I think that the editors of the Wall Street Journal are casting with far too wide a net in these remarks:
Another sign of the age: Chicagoland Congressman Dan Lipinski, one of the Democratic Party’s final antiabortion holdouts, lost a primary election Tuesday by two points, or about 2,500 votes. The traditional working-class Democrats who once chose Mr. Lipinski—and his father before him—used to be a keystone in the party’s base.
But the left today tolerates no dissent on abortion. National progressives, including AOC and Bernie Sanders, piled in to defeat Mr. Lipinski. Officially, the Democratic Party’s apparatus supports its incumbents, but few bigwigs have gone out of their way to help Mr. Lipinski. Two years ago his fellow Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez called him “a dinosaur†and a holdover from the party of 1980, who should be “a relic in some museum.â€
The problem with drawing such sweeping conclusions is that in Illinois at least primary election turnout fell just short of a record-breaking low—around 25%. That might be true of the Democratic Party or it might not. What we can conclude is that pro-abortion activists were more highly motivated to brave COVID-19 and go out in vote than the white ethnic working class voters that formed Dan Lipinski’s base.
I wrote at least one post opposing Dan Lipinski more than 15 years ago when he first took office on grounds of nepotism. I have no particular fondness for him even now. I just think you should avoid drawing any conclusions about Democrats in Chicago based on a low showing in one Congressional district.
It might also be that the district gerrymandered for Lipinski almost ten years ago has changed over time. The question is whether the district has changed enough that a Republican can win it now. This was the district that a neo-NAZI won the Republican primary two years go because the party was indifferent. The Republican winner this year seems to be a conventional Republican, who was counting on Lipinski to lose in order to be competitive, so we’ll see.
The fact that the primary turnout is low is irrelevant. The primary filters the candidates, and sets the terms of the general election. The people who turn out determine the platform of the party, and the issues that the general election will turn on. DeBlasio got maybe 10% of the Democrats in NYC to vote for him. Yet, he is Mayor, and that 10% has set policy in NYC.
People who don’t vote literally do not exist. They are merely the food of those who do.