"The act of throwing Lipinski under the bus was an exercise in bare-knuckled Chicago politics, and it was also a tale of a party that is an increasingly awkward fit for centrists like Lipinski."
With that "centrist" label in place, Korecki turns the floor over to Lipinski himself, who offers the usual progressive-trashing line:
"'There's an effort that is very detrimental to the Democratic Party, in that there's the Tea Party of the Left that some people said they wanted to create. That's bad for the party. That's not going to be helpful in growing our numbers,' said Lipinski, who noted that the Tea Party movement was responsible for Trump's ascendance. 'I think we have to acknowledge that the way to get back into the majority into the Congress and pick up seats is to make sure we are a big-tent party and reaching out to people are moderate and not just push to the left.'"
While positioning Lipinski as a "centrist" is essential to this anti-progressive narrative, the 3rd District is strongly Democratic--over 60%--meaning it's likely that Lipinski's conservative views are directly at odds with those of most of his constituents.[1] This gives him no claim on the political "center" there.[2] Korecki knows how to get around this problem; she attributes the view that Lipinski is out of step with his district to Gutierrez and Schakowsky, the people she describes as back-stabbers unconscionably putting the knife to their colleague. Gutierrez is further besmirched when Korecki gratuitously suggests that his endorsement of Newman may be merely his "settling a score with the powerful state party chairman Mike Madigan, a longtime ally of the Lipinski family" (a few paragraphs are then devoted to this ad hominem rabbit-hole).
Korecki also suggests that wanting a more reliable Democrat representing a reliably Democratic district isn't "pragmatic." The Newman endorsements, she writes, "put [Gutierrez and Schakowsky] at odds with a more pragmatic faction of Chicago Democrats," those being Lipinski's supporters, who, in Korecki's telling, get that "pragmatic" label merely by being Lipinski supporters. Korecki is beside herself over the fact that this race is happening and megaphones the views of this "pragmatic faction":
"In other words: why is the party spending precious resources to oust an incumbent from a safe Democratic seat? Especially when Democrats are busy trying to oust a Republican governor from office and nearby GOP congressmen from their seats?"
Democracy, perhaps?
Korecki turns the mechanics of the race on its head, writing that in endorsing Newman, "Schakowsky and Gutierrez joined powerful national groups that have already coalesced behind the challenger, including NARAL, MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Human Rights Campaign." How appropriate is Korecki's violent language and invocation of "bare-knuckled Chicago politics" to describe Newman's support given the fact that Lipinski, not Newman, is the candidate backed by the powerful Chicago Democratic machine noted for its bare-knuckling tendencies? Dan Lipinski's father held this same seat for 22 years. In 2004, Daddy Bill ran for the Democratic nomination for the 12th time, won it, then just gave it to son Dan, who hadn't even regularly lived in the district for 15 years. In such a safely Democratic district, Dan didn't even have to compete for it. He's held it ever since. Newman is a political novice who entered the race with very low name-recognition while Lipinski is a dynastic incumbent backed by the Chicago machine, with all the extraordinary advantages that confers, yet in Korecki's telling, the reader could be forgiven for believing Lipinski is the besieged underdog taking on the unscrupulous Establishment.[3] It's an inversion of reality that is simply impossible to justify.
It's also worth noting that while Korecki ties this race to the larger ongoing conflict within the Democratic party, it's hardly representative of it. There are, this year, a quite large number of Bernie Sanders-inspired crowdfunded progressive candidates around the U.S., an army of them unlike anything this not-inexperienced writer has ever seen. They should make this political year very interesting. Newman is drawing a lot of Democratic support in her race but the Democratic Establishment typically stands against these up-and-coming liberals, choosing, instead, to throw support behind conservative Clintonite figures. This---a problem for many years and a perpetual complaint among activists--is finally beginning to get some press. Perhaps the spectacle of some prominent Democratic pols and groups backing Newman--a man-bites-dog story, really--is partly what draws Korecki's fury.
That ongoing Democratic conflict is between progressives who are attempting to make the party better reflect the left views of its constituents and Clintonites who push a more conservative, business-friendly, war-hawkish line. While that conservative line attracts big-money donors (as it's intended), it's at odds with the views of the party's voters, and the Clintonites have attempted to obscure and avoid addressing this by, among other things, crafting the narrative Korecki has deployed here,[4] an indefensible narrative that amounts to an attack on not just liberals but liberal democracy itself. Its a gross misrepresentation of what's actually happening, its underlying assumption is that it's entirely unreasonable to want one's elected representatives to reflect one's own views and it heaps personal abuse on anyone who takes any real measures to make that the case,[5] all in the service of defending unrepresentative conservative pols in a progressive party and country. The great passion Korecki displays is offered in defense of an utterly disreputable cause and does a disservice to her readers.
--j.
---
[1] That's what Newman's internal polling from a few months ago suggested; support for Lipinski within the district begins to collapse when voters are informed of his conservative record. Take that for what it's worth.
[2] Even looking at the race from the national perspective, Lipinski's views on, for example, abortion and gay rights--he's opposed to both--are wildly outside the broad American political center.
[3] Though Korecki does note, almost in passing, that the AFL-CIO--hardly a bit player--has endorsed Lipinski.
[4] Arguably, this race isn't even an example of this sort of progressive-vs.-Clintonite fight that prefab narrative was meant to cover and to obscure--Lipinski is a labor-backed candidate with backwards social views, while Newman's commitment to progressive policies has yet to be demonstrated.
[5] It's worth noting that while progressives holding to any sort of minimal standards for an elected official are treated by the narrative as engaged in entirely unreasonable purity politics, Clintonites exempt themselves from this when its their favored issues in question.
