Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it anymore.
That was the message New Hampshire Democrats received loud and clear on Sunday, when Pritzker rocked the room — and went viral across the Internet — with his fiery condemnation of his party’s middle-of-the-road pushovers.
“For far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces,” Pritzker said. “Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people and trans kids and immigrants instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.”
Pritzker’s pointed remarks drew an instant contrast with fellow 2028 prospect Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who calls for the party to seek conciliation over conflict. But it was more than that; millions of Democrats have spent months telling pollsters they want to see a more aggressive Democratic Party. Pritzker’s no-compromise message just made him the standard-bearer for the party’s disaffected masses.
Pritzker’s speech comes at a complex moment for Democratic insiders. President Trump will mark his 100th day dogged by an abysmal 39 percent approval rating and a stock market that is on course for its worst run since the Great Depression. The speed and breadth of Trump’s collapse has coincided with rising support for Democrats after a month near record lows. But the news isn’t all positive — a recent Harvard Youth Poll showed the Democratic Party still struggling to win back young voters who see congressional Democrats as exactly the “do-nothings” Pritzker criticized.
At first glance, Pritzker is an unlikely messenger for an unapologetically progressive platform. He’s the second-richest elected official in the country, clocking in at nearly $4 billion in personal wealth. That is paradoxical in a party where Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Fighting Oligarchy Tour is packing arenas with a message heavy on taxing the rich and uplifting the working class. But look closer, and Pritzker reveals himself to be something truly rare: a traitor to his class.
That phrase was most notably used to criticize two other patrician presidential hopefuls, Republican Theodore Roosevelt and his fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like Pritzker, both Roosevelts could easily have ignored the concerns of a working class that was as invisible in 1900 and 1932 as it is today. Yet both found themselves not only fighting for the working class but becoming the figureheads of social justice revolutions. They reached that peak not by triangulating their politics to be inoffensive but by speaking fearlessly about the principles that formed the bedrock of their belief system.
In fact, Pritzker’s words sound quite a bit like the elder Roosevelt’s remarks in Chicago during the heated campaign of 1912. In a speech that wouldn’t be out of place on Sanders’s barnstorming tour, Roosevelt condemned the conservative Supreme Court for enforcing on working people a “submission … which would turn constitutional provisions which were intended to favor social justice and advancement, into prohibitions against such justice.”
“Our purpose is not to impugn the courts, but to emancipate them from a position where they stand in the way of social justice,” Roosevelt said. “As a people, we cannot afford to let any group of citizens or any individual citizen, live or labor under conditions which are injurious to the common welfare.”
Roosevelt believed in what he called “masculine” politics — the politics of fighting back when something is fundamentally broken in our nation. Pritzker made the same case to an audience of Democrats eager for someone, anyone, to throw a strong punch. Polls show that large swaths of the Democratic base feel the party has surrendered the fight on key social issues to Republicans without much resistance. Pritzker is right that voters are angry at Democrats not for what they believe but for the moral courage they’ve so often failed to demonstrate.
Far from disqualifying, Pritzker’s wealth offers him the freedom to voice voters’ deep frustrations without worrying about fundraising boycotts or political blowback from the conflict-averse stiffs in Washington. Some progressives may find his Scrooge McDuck-ian wealth distasteful, but his actions in Illinois and on the national stage make him a stronger ally of progressive principles than many of the self-professed “pragmatic progressives,” who seem to think actual progress is simply too radical for the American people.
Democratic voters have made clear they want a fighter. Pritzker is willing to give them one. If he can use his voice to spur other Democrats to find their spines, voters will reward him handsomely.
This is not a time for small men. As Pritzker will be happy to tell you, he’s anything but a small man.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.