Cheri Bustos takes on the new left; The DCCC chairwoman is standing firm against a progressive backlash.

By Heather Caygle & Laura Barron-Lopez @ Politico.com, 04/04/2019 05:03 AM EDT

Cheri Bustos isn’t afraid of the insurgent left. The chairwoman of House Democrats’ campaign arm has found herself in a very messy — and public — spat with progressives over the past week and a half.

But the Midwestern moderate is refusing to budge, despite drawing ire from prominent progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has encouraged her millions of social media followers to halt donations to the campaign committee in retaliation.

“I’m pretty transparent, I don’t try to do things behind people’s back, I don’t try to mislead,” Bustos said in a brief interview Wednesday, when asked about the intraparty conflict.

At issue is a new Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee policy that prohibits Democratic consultants and vendors from working for a primary challenger to a sitting incumbent if they want the lucrative business of the DCCC.

That stance was considered an unwritten rule for the party, but Bustos decided to codify it at a time when the prospect of left-wing primary challenges looms large among House Democrats.

Despite the outcry from some progressives, many Democrats have rallied behind Bustos — approaching her on the floor and privately commending her for being willing to confront the left wing of the caucus when others have cowered, fearful of becoming the Twitter target du jour [....]

Obama: I worry progressives may undercut Democratic allies

By Tal Axelrod @ TheHill.com, April 6

Former President Obama expressed concern about the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, saying he feared it could end up undercutting allies. 

Speaking at a town hall event on Saturday for the Obama Foundation in Berlin, the former president spoke about the need for compromise in politics, citing the Affordable Care Act as something that he said signified progress even though it did not achieve all of his aspirations for U.S. health care. 

"One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States —maybe it’s true here as well — is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, 'Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be,' and then we start sometimes creating what’s called a 'circular firing squad,' where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues. And when that happens, typically the overall effort and movement weakens," he said. 

"So I think whether you are speaking as a citizen or as a political leader or as an organizer … you have to recognize that the way we structure democracy requires you to take into account people who don’t agree with you, and that by definition means you’re not going to get 100 percent of what you want," he added {....]