Endangered Species

But Bernie Sanders held his ground. “You just can’t exclude people who disagree with us on one issue,” the Vermont socialist said in an interview. Democratic congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi sided with Sanders—with Pelosi going so far as to blame the party’s hardline stance on abortion for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss.

“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. “Everything was trumped, literally and figuratively by that.”

Despite the efforts of congressional Democratic leaders to send the message in 2017 that there’s room in the party for pro-lifers, some progressives hope to send the opposite message in 2018. In Illinois’s March 20 primary, activists are trying to purge incumbent congressman Dan Lipinski, one of the rare pro-life Democrats remaining in Congress.

“There are only three left,” Kristen Day of Democrats for Life says of the pro-life Democratic caucus in the House, whose membership is comprised of Lipinski, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, and Henry Cuellar of Texas. “The push for party purity on this issue is not going to help build a majority.”

Lipinski says his opponents want to create a “Tea Party of the left” and tells The Weekly Standard: “It’s ironic that we’re arguably in the worst position we’ve been in in terms of the number of elected officials across the country since Herbert Hoover. And there are those who want to narrow the tent.”

“When it comes to issues such as abortion, there is bias against people who are pro-life,” he says.

“I can understand NARAL going in because that’s what they do,” says Kristen Day, but many of “the people attacking Dan Lipinski are not supposed to be abortion-only organizations.” Groups like Democracy for America, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and MoveOn.org are backing Lipinski’s challenger Marie Newman. And so are New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Democratic members of the Illinois congressional delegation Luis Gutiérrez and Jan Schakowsky.

According to Roll Call, Lipinski “has voted with his party 87 percent of the time he’s been in Congress, compared to 92 percent for the average House Democrat.” His NRA rating is 7 percent. Lipinski is arguably the last liberal pro-life Democrat in the House—he voted for Obamacare in 2009 when it included a measure prohibiting taxpayer-funding of abortion known as the Stupak amendment, but Lipinski was the only Democrat to switch his vote to “no” on final passage of Obamacare in 2010 because the Stupak amendment wasn’t included in the bill. (Peterson and Cuellar voted against Obamacare both times.)

Bart Stupak, the Democratic congressman sponsoring the measure, caved in exchange for a meaningless executive order, and the 2010 election wiped out a number of pro-life Democrats, even those who had consistently voted against Obamacare. Redistricting helped diminish their numbers even more in 2012.

Lipinski’s seat will almost certainly stay in Democratic hands no matter who wins the primary—Clinton won the district by 15 points in 2016; Obama carried it by 13 points in 2012. But Kristen Day asks: “If the Democratic party is really serious, why are they going after a safe seat? Why are they spending money?”

Picking up a single vote is unlikely to be decisive on any particular issue, but the groups going after Lipinski hope to send a message—dissent will not be tolerated—that may be more important than winning the seat. “Even if you don’t defeat an individual member, you maybe make them think twice about some of the ways they deviate from party orthodoxy,” says Kyle Kondik, who follows congressional races at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The primary challenge may have already had an impact on [Lipinski’s] behavior given that he didn’t go to the March for Life.”

Asked why he decided not to speak at the annual pro-life march, Lipinski told me he made the decision after President Trump decided to address the marchers via video from the Rose Garden. “When I found out [President Trump] was going to be addressing the march, especially in light of the s—‌hole comment that had just come out, it really reinforced that I had no idea what the president may say. I didn’t want to put myself in the position of being up on the stage, going and speaking after him when I had no idea of what he was going to say.” Lipinski adds, “I didn’t want to do anything to distract from the march or to take anything away from the pro-life movement in any way.”

The Democratic party has moved so far left on the issue of abortion that what was once considered a moderately pro-choice position is now embraced only by self-described pro-life Democrats in Congress. When the partial-birth abortion ban passed the Senate 64-34 in 2003, it did so with the support of 17 Democrats, including supporters of Roe v. Wade like Pat Leahy, Joe Biden, and Tom Daschle. It passed the House with 218 Republican and 63 Democratic votes. When the House voted in 2017 to ban most abortions after the fifth month of pregnancy—when infants can feel pain and survive if born prematurely—it had the support of only three Democrats. And the bill has the support of just three Democrats in the Senate: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

In 2016, the Democratic party platform explicitly called, for the first time, for the repeal of the Hyde amendment, which would open the door to unlimited taxpayer funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients. Groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood are laying the groundwork to repeal the Hyde amendment—which has been on the books since 1977 and has decreased the number of abortions by hundreds of thousands over the years—the next time Democrats control Congress and the White House.

Despite increasing Democratic conformity on the issue, the Lipinski primary is still causing a rift in the party. When Congressman Kurt Schrader of Oregon, a member of the moderate and conservative Democrats’ Blue Dog coalition, was asked about Kirsten Gillibrand’s endorsement, he told McClatchy: “It’s bullshit. .  .  . She used to be a Blue Dog, and then miraculously turns around?” Gillibrand, the former moderate, appears likely to run for president as a staunch progressive.

It’s unclear how much trouble Lipinski may be in. A former professor at the University of Tennessee and Notre Dame, Lipinski was first elected in 2004, having taken over the seat from his father Bill Lipinski, who represented a suburban Chicago district in Congress for two decades. The last time Dan Lipinski faced a primary challenge was 2012, and he walked away with 87 percent of the vote.

But that 2012 primary was not serious, and liberal activists and national organizations appear to be motivated this year. “I have a poll that was just in the field, I’m waiting to hear back any day now,” Lipinski told me. “But I’m confident.” His opponent, the little-known Marie Newman, released a poll that showed her trailing Lipinski 49 percent to 18 percent. But once respondents heard her liberal attacks on Lipinski, the race was a dead heat with both candidates polling in the 30s.

Illinois has an open primary, which means that pro-life Republicans could vote for Lipinski on March 20, but they may be more inclined to cast a protest vote against incumbent Republican governor Bruce Rauner, who signed a bill allowing Medicaid funding of elective abortions. Rauner led his GOP challenger Jeanne Ives 65 percent to 21 percent in a January We Ask America poll.

A low-turnout congressional primary with little public polling is the kind of race that can catch people by surprise. If Lipinski is in danger, says UVA’s Kondik, “there’s probably going to be no indicator that he’s in trouble until there are results.” But win or lose, it’s safe to say that pro-life congressional Democrats are an endangered species and face the very real threat of extinction in the next decade.

John McCormack is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.