Yesterday, The Hill ran one of it's never-ending condemnations of Democratic Party "purity" politics. Purity politics... it sound yucky, right> What what it really is all about is a contest between candidates who believe in the values and principles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (purists) and the candidates running as Democrats who are more in-tune with Ronald Reagan. Is this about "purity?"The Democratic establishment-- dripping with corruption nearly as badly as the Republican establishment-- is "rallying behind their incumbents after a small band of liberal lawmakers endorsed a primary challenge to Rep. Daniel Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL) in a deep blue Chicagoland district. Lipinski’s critics say the eight-term Blue Dog is simply too conservative to represent the party, citing his opposition to abortion and his vote against ObamaCare. They’re endorsing Marie Newman, a liberal businesswoman who also challenged Lipinski in the 2018 midterms-- a hard-fought contest that Lipinski eked out by just over 2,000 votes." Eked out with a last minute million dollar smear campaign against Newman engineered by Nancy Jacobson's and Mark Penn's No Label and Problem Solvers front organizations and paid for by Republicans and corporate Democrats.Other corrupt incumbents, though, are more concerned with their own hides than with any issues or values. Scott Wong wrote that "the attacks on a sitting colleague have unsettled a number of Democrats now rushing to Lipinski’s defense." These lawmakers, including some prominent progressives [not really; he's mis-reporting], want Democrats to avoid divisive internal fights heading into the 2020 elections, when they have bigger fish to fry with President Trump on the ballot and the direction of the country at stake." Pelosi and racist insensitive DCCC Blue Dog Cheri Bustos are leading the anti-progressive jihad against Newman and at least a dozen other progressives seeking to replace conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Click the 2020 primary thermometer on the right to see a list of the challengers to the worst of the Blue Dog and New Dem garbage.Wong used crooked St Louis Democrat Lacy Clay as an example of an upstanding progressive who opposes primaries-- without mentioning that Clay is a crook or that he's fighting for his political life... in a primary. ProgressivePunch rates his voting record a "B," which isn't terrible. There are 69 Democrats in the House with better voting records-- and none of them are whining about primaries.How about we get Wong to push some establishment talking points now? How about the stupidest one of all, that conservative Democrats-- who he obediently calls "moderates" and "centrists"-- put the Democrats back in power in the House. That's patently false. Trump and grassroots energy against Trump is what put the Democrats in the majority-- a majority they're afraid to use because of the damage they think they'll inflict on the right-wing freshmen. Conservative ideology did nothing to help Democrats take back the House but it will do plenty in making them lose the majority in 2022 when Trump is just a bad memory.
The pushback against Lipinski’s critics highlights the broader ideological tensions within the sprawling Democratic Caucus, which has seen a liberal insurgence in the Trump era but owes its House majority to centrist lawmakers who flipped Republican seats last year in conservative-leaning districts-- tensions being fueled by the emergence of similar clashes among the Democratic presidential hopefuls on the primary trail.
One Democratic operative told me this morning that it's foolish of Wong and other establishment journalists to refer the Lipinski-Newman fight as "a purity test." He said, "It isn't a purity fight, it's a fight over the values of the party-- a fight that involves Democrats and Republicans-who-call-themselves-Democrats... you know-- DINOs." Wong says Democratic leaders are "caught in the middle," but he's wrong. Hoyer and Bustos are the chief villains here and they've dragged Pelosi down into their sewer. Hoyer and Bustos have never and will never energize the liberal base-- only elite donors. Hoyer: "We want to see the party as unified as possible. We think it's very important to keep the majority, obviously, not just because we want to be in the majority, but because the values that the parties reflect [are] very, very disparate-- as disparate as I've seen it in my entire career." Like anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-healthcare, anti-consumer protection and anti-regulation, pro-gun, pro-corporate greed, pro-Big Money in politics? That isn't the Democratic Party Democrats want anything to do with-- only Lipinski and enablers of his like Hoyer and Bustos. Wong wrote that "a handful of liberal hardliners"-- note the negative framing, which comes right out of Hoyer's office and the DCCC-- "have a decidedly different view, urging Democrats to embrace a progressive identity on issues like abortion rights and LGBT equality." How about this: if the Democrats give up Choice and equality they'd never win another election for anything anywhere-- and that includes even conservatives like Lipinski!
In a tweet this week that raised eyebrows in the Democratic Caucus, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a CPC leader, called out fellow liberals who have declined to line up behind Newman.Khanna, who got his political start as a campaign volunteer for former President Obama’s first Illinois state Senate race in 1996 and later served in the Obama administration, doubled down on his stance in an interview with The Hill later in the week.“Progressives have to stand for certain basic values: reproductive choice, LGBT equality, the rights for Dreamers. These things should not be places where we compromise,” Khanna told The Hill.“And when you have someone like Dan Lipinski, who was a thorn in the side of Barack Obama, who opposed with all his passion President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, who has opposed reproductive rights, who has opposed LGBT equality, who has opposed the rights of Dreamers,” Khanna continued, “then you have to take a stand and say that person doesn’t represent Democratic values. That person doesn’t respect the most iconic president, Barack Obama, in our party. He doesn’t deserve to be there. I don’t understand why that is so difficult.”The only other members to endorse Newman are progressive freshmen Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Lauren Underwood (D-IL).“We can’t afford deep blue seats fighting against healthcare & equal rights," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Tuesday in endorsing Newman.Lipinski fired back on Friday, warning that Democrats risk handing the White House back to Trump if the infighting continues.“Illinois’ Third Congressional District is not the Bay Area and it’s not the Bronx,” he said in an email. “The endorsement of Marie Newman by Rep. Khanna and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez make clear that this primary is a choice between mainstream Dan Lipinski and extreme Marie Newman. My constituents want mainstream, not extreme.”...Rep. Jesús Garcia (D-IL), a liberal freshman who replaced the retired Gutiérrez, said he’s “not in a hurry” to jump into the race-- and suggested he won’t do so.“I serve with him on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and at least three subcommittees,” Garcia said of Lipinski, “so I really haven't given that much thought.”
Illinois Democratic boss, House speaker Mike Madigan has made sure of that, even more so than Pelosi and Bustos. Anyone waiting for Garcia to live up to his primary promises of being a liberal firebrand is going to be waiting a very, very long time."Democratic lawmakers of all stripes," wrote Wong, "have lined up behind efforts to keep their colleagues in place. Take establishment hack Robin Kelly, another "B" Democrat in a deep blue district (PVI is D+29 where Trump didn't even hit 20% of the vote) 'I know Marie and like Marie, but there’s also something to the fact that [Lipinski’s] a current member and that mutual respect. I don’t agree with all of his stances, but you know how you respect the office, like we say about the president?'" Sad.Beyond Impure (Blue Dog-TX)Yesterday, Huff Po's Alexander Kaufman reported that the Sunrise Movement jumped into the fray against another wretched DINO-- corrupt Blue Dog Henry Cuellar-- by endorsing Jessica Cisneros, a "26-year-old immigration attorney mounting a progressive primary challenge against a conservative Democrat whose reelection campaign is heavily funded by the oil industry." Cuellar is very much like Lipinski, except further to the right and more aggressive about supporting the Republican agenda.Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement’s executive director: "Henry Cuellar represents all that’s wrong with Washington. Even though he calls himself a Democrat, he rakes in campaign contributions from fossil fuel CEOs and Wall Street and joins with Trump to do their bidding in Congress. Young people like Jessica Cisneros have seen the impacts of these failed policies for our entire lives."Do you have half an hour to spare? Here's how you can help change our country back into what we need it to be:
