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.”

Trump 2.0 - Women should not be allowed to vote

 

Parsing the New Hampshire primary

Trump won by a low margin of 10 points over Nikki Haley, but take a look at this chart:

I would think that what may be more worrisome - or at least as worrisome - for them is the 25% of Republicans who didn't vote for him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

DNC stepping on its own dick again

[An] unusual situation [has arisen] from the Democratic national committee’s decision to ditch decades of tradition this year in choosing South Carolina, a much more racially diverse state, to host the first presidential primary. When New Hampshire said it would host its primary first anyway – South Carolina will vote next week – the Democratic National Committee essentially said it would ignore the state’s results.

[...]

As a consequence of the party scrap, Biden’s name will not even appear on the ballot in the Granite state on Tuesday.

[...]

“New Hampshire historically has not been about delegates, because we have relatively few to offer in the big scheme of things,” [Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire] said.

“It’s about the publicity that comes with a victory or even a better-than-expected performance in an early voting state in the nomination process, and I think they’ve been following that playbook.”

[...]

Biden might be absent from the state, but a movement has emerged encouraging people to write his name on voting slips, and in a sign that the Biden campaign sees the potential for embarrassment, a series of high-profile Biden supporters have been dispatched to New Hampshire in recent weeks.

  Guardian

Another hot mess for 2024.

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Is the tide slowly turning?

New Hampshire Democrat Hal Rafter scored a major pickup for his party on Tuesday.

[...]

Rafter beat Republican Jim Guzofski 56-44 to flip Rockingham County's 1st District, a constituency that favored Donald Trump by a tiny 49.1 to 48.7 margin in 2020. The seat became vacant in April when Republican Rep. Brian Bartlett resigned, citing health issues.

Rafter's win leaves Republicans with a bare 198-197 edge despite a map that they gerrymandered for their own benefit just last year. The enormous 400-member also includes a pair of independents and, importantly, three other vacant seats. Two of those vacancies occurred this very week: Democrat Bill Hatch announced his departure Monday, while Republican Troy Merner resigned the next day, just hours before Rafter's victory.

The final unoccupied seat was last held by Democrat David Cote, who stepped down in July. Only the race to replace Cote has been scheduled, so if Democrats defend his safely blue district in the Nashua area on Nov. 7, they'd force a tie in the chamber―assuming nothing else happens, that is.

The other two vacant seats are less likely to change hands, but in New Hampshire, nothing is impossible.

  Daily Kos

Democrat Lindsay Powell won her special election for the Pennsylvania State House in Allegheny County in a blowout performance. As of 8:15PM ET, Powell held a commanding lead with 82% of the vote.

While expected, here’s what makes Powell’s win so important: Powell’s win puts Democrats back in control of the Pennsylvania House with a narrow majority.

[...]

Republicans still retain a Senate majority in the commonwealth.

[...]

The string of victories display Democrats’ electoral strength heading into the 2024 elections. As pundits continue to talk endlessly about their shoddy polls and failed narratives, Democrats continue to outperform all expectations.

Voters continue to reject the extremism of the Republican Party election after election in what could — and should — be the biggest political story of our time.

  Meidas Touch

Another case of voter fraud

And once again, it's a Republican.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Welcome to the resistance

New Hampshire’s 2022 school board elections were supposed to be proving grounds for conservative frustrations around school policies, from spending to COVID-19-related restrictions to teachings about racial justice and diversity.

Instead, Tuesday’s local elections appeared to deliver broad victories for progressive public school advocates, who argued against what they characterized as threats to traditional public schools from the right. In total, 29 candidates designated by progressive organizers as “pro-public education” won Tuesday night, many in traditionally conservative towns like Brookline and Londonderry.

[...]

Hanging over many of the local races this year were debates with national or statewide themes. Two years of intermittent periods of remote learning and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic helped fuel a “parental choice” effort on the right, voiced by angry parents at school board meetings and championed by many conservative school board candidates.

Opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies at public schools from some right-leaning activists – and accusations that administrators have applied concepts of “critical race theory” in K-12 schools – made a mark on some New Hampshire campaigns and ballot initiatives.

And a statewide school choice movement among Republicans that has led to the creation of an “education freedom account” program to allow public education funding to help pay for private school tuition for eligible families appeared to play a role, too.

[...]

That combination of issues has worked for conservatives in other states’ elections in recent years, drawing in parents and voters anxious over pandemic-related restrictions. But in New Hampshire, even amid higher than usual turnout Tuesday, the approach appeared to fall short.

[...]

“Tonight’s results prove that when young people run, they win, and that a little bit of encouragement and focused investment go a long way in building the next generation of leadership,” said Tim Peltier, the leadership development director for 603 Forward, a progressive group focused on electing young candidates in the state.

Rice Hawkins agreed.

“This is really the first time Granite State voters have had an opportunity to weigh in here,” she said, noting that the school elections came after a recent spate of laws and bills that would penalize teachers who teach banned concepts around race or oppression. “Part of the reason our organization is so excited is we knew that the public was in a very different place than some of the politicians on this, and that is turning out to be true.”

  New Hampshire Bulletin

It's Sunday

JFC

America's inexorable march toward authoritarianism

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Make America Russia in the 40s

This is some scary shit, people.  

Cleaning up Trump's mess

Biden health officials have quietly revoked the previous administration’s approval of Medicaid work rules in two states.

[...]

Federal Medicaid officials on Wednesday sent letters to Arkansas and New Hampshire officials, informing them that the administration had formally scrapped the federal government’s permission for the states to mandate that some enrollees work, volunteer or attend school as a condition of coverage.

[...]

In Arkansas, the only state where work rules ever fully took effect, more than 18,000 people lost Medicaid coverage during a brief stretch in 2018 before a judge halted the policy. “Obstacles to finding new employment have likely grown even larger during the pandemic-related economic downturn of the past year, particularly since job and income losses have been highest among low-income and minority workers, who are disproportionately enrolled in Medicaid,” the HHS report reads.

[...]

Though the Biden administration had left little doubt it would revoke work rules widely despised by Democrats, the timing of the move is significant. The Supreme Court is still weighing whether to review lower court rulings against work rules in Arkansas and New Hampshire, and revoking the programs could make the case moot.

  Politico

Slick.

Some states indicated to CMS they would challenge a decision to revoke the work rules. That includes Georgia, which in October received the Trump administration’s permission to partially expand Medicaid to low-income adults along with a work requirement.

Arkansas’ top Medicaid official argued that moving too hastily to revoke the state’s program would violate a previous agreement it made with the Trump administration. She also asked for another two months to respond to the Biden administration’s initial letter.

[...]

Arkansas is among the states that signed agreements with the Trump administration in January that were meant to significantly slow down Biden’s efforts to revoke work rules and other conservative Medicaid policies. The Biden administration said it doesn’t believe those agreements are legally binding.

[...]

CMS letters to Arkansas and New Hampshire on Wednesday said withdrawal of the work rule approvals would take effect within 30 days. States can appeal the decisions to the agency.

New Hampshire?

Where have all the rallies gone?

In the days after President Donald Trump’s poorly attended rally in Tulsa, Okla., senior campaign aides repeatedly assured their optics-obsessed boss it was a one-off debacle.

They demoted a longtime staffer who had managed logistics for the failed campaign comeback. They went to work locating the perfect site for a do-over MAGA rally large enough to quell suggestions of declining enthusiasm among Trump’s base. And they quickly settled on New Hampshire, the state that jump-started Trump’s political movement four years ago and managed to dodge the brunt of Covid-19 during its rapid spread across the Northeast this spring.

[...]

[S]ome congressional GOP candidates were invited to attend Trump’s rally as warm-up acts or front-row participants, providing an opportunity to appear before larger-than-normal crowds in their own backyard. One of them, congressional Republican candidate Matt Mowers, had been scheduled to speak at the rally prior to Trump’s remarks and greet him when he arrived in the Granite State.

[...]

At this point in 2016, Trump was already holding several rallies each week, including a double-header in Nevada and Arizona on June 18 and a three-day span in late July that featured six rallies in four states over 72 hours.

By comparison, the president has only attended two large campaign gatherings — his Tulsa rally and a “Students for Trump” event in Phoenix — since his March 13 Oval Office address about the novel coronavirus.The Trump campaign had hoped to be averaging two rallies per week by June 2020, according to a person involved with the president’s reelection.

“President Trump was a machine in 2016 and he wants to be that same candidate this cycle. Unfortunately, coronavirus has interfered with our plans to contrast his tremendous stamina with Sleepy Joe’s,” this person said, referring to Trump’s 2020 challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.

  

Lucky for you. "Sleepy Joe" is in far, far better physical shape than Old Lard Ass.

Two people close to the Trump campaign said its primary issue is locating areas where local and state officials are both willing to permit large-scale campaign events and unlikely to blame the president if an outbreak of the virus occurs once he’s come and gone. Trump aides felt blindsided early last week when New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, publicly stated that he would not attend the [planned] Portsmouth rally out of precaution for himself and his family.

So the campaign cancelled it, blaming it on a nonexistent storm on the way.

