As the G.O.P. assault on women’s reproductive rights escalated in recent weeks, punctuated by the passage of anti-abortion laws in Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Alabama, Democratic Party leaders and lawmakers were quick to condemn the draconian legislation, and women’s reproductive rights were suddenly, at long last, at the center of the Democrats’ 2020 agenda.

But there was a large hole in this unified front: the Democratic establishment continues to back an anti-choice congressman against a pro-choice woman challenger in the primary for Illinois’s 3rd Congressional district. Daniel Lipinski, a staunchly pro-life 14-year incumbent in the House, will face his second challenge from Marie Newman, a pro-choice Democrat, who fell just 2.2 points short of victory in the 2018 cycle. But this time around, Lipinski will have another leg up thanks to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s new policy of not conducting business with vendors who support primary challenges against Democratic incumbents. And only one 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, has formally thrown her support behind Newman over Lipinski. (Since publication, Governor Jay Inslee also endorsed Newman.)

The primary race has focused interest on the contradictions of establishment Democratic Party politics, where incumbency can be a value in itself, as important as any policy position, or even more so. “What Dan Lipinski may want to believe personally is his right. Everyone has the right to their personal beliefs but when it comes the law and when it comes to public policy, he has to be for constitutional reproductive rights to affiliate, in my view, with what it means to be a Democrat,” Congressman Ro Khanna, the only House Democrat to back Newman in the 2020 cycle, told me. “You have the irony that the Democratic Party in Washington is blackballing consultants who seek to work on [a] female candidate’s race who is pro-choice against a man who doesn’t recognize reproductive rights and our party is saying that if you work for the woman who is pro-choice against a man who is anti-choice, we’re never going to do business with you. In what world does that make sense, just from a common sense perspective?”

The D.C.C.C. insists that the policy benefits the party, whatever turmoil it can inspire. “That policy is staying,” said a Democratic strategist allied with the D.C.C.C. “This is a membership organization and our priority is its membership and we believe that it is an imperative in 2020 that Democratic time, talent, and financial resources are focused on expanding the map into Republican-held parts of the country and defeating Republicans,” the Democratic strategist told me, noting that it is intended to protect all incumbents—progressives and moderates alike. “Our policy of standing with the caucus is not changing in any way, shape, or form and re-electing our incumbents is key to that effort; key to fortifying and expanding our majority and one specific event for an incumbent is not changing our policy to protect the caucus as a whole.”

The bad optics came into focus last week when, one day after Alabama legislators voted to ban abortions in nearly all cases, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that Democratic Congresswoman Cheri Bustos, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was to headline a fundraiser for Lipinski in Chicago at the beginning of next month. Facing a fusillade of criticism, on Wednesday night, the D.C.C.C. announced that Bustos would no longer attend the Lipinski fundraiser. “[Lipinski] asked me to attend a fundraiser for him several months ago, and I agreed to do so, but I’ve determined that I must cancel my participation in this event,” Bustos wrote in a statement. “I’m proud to have a 100 percent pro-choice voting record and I’m deeply alarmed by the rapidly escalating attacks on women’s access to reproductive care in several states.”