Illinois Gov Pritzker lays it out

 

If we still get to have elections in 2028, look for Pritzker to run for president.  He's a billionaire.  He'll have the funds.

UPDATE 05:56 pm:

Nullificationist.

UPDATE 04/29/2025:

While some party donors and consultants have urged moderation, Mr. Pritzker is tapping into the Democratic base’s visceral desire for a fight — and for a leader.

[...]

Pritzker has emerged as a leader of an insurgent faction calling for a full-throated, unflinching barrage of attacks on Mr. Trump, his Republican allies and their right-wing agenda.

His speech was a call to action more aggressive and comprehensive than perhaps any other by a major liberal figure since Mr. Trump took office, rivaled only by rallying cries from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on their Western tour. But unlike them, Mr. Pritzker set his stem-winding address in a state with a century-long hold on the nation’s first presidential primary contest — a striking statement on its own.

[...]

Pritzker wears a triple crown in Democratic politics, simultaneously one of the party’s most prominent elected officials, most generous donors and most talked about 2028 presidential prospects.

[...]

While other governors have made ham-handed attempts at reconciliation with Mr. Trump, Mr. Pritzker has turned his state into a bulwark of opposition to the administration’s crackdown on immigration, cuts to the federal government and tariffs on other countries.

He has done so as some congressional Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, have urged their party to be selective with their attacks against the president to avoid alienating independent voters who supported him. Mr. Pritzker, by contrast, wants his party to adopt a posture of zero accommodation.

  NYT

If only they'd listen to him.

“The main divide within the Democratic Party is not between left and right — it’s whether you think this is a constitutional crisis or this is politics as usual,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the progressive activist group Indivisible. “Pritzker is really demonstrating what it looks like to lead an opposition party against the overreaching authority of the federal government.”

[...]

While his targets went unnamed, there were obvious candidates: Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, the host of a podcast that has featured stars of the MAGA movement, and the Democratic strategist James Carville, who has argued for “a strategic political retreat” until Mr. Trump’s approval ratings fall.

“Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people and trans kids and immigrants,” Mr. Pritzker said, “instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.”

[...]

“Voters didn’t turn out for Democrats last November — not because they don’t want us to fight for our values, but because they think we don’t want to fight for our values,” he said in his speech. “We need to knock off the rust of poll-tested language, decades of stale decorum. It’s obscured our better instincts.”

[...]

Aides and advisers trace Mr. Pritzker’s activism to his family history and Jewish faith. His ancestors fled pogroms in Ukraine to make their fortune in the United States. He led the campaign to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and has for years invoked the specter of Nazism to describe Mr. Trump.

[...]

“What we’re seeing right now is 1930s Germany; the only way to actually stop that from happening is to be very loud and vocal about the pushback,” said Anne Caprara, Mr. Pritzker’s longtime chief of staff. “That is what is motivating everything he is doing right now.”

[...]

An heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune with a net worth estimated around $3.5 billion, Mr. Pritzker is one of the richest elected officials in the country — a position that has given him a measure of political independence because he is not as reliant on party donors.

In 2018, he transformed himself from a longtime donor who was a major funder of Hillary Clinton’s two presidential campaigns into a formidable politician in his own right. He has self-funded two campaigns for governor and spread his wealth to support Democratic candidates for governor and the state parties in battlegrounds — Wisconsin in particular.

[...]

Even before President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s disastrous debate performance last year, Mr. Pritzker was talked about as the Democrats’ “break glass” nominee — a candidate able to fund a White House campaign at a moment’s notice.

Instead, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and threw his party a joyous convention in Chicago.

[...]

Two days after the [2024] election, Mr. Pritzker told reporters that his administration “was not unprepared” for a Trump victory. The planning had begun months earlier as his state stockpiled abortion medication and prepared to sue the federal government.

And he issued a warning: “You come for my people, you come through me.”