In Tuesday’s Illi­nois pri­maries, the Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Machine was chal­lenged on mul­ti­ple fronts. And if the results are a sign of things to come, pro­gres­sive forces in Chica­go could be on the ascent.

Winning outright is always the goal in a political race, but it isn’t special pleading to note that in primaries, especially, a movement wins just by being in the race and shaping the debate.

The 3rd con­gres­sion­al dis­trict pri­ma­ry in Illi­nois cap­tured much about the past two years of our nation­al pol­i­tics. On the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side, an estab­lish­ment, cen­trist Demo­c­rat faced a pro­gres­sive chal­lenger to his left. On the Repub­li­can side, the only can­di­date in the race was a white suprema­cist and Holo­caust denier.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic race between incum­bent Dan Lip­in­s­ki and insur­gent Marie New­man in Chicago’s South West Side and sur­round­ing sub­urbs end­ed in near­ly a draw, with Lip­in­s­ki cling­ing to a nar­row lead. At the New­man elec­tion night par­ty on Tues­day, spokes­peo­ple for the var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions that had mobi­lized vol­un­teers for the pro­gres­sive chal­lenger gave peri­od­ic pep talks as the night dragged on and precinct report­ing slowed to a crawl. With the results stalled in the low 90s of precincts report­ing, and Lip­in­s­ki main­tain­ing a lead of about two per­cent­age points, the Human Rights Cam­paign (HRC)’s nation­al field direc­tor, Mar­ty Rouse, took the stage to announce that ​“it’s time for Dan Lip­in­s­ki to go” and ​“we are going to stay here until every vote is count­ed.” New­man said she wasn’t ready to con­cede because she ​“would like Mr. Lip­in­s­ki to have a very painful evening.”

The last of the votes were still being count­ed Wednes­day morn­ing, with Lip­in­s­ki hold­ing on to a two-point lead. The nar­row loss for New­man comes as a dis­ap­point­ment for pro­gres­sives who were hop­ing to oust a cen­trist Demo­c­rat in one of the most high­est-pro­file House races in the nation. Over the past few weeks, mul­ti­ple media out­lets pub­lished var­i­ous ​“Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty civ­il war” arti­cles, focus­ing on the Lip­in­s­ki-New­man race. A New­man win would have sent a bold mes­sage about the pro­gres­sive movement’s elec­toral mus­cle. In addi­tion to NAR­AL and HRC, New­man had the endorse­ment and sup­port of orga­ni­za­tions such as the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, Our Rev­o­lu­tion and Jus­tice Democ­rats — key play­ers in the emerg­ing pro­gres­sive infra­struc­ture around elec­toral politics.

Pro­gres­sives, in oth­er words, were all in on this one. So, what’s the take­away from a loss in the 3rd, and from the results in Illi­nois more broadly?

Win­ning out­right is always the goal in a polit­i­cal race, but it isn’t spe­cial plead­ing to note that in pri­maries, espe­cial­ly, a move­ment wins just by being in the race and shap­ing the debate. That is what made the Tea Par­ty a pow­er­ful force on the Right in the ear­ly 2010s. It is remem­bered main­ly for being anti-tax and anti big-gov­ern­ment, but, in truth, its pow­er was as much in its anti-immi­gra­tion stances and in its use of pri­maries to force incum­bent Repub­li­cans to reject ​“amnesty” for undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants. Rel­a­tive­ly few Repub­li­cans got elect­ed by pri­or­i­tiz­ing an anti-immi­grant agen­da. But the work done by the Tea Par­ty in the pri­maries — by field­ing can­di­dates, or just threat­en­ing to — reshaped the debate and made immi­gra­tion, along with tax cuts, the heart of the Repub­li­can plat­form under Don­ald Trump.

The Left has its own game-chang­ing issue in sin­gle-pay­er health­care. Marie New­man ran on a strong com­mit­ment to push Medicare-for-all leg­is­la­tion, along with a $15 min­i­mum wage, immi­grant pro­tec­tions and abor­tion rights. Lip­in­s­ki was vul­ner­a­ble on mul­ti­ple fronts — he’s anti-repro­duc­tive choice and anti-LGBT rights, for exam­ple — so his vote in 2010 against the Afford­able Care Act was just one of many ways he proved how pro­found­ly out of step he is with where the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is headed.

At her cam­paign event on Tues­day night, New­man acknowl­edged how her plat­form in the race put pres­sure on Lip­in­s­ki to move in a more pro­gres­sive direc­tion: ​“We have moved him on immi­gra­tion, we have moved him on health­care, I scared the crap out of him on $12 ver­sus $15.”

