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MAY 24, 2022
Meyerson on TAP
Who's for Whom in Today's Texas Runoff?
Jessica Cisneros's backers don't only come from the left.
In a good deal of the coverage of today's South Texas Democratic
primary runoff between incumbent Henry Cuellar and challenger Jessica
Cisneros, Cuellar is referred to as a centrist and Cisneros as a
progressive.
That's half right: Cisneros is indeed a progressive, but Cuellar is
well to the right of any other Democratic member of the House. He's
best known for being the only House Democrat to have voted against a
bill establishing (or re-establishing) a woman's right to choose, but
that's hardly the only time he's gone over, solo, to the Republican
side. He is also the only House Democrat to have voted against the PRO
Act, which would stiffen the penalties on employers who violate the
National Labor Relations Act, characteristically by illegally firing
workers engaged in efforts to unionize their workplace.
That begins to explain one of the defining features of this contest:
Cisneros's list of endorsers extends well beyond the usual progressive
suspects. To be sure, it includes Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC,
Ayanna Pressley, and Katie Porter, not to mention the Working Families
Party, Progressive Democrats of America, and Justice Democrats. But it
also includes such mainstream Democratic groups as the Texas AFL-CIO,
the Service Employees International Union, the Communications Workers of
America, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Indivisible, the League of
Conservation Voters, UNITE HERE, J Street, NARAL, the United
Steelworkers, and the United Farm Workers. In other words, Cisneros is
backed by virtually every constituency group that consistently turns out
volunteers for Democratic candidates. Or, if you prefer, a
representative sample of the entire Democratic base. For his part,
Cuellar can claim the backing of no Democratic organization that has
members, though he has benefited from the independent campaigns of
center-right big-money PACs.
In fact, one reason (among many) today's race is notable is that it
pits the Democratic House leadership-Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn, and
Jeffries, all of whom have backed Cuellar in a knee-jerk gesture of
incumbent defense, notwithstanding his opposition to core Democratic
principles-against the panoply of groups these same leaders count upon
to propel their party to victory come election season.
In essence, then, today's contest pits the Democratic leadership
against the Democratic Party, or at least against the known Democratic
universe. It also pits them against their own beliefs. On
**Morning Joe** today, Speaker Pelosi spoke about the need to enshrine
abortion rights into law-just 48 hours after she'd taped a robocall
for Cuellar.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that "the test of a first-rate
intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the
same time, and still retain the ability to function." By that standard,
in this dubious context, Pelosi must be some kind of genius.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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