THE ANGRIEST DEMOCRAT IN THE ROOM. JB Pritzker, the billionaire hotel heir who has served as governor of Illinois since 2019, wants to be president. Like many Democrats, Pritzker believes his party has not been tough enough in opposing President Donald Trump. Now, he is urging Democrats to take to the streets to engage in mass protests, mobilization, and disruption so that Republicans “never know a moment of peace.” It is not clear how far Pritzker wants Democrats to go in their disruptive activism, but when you vow that your adversary will “never know a moment of peace,” you probably mean just that, whatever ugly measures it might entail.
Pritzker made the vow Sunday night in a speech to Democrats in New Hampshire. A key part of his address was to push back against members of his own party who say Democrats have gone too far left and should moderate their positions to reconnect with more voters.
First, Pritzker touted some of his accomplishments in Illinois: “We enshrined reproductive rights into law,” he said. “We legalized cannabis. We protected labor rights. We joined the U.S. Climate Alliance.” Abortion, marijuana, minimum wage, and climate — maybe that’s not a comprehensive platform, but it’s what Pritzker highlighted. And then he declared: “We may have to fix our messaging and our strategy, but our values are exactly where they ought to be — and we will never join so many Republicans in the special place in hell reserved for quislings and cowards.”
It is common for a party, following a painful defeat, to have a debate about whether its beliefs and policies were the problem or whether party leaders simply failed to communicate to voters how wonderful they were. The people who prefer the messaging explanation often prevail because their solution, more and better spin, doesn’t require any introspection. If a Democratic leader today tells voters that the party just needs to tweak its messaging and strategy, he is also telling them that they don’t have to reexamine their beliefs on the border, and woke, and crime, and other issues on which the party embraces minority views.
So, Pritzker was telling the New Hampshire crowd: You don’t have to change a thing — just fight, fight, fight. Some Democrats really like that.
Pritzker focused on the stories of three Americans he admires for fighting back against the Trump administration. “In this fragile moment, the direction of this nation will turn on who we choose to listen to,” he said, “whose stories we decide to tell about what is happening, who we elevate and who we ignore.” He discussed Andi Smith, an Edwardsville, Illinois, woman who formed a Trump protest group; Gavin Carpenter, a Yosemite National Park employee who supplied an American flag displayed upside down as a protest against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency; and Lucy Welch, an employee of the Sugarbush ski resort in Vermont who denounced Vice President JD Vance before a visit there in which protests forced Vance and his family to relocate.
“These three Americans acted on an instinct that we teach our children as one of their first lessons in life,” Pritzker said. “When you see a danger, you yell for help at the top of your lungs. We Democrats, we shouldn’t be comfortable ignoring those cries for help — the fact that so many are speaks to the real reason we lost last November.”
That was another reference to the debate Democrats are having about the 2024 loss. Don’t listen to those people who won’t hang the flag upside down or hector Vance out of a hotel, Pritzker told the crowd in New Hampshire. Listen to the people who want to fight. “Listen, I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now,” Pritzker continued. “But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.” With that, the audience burst into applause, and one man in the audience yelled, “Yes!”
Pritzker went on: “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact — because we have no alternative but to do just that — we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”
If you get the sense that Pritzker likes to condemn people to everlasting punishment — to send them to that “special place in hell reserved for quislings and cowards” or to the Museum of Tyrants and Traitors — you’re right. And if you get the sense that his talk will eventually end up where such talk always does, by likening Donald Trump and his supporters to Adolf Hitler and Nazis, well, Pritzker does that, too. He did not mention Nazis in his New Hampshire speech, but in a February speech to the Illinois state legislature, he denounced the Trump administration and added, “If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”
Later, in a television interview, Pritzker said of the Nazi reference, “I’m not suggesting that’s exactly where we’re going.” But of course, that was exactly what he was suggesting.
The 2028 Democratic race will be in the news from now until a nominee is chosen. Lately, we’ve heard a lot about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and the big crowds she and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have attracted in their private-jet “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. But don’t forget JB Pritzker, who can match Ocasio-Cortez radical idea for radical idea, who has a few billion dollars in personal fortune to run as long as he likes, and who can make sure Republicans never know a moment of peace.