Lip­in­s­ki, a sev­en-term incum­bent and Machine Demo­c­rat, came as close to los­ing as he has in his polit­i­cal career, which began in 2004, when he inher­it­ed the seat from his father William, an ally of the old Chica­go May­or Richard J. Daley, who was first elect­ed to Con­gress in 1982. After near­ly being tak­en out by New­man, a polit­i­cal new­com­er, Lipinski’s chances of hold­ing on to the seat in 2020 are slim. As The Inter­cept​’s Ryan Grim point­ed out: ​“If Lip­in­s­ki pulls this out, he imme­di­ate­ly becomes a lame duck, since his seat would be Newman’s for the tak­ing in a pres­i­den­tial cycle. And the com­po­si­tion of the 2021 Demo­c­ra­t­ic class mat­ters much more for pol­i­cy than the 2019 one.”

So if New­man decides to chal­lenge Lip­in­s­ki again in two years, she would almost assured­ly have a bet­ter shot, espe­cial­ly in a year that Don­ald Trump will most like­ly sit at the top of the bal­lot. And by run­ning as a strong pro­gres­sive, she helped shift the dynam­ics of the race, which in turn could inspire oth­er left chal­lengers to do the same in the future.

The case of Mike Quigley in the 5th Dis­trict may be more typ­i­cal of the com­ing bat­tles with­in the par­ty. A five-term incum­bent, Quigley’s record is right in the mid­dle of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pack. Unlike Lip­in­s­ki, he has a sol­id record on repro­duc­tive and LGBT rights. But his record on civ­il rights and leg­is­la­tion that favors cor­po­rate inter­ests earns him a pro­gres­sive score of D, over­all, from the vote-track­ing web­site Pro­gres­sive Punch. Quigley was pri­maried from the left by Sameena Mustafa, a pro­gres­sive endorsed by the Jus­tice Democ­rats, who made Quigley’s lack of sup­port for Medicare for all cen­tral to her campaign.

Mustafa got about 24 per­cent of the vote, to Quigley’s 63 per­cent, in a four-way race. Is that enough of a chal­lenge to move Quigley to the left on health­care? We’ll find out soon enough. But we know, from the recent exam­ple of the Tea Par­ty, that hav­ing can­di­dates in the race like Mustafa, who pri­or­i­tize a gal­va­niz­ing issue like sin­gle-pay­er health­care, does move the nee­dle with­in the par­ty — even when they lose.

Anoth­er take­away from Tuesday’s results is that, despite the sting of Newman’s loss, the move­ment is build­ing actu­al elec­tion-win­ning pow­er that has impli­ca­tions for 2020 and beyond. Four can­di­dates endorsed by pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tion Unit­ed Work­ing Fam­i­lies (UWF), the Illi­nois part­ner of the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty, won their races, includ­ing Delia Ramirez in Illi­nois’ 4th house dis­trict, Bran­don John­son, a Chica­go Teach­ers Union mem­ber, in the Cook Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Dis­trict 1 race, Alma Anaya in the Cook Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Dis­trict 7 race and Aaron Ortiz, a 26-year-old chal­lenger who took out state Rep. Dan Burke, the Chica­go Machine’s can­di­date in the House 1st Dis­trict race on Chicago’s South West side.

Respond­ing to the vic­to­ries, UWF Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Emma Tai said: ​“The Unit­ed Work­ing slate was com­prised of young peo­ple of col­or who were first-time can­di­dates. They took on big-mon­ey inter­ests and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic machine and they won. We stand ready to take on the cor­po­rate Democ­rats who have let incar­cer­a­tion, vio­lence, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and unem­ploy­ment rav­age our com­mu­ni­ties. And tonight’s results show that the vot­ers are with us.”

And then there is the case of the Cook Coun­ty Assessor’s race, which pit­ted long­time incum­bent Joseph Berrios against pro­gres­sive chal­lenger and polit­i­cal new­com­er Fritz Kaegi.

It’s the kind of race that typ­i­cal­ly flies under the radar, but it attract­ed the media spot­light in recent weeks after the release of a study that found that the Cook Coun­ty Assessor’s office, under Berrios, had sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly under­val­ued expen­sive homes and over­val­ued more mod­est homes. Pro-Pub­li­ca not­ed that the errors ​“amount to a stag­ger­ing trans­fer of wealth” — total­ing about $2.2 bil­lion, from 2011 to 2015 — ​“that ben­e­fit­ed Chicago’s most afflu­ent home­own­ers at the expense of peo­ple who own low­er-priced homes.”

The sto­ry was about more than just the way the asses­sor spiked inequal­i­ties in Cook Coun­ty. It was a text­book exam­ple of old-school, Chica­go-style cor­rup­tion, specif­i­cal­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty cor­rup­tion, since peo­ple who want to con­test their home val­u­a­tion are steered to lawyers who are often, in turn, big donors to the very Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty machin­ery respon­si­ble for the valuations.

Kae­gi, who had the endorse­ment of Our Rev­o­lu­tion, beat Berrios by about 11 points, 45 to 34 per­cent. It’s one small vic­to­ry for much-need­ed house clean­ing with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. And — hope­ful­ly — a sign of much more to come.