Staffers who were already on the ground in Portsmouth, N.H., a riverfront city situated in a county Trump handily won in 2016, were caught off guard last Friday when their colleagues alerted them of the change. One campaign volunteer, who questioned the reasoning at the time, noted that intense humidity was the only weather-related issue on the ground and suggested that Parscale postponed the event until the campaign could guarantee larger crowds.

2024?

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign said the rally was expected to be rescheduled in the next one or two weeks, and disputed claims that it was postponed for any reason other than the forecast. The same spokesperson on Tuesday said there was “nothing to announce” about when the rally might be rescheduled.

[...]

Last week, President Trump hosted a roundtable in Miami, Vice President Pence had a hugely successful bus tour in Pennsylvania and Women for Trump just finished up a bus tour in Wisconsin.”

The boat parade. Don't forget the boat parade.

In Florida, where Republicans are expected to hold a portion of the party’s nominating convention next month, three counties have tightened restrictions on restaurants and bars, and issued stricter guidance on mask-wearing for residents. In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has paused further statewide reopenings and mandated masks in most public spaces. Whitmer previously said it would be “a long time” before she felt comfortable permitting Trump or Biden to host crowded campaign events in her state.

[...]

One senior administration official said the lack of recognition some of Trump’s top aides have paid to coronavirus has done irreversible damage to his reelection campaign. Internal divisions over how much focus Trump should lend to the virus have plagued the White House in recent weeks. Chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior adviser Jared Kushner have both pushed the president to focus on communicating a strong second-term agenda, including measures he would take to help bring the U.S. economy roaring back to life, while others have encouraged him to focus on combating the virus itself given its widespread impact on most people’s lives.

And he has done neither.

Last week, he hosted a White House event to discuss the reopening of schools this fall. But he has consistently attributed the rising number of cases in southwestern states to increased testing capabilities, even as other administration officials acknowledge that testing alone cannot statistically account for surges in most areas.

In an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Trump said Covid-19 testing in the U.S. has been “working too well.”

“We’re finding thousands and thousands of cases,” he told the network.

Slow down the testing!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Freakout correction

Bernie and Pete apparently got the same number of delegates.  What I was looking at from NPR was the total number including Iowa.

Apologies for the misinformation.

But it doesn't change the fact that the popular vote isn't what wins the national election.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

New Hampshire results

From NPR:

Until we fix our electoral system, they need to stop claiming a win on popular vote.  Buttigieg gets one more delegate out of this than Bernie, so WTF?  It's the delegates that matter.  And this is, as has been for all of modern American electoral history, a major flaw in the system that we keep pretending doesn't contradict our claim to a democratic government.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And, hello Amy.  At least white people like her a lot.

UPDATE:  Apologies for the freakout.  Those delegate numbers are totals, including Iowa.  Pete and Bernie apparently both got 9 delegates from New Hampshire. 

The complaint about popular vote vs. winner still stands.

Because they can't win if they don't cheat

And expect November to be the worst cheating ever.

Eager to put on a show of force in a general election battleground state, President Donald Trump tried to rattle Democrats on Monday with a rally in New Hampshire on the eve of the state’s first-in-the-nation primaries.

[...]

The president relished the idea of dominating the stage in New Hampshire and stealing some of the media oxygen from the Democrats. Advisers hoped that Secret Service moves in downtown Manchester to secure the area for the president’s arrival would make it harder for Democratic candidates and their supporters to transverse the state’s largest city in the hours before the primary’s first votes are cast.

[...]

Trump has not hesitated to try to influence the Democrats’ nominating process. At the rally, he urged New Hampshire independents — who are allowed to vote in either party’s primary — who support him to instead back “the weakest” Democratic candidate Tuesday. He also, again, trafficked in the unfounded conspiracy theory that buses of illegal voters traveled in from Massachusetts in 2016 to deprive him of a victory in the Granite State.

[...]

“Our good Republicans in the United States Senate voted to reject the outrageous partisan impeachment hoax and to issue a full, complete and absolute total acquittal,” Trump told a crowd that roared and cheered throughout his speech. “And it wasn’t even close.”

[...]

Before leaving Washington, Trump said he had planned the rally to rattle Democrats and demonstrate his strength in the state before the primary vote.

[...]

At the same time, Trump continued to celebrate the Senate’s acquittal decision, lacing into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her performance during his State of the Union address last week.

“I had somebody behind me who was mumbling terribly, mumbling, mumbling,” Trump complained, calling it “very distracting, very distracting.” He did not make mention of how, at the address’ conclusion, Pelosi tore up her copy of the speech.

Trump’s remarks prompted the crowd to break into the same “Lock her up!!” chant that his supporters directed at Hillary Clinton four years ago.

  AP News

If we get out of this shit alive with a functioning democracy, I hope all those Trump chumps crawl back under their rocks and stay there.

