by Frank Holmes, reporter
There’s a civil war brewing in the Democratic Party between the establishment and far-left progressives. While the presidential insurgency of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-V.T., is losing — badly — to former Vice President Joe Biden, democratic socialists’ efforts to purge the House, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., just claimed their first scalp.
An AOC-backed leftist Democrat narrowly toppled eight-term Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois in a primary on Tuesday.
Lipinski, who’s served the district since 2005, has been a top target of national leftists, because he’s one of a handful of pro-life Democrats. He became a national leader to defund Planned Parenthood, especially after undercover videos showed abortion officials discussing the sale of body parts from aborted babies.
Lipinski also violated left-wing orthodoxy by voting against Obamacare (“It was not a good bill,” he said) and supporting the Defense of Marriage Act.
The blue-collar Democrat won his Chicago district by focusing on kitchen table issues like jobs and constituent service.
But Newman, a former advertising executive, ran up a formidable lead in the district’s wealthier suburbs.
Newman led by more than 2,200 votes, or about 2.5 percent, on Wednesday, when Lipinski conceded.
After looking at the returns, Lipinski told his supporters he realized “I will not prevail.”
Praise showered in on the Newman campaign from left-wingers nationwide, including Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted “congratulations” for Newman’s “incredible victory!”
One bright spot: despite powerful attempts in DC to protect an anti-LGBT+, anti-choice Dem in a safe blue seat, powerful progressive @Marie4Congress won the #IL03 primary!
Congratulations, Marie. You & every organizer worked so hard to make this happen.
Thank you #IL03 voters! pic.twitter.com/xbwSiFAim1
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2020
But AOC did a lot more than tweet from the sidelines. She’s been bucking to topple Lipinski for years.
The super PAC that put AOC into office, Justice Democrats, handpicked Newman to oust Lipinski two years ago.
Newman is a leftist ideologue who backs the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, which would force 170 million people off their private health insurance plans.
Newman narrowly lost in 2018, but she came close enough that it encouraged the party’s progressive wing to throw all its support behind her in 2020.
This time, Newman outraised Lipinski by about half-a-million dollars — which doesn’t include the outside “dark money” left-wing activist groups poured into the district race.
Leftists from around the nation spent nearly as much to defeat Lipinski as Newman did.
The pro-abortion lobby—including EMILY’s List, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood—spent $1.5 million on the race, compared to Newman’s $1.7 million.
“She’s got significantly more independent-expenditure resources than she had last time, and we have significantly less,” said one of Lipinski’s media hands, Dave Heller.
The Left has had its eye on Lipinski for a long, long time—but the prominence of democratic socialists has emboldened them to purge the party of its dwindling number of centrists.
AOC’s wing of the party said there’s no room for pro-life Democrats in the party. Supporting the idea that all Americans—and illegal aliens—have the right to abortion at taxpayers’ expense for all nine months of pregnancy is “an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat,” Sanders has said.
But less than four out of 10 Democrats back abortion “under any circumstances,” like Sanders, AOC, and Newman.
“The Democratic Party is working overtime to kick out pro-life Democrats” said pro-life Susan B. Anthony List spokeswoman Mallory Quigley, “and it will be to their own political peril.”
But for Lipinski, it was never about politics. “I could never give up protecting the most vulnerable human beings in the world simply to win an election,” he said.
Progressives could use a shot in the arm after they lost a bid earlier this year to unseat pro-life Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas.
Justice Democrats-backed candidates are challenging four other Democrat House incumbents in Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, and Ohio.
She hasn’t succeeded in her hopes to become the queenmaker from Queens. But she has still pulled Congress leftward.
Her proposal to send $1,000 checks to every American has the support of Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton.
And her own future has never looked brighter. With Sanders’ campaign hopes sagging, Cortez addressed questions about whether she’ll run for president in 2028—and she did not exactly rule it out.
But Cortez has backed off on the presidential primary, signaling that she’ll support Joe Biden if he clinches the party’s nomination.
AOC is sending a loud and clear message: She plans to keep building her own center of power, and moving the Democratic Party toward socialism, no matter who’s at the top of the ticket. And one day, it will be her.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”