Facing down liberal critics, Rep. Cheri Bustos pledges to keep Democrats' tent big

By Mike DeBonis June 1 at 6:00 AM

PEORIA, Ill. — When Rep. Cheri Bustos canceled her appearance at a fundraiser to be held this month for one of the last antiabortion Democrats in Congress, many liberals cheered the move — and many more saw it as cementing a new Democratic litmus test.

Not so fast, Bustos says.

In her first interview addressing the controversy, the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said this week that she remains committed to keeping the party tent as open as possible and defended her efforts to protect Democratic incumbents, even those — such as Daniel Lipinski, a fellow House member from Illinois and the beneficiary of the fundraiser that Bustos skipped — in safe districts who have drawn opposition from the left.

“Everybody has to navigate their own district, and who am I to prescribe how anybody does that?” she said. “I just think, our core values as Democrats, we’re pretty much on the same page. We want to make sure that people have opportunities to do better.”

Five months into their House majority, however, Democrats have had trouble staying on the same page on policy and politics. Proposed expansions of government, such as Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal climate plan, have set liberal activists against the party leadership, and the DCCC’s defense of incumbents of all ideological stripes has similarly rankled the left.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/facing-down-liberal-critics-rep-cheri-bustos-pledges-to-keep-democrats-tent-big/2019/05/31/2381d8ea-83b5-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html