A couple off days ago, a fine progressive candidate for Congress was making her pitch as to why Blue America should endorse her and mentioned, proudly, that she had been endorsed by EMILY’s List. I couldn’t resist asking her to read these posts that delve into the heart and soul of EMILY’s List . We don’t hold it against anyone because they’re endorsed by EMILY’s List-- after all, they don’t force candidates to take any abhorrent policy pledges the way the New Dems do-- but an endorsement from EMILY’s List isn’t a plus either. Sam with the so-called End Citizens United PAC , which has nothing to die with ending Citizens United, only draining grassroots contributions towards DCCC and DSCC candidates. Nor do we hold it against candidates who accept the endorsement of the DCCC, although, candidates who do so in the midst of a primary, are doing something fucked up and problematic and ought to not join the DC corruption even before they’re elected. Now, No Labels, fits in as another Blue Dogs or New Dems and an endorsement from that group, would make it impossible for Blue America to raise money for a candidate.

We first became aware of their electoral work in 2016 when they attacked progressive rivals Dena Grayson and Susannah Randolph in Orlando on behalf of conservative NRA-ally Darren Soto.

Friday, writing for, Zaid Jilani and Ryan Grim, went a long way towards explaining why, noting how they had backed Lipinski because progressive challenger, Marie Newman, is a Bernie supporter . And they found the proof.

Noting that Lipinksi is among “the most conservative Democrats in the House, with his opposition to legal abortion and hostility toward marriage equality and immigration rights,” he had gained a lot of valuable ($1 million worth of) support from No Labels, a group largely financed by a handful of wealthy conservatives-- “Jerry Reinsdorf, the chair of the Chicago White Sox and Bulls, and a longtime friend of Lipinski’s father; Daniel Tierney of Wicklow Capital; Bud Selig, the former Major League Baseball Commissioner; and New Yorker Michael Sonnenfeldt of TIGER 21.” This is one of the false, ugly, distorted attack ads that No Labels, led by right-wing troll Nancy Jacobson, one of the most vile and destructive political operatives in Washington, blanketed the district with in the weeks before the election on behalf of Lipinski:

By spending so heavily to back the anti-LGBT Lipinski, No Labels crossed the line with some Democrats who were otherwise inclined to support the group, according to emails between the group’s founder and CEO Nancy Jacobson and two separate members of the group’s email distribution list. The list members wrote in their objections to Jacobson, who explained her rationale in exchanges that were subsequently obtained by The Intercept. (Asked to comment on one of the email exchanges, Jacobson told The Intercept, “This was a private email exchange with someone who is not a no labels supporter/backer-- fortunately there are tens of millions of people across this country who are and understand the importance of our work.” A spokesperson for No Labels declined to comment on the rest of the exchanges reported on for this story.)





“Nancy,” wrote one critic to Jacobson, “I have admired what you were trying to do with NoLabels, but I think you made a big mistake in supporting Dan Lipinski. Either you don’t fully appreciate how bad Dan is or you have decided to compromise too many Democratic values in the interest of compromise. I am fiscally responsible and socially liberal but I refuse to compromise on civil rights.”





A second No Labels list member wrote to Jacobson with a similar criticism. “Rather than pushing the Democratic party to appeal to a larger slice of America, you are in essence trying to create your own political party that includes people who don’t support [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that shielded 800,000 immigrants from deportation], don’t support [the Affordable Care Act], don’t support a woman’s right to choose and don’t value LGBTQ rights,” the No Labels critic wrote to Jacobson. “One would wonder is there any issue too offensive that you would not welcome someone in your big tent? Would you welcome Jeanne Ives to your tent? What boundary do you draw that says someone is not a ‘problem solver’?” (Ives nearly won the GOP nomination for the 2018 Illinois governor’s race on a platform of extreme opposition to legal abortion.)





Jacobson replied with her reasoning for the group’s intervention, explaining that part of the opposition to Newman was related to her endorsement by Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont. “I see a whole new crop of Democratic challengers-- like Marie Newman-- who see Bernie-- WHO IS NOT EVEN A DEMOCRAT-- as a model worthy of emulation,” Jacobson wrote, all-caps in the original, denigrating Sanders for not labeling himself a Democrat. “But I don’t think we need more people in Congress on either side who rile up their bases and then actually achieve nothing.”





…While the primary showed No Labels’s ability to raise funds, however, the scathing criticisms revealed that there was a cost to be paid for stepping on some Democrats’ third rails-- and that the arguments the group uses to gloss over its candidates’ anti-LGBT and anti-choice views might not pass muster with even centrist liberals.





In her emails, Jacobson argued that Lipinski’s “private beliefs” on social issues should be set aside in pursuit of a more important consensus around opposition to Sanders on the one side and the tea party on the other:

I am very saddened that you feel this way about No Labels’ work in this race. I understand and respect your passion on LGBT issues. And I don’t happen to have the same view as Rep. Lipinski on LGBT or other social issues. But I don’t believe the greatest threat facing America is Dan Lipinski’s private beliefs on social issues-- even if you or I might find those issues very important. I believe the greatest threat to our country is the growing intolerance in each of our parties, and the belief that our political opponents are not just wrong, but evil and treasonous. This is the brand of politics being espoused by Dan Lipinski’s opponent, Marie Newman, who was just endorsed by Bernie Sanders. I know people on the left see Bernie as a hero. But what I see is someone who has been in the House and Senate for almost 30 years and has almost no legislative record whatsoever because he has no interest at all in doing the hard work of governing.

(Between 1995 and 2007, when House Republicans controlled Congress, then-congressional representative Sanders passed more roll call amendments than any other member of Congress.)





Jacobson said she worried that a Lipinski loss could set off a domino effect that could lead to other incumbents being knocked out as well. “If Dan Lipinski loses, I am certain it will embolden the far left to try to knock out every last moderate and independent thinking Democrat left in Congress,” she wrote. “They are in effect, trying to do what the Tea Party has done to the Republicans over several elections. I think this would be a disaster.”





As former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau pointed out on Twitter, the incumbent congressional representative’s right-wing positions are not necessarily “far left,” but rather at odds with the values cherished by the modern-day Democratic Party, and he champions them in a solidly Democratic district:













Jacobson, though, sees politics through a very different lens. A creature of the centrist upsurge within the Democratic Party in the 1980s and 1990s, she was introduced by former Senator and Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh to her now-husband, Democratic pollster Mark Penn, at a Democratic Leadership Council event. The DLC effectively acted as a counterweight to the progressive wing of the party, which centrists blamed for losses in the 1980s.





In response to the critic who argued that the Democratic Party should “appeal to a larger slice of America,” Jacobson reached back 30 years to make the case for her more conservative political approach. “Those of us that launched Bill Clintons first campaign will have to eventually find another big tent dem to ultimately save the party like we did in the early 90’s,” she wrote.













But dialogue, apparently, can only go so far. Jacobson solved her own problem with her disgruntled interlocutors by booting them from the No Labels email list. “The center must survive and to do so it needs a big tent,” she wrote to one. “It must be time to remove you from our list as we must diverge at this point.”