07-05-2025
J.B. Pritzker Is Showing Democrats How To Stand Up to Trump
In the summer of 2003, a relatively unknown Democratic governor from Vermont named Howard Dean electrified rally goers around the country with a simple message: The George W. Bush administration should be resisted rather than accommodated. He blasted Democrats who had rolled over for the disastrous and unprovoked invasion of Iraq and said that he represented "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," thrilling the woebegone party faithful yearning for someone to take the fight directly to Bush.
Dean's campaign for the Democratic nomination collapsed, of course, but the defeat of the party's eventual 2004 nominee, a "safe" Iraq War-supporting bore named John Kerry, offers a clear lesson for today's Democrats. Just as those who bucked conventional wisdom by opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq later looked like geniuses, Democrats who can prove that they stood firm from day one of Donald Trump's second term will have an enormous leg up on their squishy rivals.
Yet only a handful of Democrats have truly met the moment. With apologies to the barnstorming (but still quite young) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), no one with plausible 2028 ambitions has resisted the MAGA takeover of America more capably than Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. The second-term governor's withering attacks on the Trump administration's authoritarian excesses and refusal to throw marginalized groups under the bus have quickly endeared him to Democrats looking for courageous defiance. It's a clear break from the pusillanimous knee-bending of the party's national "leaders."
At first glance, Pritzker is an unlikely hero of the progressive movement. The heir to a staggering family fortune built through the Hyatt hotel chain, Pritzker was little known until his run for governor in 2018, when he vanquished a large field of hopefuls in the Democratic primary to take on the doomed incumbent, Republican Bruce Rauner.
Progressives initially bristled at the idea of supporting a man whose place in the race was obviously attributable to his personal fortune. But Pritzker has proven his doubters quite wrong by serving as a capable steward of Illinois' turbulent politics. Not only that, but his ability to bankroll his own race allowed Democrats to concentrate their resources down ballot and capture towering majorities in the state legislature. Since Pritzker took office in 2019, Illinois has (among many other things) hiked the minimum wage, legalized recreational marijuana (and expunged cannabis convictions for hundreds of thousands of Illinoians), and eliminated cash bail, all while repairing the state's tattered credit rating and demonstrating to long-suffering residents that Democrats can be trusted with the state's most difficult challenges. Pritzker, unsurprisingly, blew out his unhinged MAGA challenger in 2022 by nearly 13 points in a difficult national environment for Democrats.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - AUGUST 20: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks on stage during the second day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 20, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - AUGUST 20: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker speaks on stage during the second day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 20, 2024 in Chicago, that's not why Pritzker is currently the talk of the town on the Left. While other prominent Democratic governors like Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer and California's Gavin Newsom have ostentatiously rolled out the red carpet for President Trump and sought to avoid potentially damaging confrontations, Pritzker's message to the far Right has been simple and eloquent from day one: We will concede nothing and fight you on everything.
"We don't have kings in America, and I don't intend to bend the knee to one," the governor said in his February state of the state address, long before President Trump's approval rating started its nosedive. And he made international headlines last week when he said that Republicans "cannot know a moment of peace" as long as the Trump administration flouts the rule of law. "We will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have," he declared.
Pritzker has also deliberately drawn a sharp contrast with what he called the "simpering timidity" of Democrats like Whitmer and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). He recently told CNN, "I look at some of the people who have capitulated and I wonder in the end, is this how you want people to think of you?" He has lit into Democrats "flocking to podcasts and cable news shows" to reposition themselves on issues like trans rights and immigration, a thinly veiled broadside against Newsom in particular, who has distinguished himself from the crowd of 2028 hopefuls by the sheer cravenness of his instant transformation into a MAGA-curious triangulator.
To the surprise of no one capable of reading the room, Newsom's approval rating has cratered while Pritzker remains quite popular. And while it's far too early for Democrats to coalesce around a 2028 contender, one thing is clear: the party's base wants a rabble-rousing, populist fighter willing to tangle with Trump, not some unprincipled shapeshifter whose every utterance seems crafted by consultants.
David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in Slate, The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
