be “repealed and replaced.”

...Even Lipinski’s most loyal supporters are beginning to see him as an outsider.

“He had a really close election last time, so what he has to do is find out what the constituents want and sort of modify those positions,” Albert Reiff, a 71-year-old Vietnam War veteran, said. “Like with the women and stuff like that. You’ve got to understand society is more [supportive of] equal wages for equal work, more open-minded with who you can love and stuff like that. He could do it, though. He’s not like Lindsey Graham. He is a moderate.”

At a senior fair in Summit, Illinois, Lipinski was in his element. A group of older constituents, mostly white, many veterans, lined up to share their gripes: Their grandkids were having trouble covering health care bills, the music festival at the local park was too damn loud, the DMV was too confusing. In this community, Lipinski is known for this kind of affair; he regularly holds events for seniors and veterans. His district office is known for getting their concerns taken care of. Reiff said Lipinski’s staff organized his paperwork for the Veterans Affairs hospital and got his Vietnam War medals mailed to his home.

As far as Reiff was concerned, Newman’s insurgency is a “reflection of the millenniums”-- referring to the progressive millennial energy that has boosted candidates like Sanders. Lipinski operates in a different world.

Talking Trump, Lipinski chose his words carefully. According to exit polling, 18 percent of his primary support in 2018 came from Trump supporters. He treaded lightly on impeachment, saying the election was the better way to oust the president, but was undecided in the 2020 presidential primary. He wouldn’t say whether he sees the national outrage around abortion rights playing inside his district.

Like Lipinski, the editors of the National Review never use "anti-Choice" to describe the fanatics who oppose women's Choice. Like Lipinski, they always use "pro-Life." And in their sympathetic response to Vox yesterday, Dan Lipinski: The Last Pro-Life Liberal Democrat they also referred to the ardently conservative Lipinski as a "true liberal." ProgressivePunch rates him a solid "F" and his crucial vote score-- even though fear of Newman has seen him vote somewhat differently in the past 2 years-- is still a repulsive (to liberals) 58.05%. The National Review appears to be dubbing him a "true liberal" because, unlike the two other anti-Choice Dems still left-- Henry Cuellar and Collin Peterson-- he doesn't have an "A" from the NRA like they do.

The eight-term congressman faced his first serious assault from the left in a 2018 primary, when challenger Marie Newman and the energized progressive base came within two percentage points of defeating him. Newman is running again to finish the job in 2020. Taking out Lipinski makes perfect sense to pro-abortion activists: Democrats have no fear of losing a general election in Lipinski’s district, which Hillary Clinton carried by 15 points in 2016 and Barack Obama carried by 13 points in 2012. Yet the anti-Lipinski effort does carry risks for the Democratic party. No single seat in the House is worth very much in terms of political power. The odds are very low that a crucial piece of legislation will advance by a single vote in the House. Purging Lipinski is more about sending a message than it is about gaining one more vote.

The message that the anti-Lipinski campaign is sending is that dissent will not be tolerated and pro-lifers and even those with moderate views on abortion are unwelcome in the Democratic party. Newman’s last campaign even carried a whiff of anti-Catholicism to it. She attacked Lipinski, a practicing Catholic, for believing contraception is morally wrong. Newman falsely suggested Lipinski wanted to ban contraception, when he has in fact voted for federal funding for it but also supports religious-liberty protections.

It says something about the leftward lurch of the Democratic party that it has fallen to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat from San Francisco, to explain to her colleagues the political peril of purging pro-lifers from the party. “You know what? That’s why Donald Trump is president of the United States-- the evangelicals and the Catholics, anti-marriage-equality, anti-choice. That’s how he got to be president,” Pelosi told the Washington Post in 2017. “Everything was trumped, literally and figuratively, by that.”

“I grew up Nancy D’Alesandro, in Baltimore, Maryland; in Little Italy; in a very devout Catholic family; fiercely patriotic; proud of our town and heritage, and staunchly Democratic,” Pelosi told The Post. “Most of those people-- my family, extended family-- are not pro-choice. You think I’m kicking them out of the Democratic party?”

Pelosi may not want to kick them out of the Democratic party for nakedly partisan reasons. All pro-lifers should hope on principle that Lipinski prevails against the campaign to purge the last Democrats who are willing to defend the right to life.

That was a slick trick Pelosi pulled-- conflating officials of the Democratic Party who can vote in Congress to take away health care from women-- as Lipinski has at every opportunity-- and ordinary voters who are certainly free to call themselves Democrats even if the party is pro-Choice. No one asked Pelosi to kick a bunch of Italian-American voters out of the party. Lipinski-- along with Cuellar and Peterson-- well, that's a different matter.

I asked Marie Newman what she thought of the National Review asserting that Dan Lipinski is somehow "a true liberal." She probably recalled the thousands of texts the Lipinski campaign sent out, in desperation at the end of the 2018 campaign, claiming she wants to "jail nuns." Pretty insane, right? Marie told us that this whole National Review nonsense makes her scratch her head "in disbelief. As a Catholic, I am a true liberal because I am pro-immigrant rights, pro-economic rights and pro-healthcare rights, so clearly, with Dan Lipinksi’s record of voting against immigrants’ rights, voting against Obamacare and recently voting to take away Obamacare from workers (last month’s Republican bill to stop workers who work under 30 hours from receiving Obamacare (HR 2782). Dan is not a true Liberal. Further, I never said Dan Lipinski wanted to ban contraception, I merely repeated what he has said many times. [Lipinski has stated several times in front of large groups, he voted against Obamacare because it had contraception in the bill.] To be clear, I am running with the district to fight for Everybody’s Everyday: 1. Healthcare for all, 2. Fighting Income Inequality and 3. Addressing the Climate Crisis. Dan is running against those issues. Finally to suggest I am anti-Catholic is beyond disrespectful to my family and specifically, to those members of my family who are Catholic faith leaders."