It seems Elizabeth Warren wants to make President Trump’s job significantly easier should she be the Democrat nominee. He loves to make #TheSquad the face of the Democrat party. Warren just made this a far more direct connection.
In an announcement Monday, Senator Warren endorsed two primary challengers running against incumbent Democrats. Both of these challengers are supported by the Justice Democrats. This is the radical progressive group that gave us Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They are making good on threats to primary Representative Dan Lipinski D-IL3 and Representative Henry Cuellar D-TX28. Both are members of the Blue Dog Coalition whose members tend to be more supportive of 2A rights, less radical on abortion and more supportive of a free market economy. For example, Lipinski voted against the Affordable Care Act and opposes abortion. Historically, Cuellar has had a 93% rating with the NRA.
How this helps Republicans
This will be the second time Marie Newman has challenged Lipinski. She failed to defeat him in 2018 by a thin margin. This will be the first challenge for Cuellar who enjoys broad support within his district. My bet is some Republican voters will use the open primary system in Texas to ensure challenger Jessica Cisneros is not successful. An immigration and human rights attorney, her website only says that she will fight for working families. Because she is endorsed by the Justice Democrats, the reality of this is support for the same raft of socialist and identitarian polices endorsed by #The Squad.
Now Elizabeth Warren has clearly aligned herself with the same radical movement. While she certainly has some of the more radical proposals among the 2020 contenders, she was not explicitly tied to the Justice Democrats until her recent endorsements. Maybe she missed the memo, but on a national scale, the current crop of radicals have horrible approval ratings. For Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, their approval ratings were 22% and 9% respectively. Likewise the approval of socialism is exceptionally low. Only 18% approved of the term.
Warren has also endorsed two candidates from the even more radical Working Families Party in local races in Philadelphia. These moves may solidify her popularity with the far left base of the party. Perhaps they will even attract some current Bernie Sanders supporters. However, it is a risky move. She is handing the RNC and President Trump the perfect basis to designate her a radical and a socialist.
How this effects Democrats
Now Warren is also directly opposing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Headed by Representative Cheri Bustos D-IL17, the DCCC was trying to directly head off primary challengers from the radical left that surprised the party in 2018. A contractor rule was put in place that stated no contractor who worked on the primary campaign against a sitting Democrat could work with the DCCC in 2020. The Committee was looking to make gains where they did in 2018 by electing moderate Democrats in suburban districts. Now one of their party leaders is endorsing the candidates of the radical left. this is going to be difficult messaging to overcome. I imagine Speaker Pelosi and Representative Bustos are genuinely unhappy.
The media’s constant promotion and defense of #TheSquad and the endorsements made by Warren are a gift to Republicans. Americans are not broadly supportive of radical ideas. Yet the media and Warren are putting radical ideas at the forefront of the party message. Let’s hope the RNC and Republicans running for office know how to drive this point home.
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