As Air Force One touched down in New Hampshire, a stream of TrumpWorld luminaries — including Vice President Mike Pence and first son Donald Trump Jr. — preceded the president to the stage.

[...]

In addition to Vice President Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu were set to campaign on his behalf Tuesday.

[...]

With his reelection effort heating up, Trump also suggested he’s trying to turn the page and notch a couple of legislative victories before November.

The president said he was hopeful that Democrats would work with him to pass an infrastructure bill as well legislation to lower prescription drug prices, despite the rancor and divisions.

I'm sure this kind of shit makes them eager to give him a boost. WTF?

The speech...

Careful.  If Junior gets too much play, Daddy will disown him.

WTF is "redemption money"?

Miraculously.

Bet on it.

Oh, yeah...

Jesus wept.

UPDATE:

Buttigieg surge

It's not just Iowa.

Democratic White House hopeful Pete Buttigieg surged to a 10-point lead in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, according to a new Saint Anselm College poll released Tuesday. Buttigieg gets the support of 25 percent of self-identified likely Democratic primary voters, marking the first time the South Bend, Ind., mayor has emerged atop a poll in the Granite State. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are tied for second at 15 percent, while no other candidate breaks double digits. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sits in third place at 9 percent.

[...]

The Indiana mayor held a 9-point lead in this week’s Des Moines Register-CNN-Mediacom survey, which is considered the gold standard in the Hawkeye State.

[...]

And while some donors and voters continue to express skepticism that the 37-year-old mayor from Indiana can unseat Trump, Tuesday’s poll shows Buttigieg with a 7-point lead over the president in a hypothetical match-up.

  The Hill

He's still not doing well in the south with black voters. Which is understandable. But if he's blowing Biden away in whiter states, he may just well get the nomination.

Michigan Man (fake) claim at New Hampshire rally

That's par for the course if you're a Republican.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The crowds! - Part 3

Manchester Deputy Fire Marshal Mitchell Cady told DailyMail.com that Trump was right – that his crowd numbered 'just over 11,500.'

Calling the president's tweet 'a topic of discussion around here,' Cady revealed that 'the arena staff said Elton John was around 11,300' in April 2004.

  Daily Mail

I'm willing to call it even, but to suggest that an estimate within 200 people over that capacity is conclusive evidence is just BS. Also, surely it's not the same arena staff in 2004 as 2019. Remember the adage: It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.

Cady said that while his department's final inside crowd count of 11,500 is not higher than the number of Trump audience members allowed in the arena, it might be a slight under-estimate.

'Had some more snuck in during the period when we're trying to assess the situation and get the door closed, when we're trying to get everyone through the mags, then maybe it's "11,500-plus",' he said.

'Mags' is short for magnetometers, the walk-through metal detectors that U.S. Secret Service sets up to screen attendees of presidential events.

[...]

Cady also said his office estimated that at least 8,000 people stood outside the arena in an overflow crowd area, watching the rally on jumbo TV screens.

[...]

An official at the SNHU Arena who declined to be named, saying, 'You're not going to get me involved in all this political fighting,' said Friday that empty 'nosebleed seats' would have been offset 'by all the people cramming themselves into the standing-room space on the arena floor.'

Then, I guess they WERE going to get him involved.

'It's not like they couldn't fill the place.'

I'll buy that. But Trump brings all this shit on himself by constantly pointing to and exaggerating the size of his crowds.

Trump has consistently come under fire for overstating the size of his rally crowds, and has claimed to break a rock star's attendance record at least once before.

Before the future president arrived at a February 3, 2016 campaign rally in Little Rock Arkansas, a man Trump later identified as the fire marshal announced on stage that the crowd had broken a record set by ZZ Top in 1974.

'In 1974 we had ZZ Top here and we set our all-time record of 11,451,' Ralph Shoptaw said on stage. 'I have just been informed that we have broken that record. Over 11,500. So welcome, Mr. Trump to Barton Coliseum.'

That proved to be untrue: Photos and video shot during Trump's speech showed the coliseum sparsely populated. Local journalists estimated the crowd size at fewer than 6,000.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The crowds! - Part 2

So, I guess these empty seats were people who had gone to the bathroom?

UPDATE:

Still talking about it.   Doesn't the man have anything to do?

The crowds!

There were notably some empty seats at President Donald Trump’s Thursday night campaign rally in New Hampshire, and now Twitter users are ridiculing the president over his failure to sell out even relatively small venues.

Twitter user Tony Posnanski got the ball rolling on Friday afternoon when he posted a video of Trump talking with several empty seats behind him.

  Raw Story

Indeed.

UPDATE:



Yeah, we did check out the pictures.  That's how we know.