* Oof…

* From Mallory Quigley at the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List…

Hi Rich,

As you know it is Election Day in IL-03. I just got back from the district where for the past 4 days a crew of 70+ college student volunteers and Susan B. Anthony List staff have been visiting the homes of Democratic primary voters urging them to get out and vote for pro-life Rep. Dan Lipinski.

Our team visited more 26,489 homes! Below is a short video of why we got involved and what it was like this weekend

The video is here.

* BuzzFeed asks the wrong question…

Should the Democratic Party accept and support anti-abortion candidates?

The party apparatus is supporting Lipinski at both the national and local levels. Go to the machine’s 23rd Ward and these are the kinds of lawns you’ll see…

It’s not about the party’s acceptance and support, it’s about the people who actually vote.

* Here are the campaigns’ final pitches to the media…

“I’m just a true-blue Democrat, and he’s a far-right radical Republican,” Newman said in an interview on Monday at her headquarters, citing Lipinski’s opposition to abortion, his positions on gay rights, and his 2010 vote against the Democrats’ signature Affordable Care Act health law. […]

“Marie Newman is a ‘Tea Party of the Left’ extremist who … wants to make the Democratic Party smaller and less inclusive,” the Lipinski campaign said in a prepared statement

* 538 takes a look at the tea party thing…

If, as this data suggests, the only prerequisite for being called a tea partier is to attack your Republican opponent from the right, then, sure, Newman is waging the mirror image of a tea party challenge. But that’s a fairly lazy conclusion; it lumps together all the primary challenges listed above when the data shows there are clear differences between them. […]

If you consider the district’s partisanship, then maybe Newman’s campaign is more like Richard Mourdock’s Republican primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana’s 2012 U.S. Senate race: According to our partisan lean calculations, Indiana was as Republican then as the Illinois 3rd is Democratic now. Lugar was indeed moderate enough (a .304 DW-Nominate score) that a primary challenge made some sense on its own, but Mourdock infamously ended up losing that general election.

All things considered, it’s debatable whether Newman’s challenge of Lipinski is within reason, according to these ideological scores, or out of line. Lipinski is indeed a Democratic nonconformist who can’t reliably be counted on to vote against the Trump agenda — but he’s not wildly out of sync with his district either. The voters will have to decide how much heterodoxy they can tolerate on Tuesday.

The difference between Indiana’s election and this one is the Republican candidate is a bona fide Nazi…

* This is probably right, but the reasoning will be wrong…

Your cable news analysts will be pulling apart the returns from the 3rd to see if they signal a desire from voters for a more centrist Democrat — Lipinski, who has the same sort of appeal as centrist Democrat Conor Lamb, who won last week’s special congressional election in Pennsylvania — or a far more left-wing Democrat — Newman, who will excite the party’s base voters and donors.

The outcome is likely to have national implications for the sorts of candidates the party recruits in the coming months.

Conor Lamb was appealing because he promised to take a seat away from the Republicans, so the more liberal Dem voters looked the other way on some stuff for partisan reasons. It happens a lot. The 3rd is a solidly Democratic district. Liberals want it. We’ll see if they can take it.

* Also…

Back in 2004, a Democrat from a safe district voting with the president as often as Lipinski might have been tolerated. Gallup found that moderate and conservative Democrats made up more than 60% of all Democrats in 2004. Liberals made up less than 35%.

Today, it’s an entirely different ball game. Liberal Democrats, at 50%, are a greater force than the combined 48% of moderate and conservative Democrats.

We can see the change in the Democratic electorate on the specific issue of abortion, as well. According to a Quinnipiac University survey in December 2004, 67% of self-identified Democrats said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Still, a significant minority, 27%, said it should be illegal most or all of the time.

* And…

“It’s not about the direction of the party—it’s about the direction of the district,” Joe Trippi, the strategist who helped lead Jones to victory in Alabama, told Newsweek on Monday. “You often have incumbents who’ve been standing in the same place for a decade or more and don’t realize the electorate and the district are changing. That’s creating a lot of vulnerability for incumbents in both parties.”

* One more…

And while Pelosi would take heat from outside for backing a losing candidate against a progressive challenger, the inside game is different. Pelosi’s loyalty to her own members remains a key reason that she remains in control of her caucus.

*** UPDATE *** NBC National Political Correspondent…

Anti-abortion Democrats in the House:

1978: 125
1996: 70
2007: 32
Now: 3 (will fall to 2 if Dan Lipinski loses tonight)

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) March 20, 2018

3 of 193 (1.6%) of House Dems are now anti-abortion, while according to Pew 22% of Democratic voters are: pic.twitter.com/I79b68oMyu

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) March 20, 2018

* Related…

* Progressives look to continue gains on Illinois primary day

* In Illinois Primaries, Abortion Is the Big Issue

* 2018 Primary: 6 Congressional Districts to Watch