Aug 20, 2024; Chicago, IL, USA; Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks during the second day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently criticized “do-nothing” Democratic politicians who “want to blame our [election] losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.” His speech encouraged Democrats to “fight” the current presidential administration “everywhere and all at once,” even endorsing “mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption.”
“Fellow Democrats, for far too long, we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell you that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames were licking their faces today, as the blaze reaches the rafters,” Pritzker said during the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual McIntyre-Shaheen dinner last Sunday. “Well, the pundits and politicians whose simpering timidity served as kindle for the arsonists, they urge us now not to reach for a hose.”
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Pritzker then spoke of Americans who have used their time to help organize group protests and their social media platforms to inform people about the current administration’s attacks on “LGBTQ+ friends and immigrant workers and people of color.”
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“Those are the stories that I want to share. No pontification, no punditry. There no tortured op eds about party messaging, no hand wringing over which battles to pick,” 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 that we lost [the presidential election] last November.”
He then blamed these do-nothing Democrats for giving into “the powerful hedge fund managers and tech bros whose blind pursuit of profits is now destroying everything that matters to middle-class families: from home ownership to health care to veterans’ benefits.”
“They spent their years watching Republicans illegitimately pack the Supreme Court, take away voting rights from people of color, systematically chip away at the constitutional order, and all the while they offered in response, a simple defense of norms and decorum and a blind hope that one day soon, Republicans would wake up to find their better angels. Well, that got us exactly where we are today,” he added.
When the courage of our civic leaders wavers when they fail to stand up for our country in its moment of greatest need, then we should remind them that cowardice always comes at a cost.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D)
“Now that this culture of timidity is on full display, those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of black people, of trans kids, of immigrants instead of their own lack of guts and gumption,” he said.
He then said it shouldn’t be difficult for Democrats to speak against the current president kidnapping and shipping people off to “a foreign gulag” without any judicial process, using anti-Semitism as a pretext for authoritarian power grabs, professing Christianity while ending funding for children’s cancer research, and destabilizing small businesses with “unsustainable tariffs.”
Priztker implies current administration wants country to fail
“We have a secretary of education who hates teachers and schools. We have a secretary of transportation who hates public transit. We have an attorney general who hates the constitution. We have a secretary of state—the son of naturalized citizens, a family of refugees—on a crusade to expel our country of both. We have a head of the Department of Government Efficiency … who is looking to destroy the American middle class to fund tax cuts for himself, And we have a president who claims to love America but … who can’t be bothered to delay his golf game to greet the bodies of four fallen U.S. soldiers… and a Grand Old Party [GOP] so afraid of the felon and the fraud that they put into the White House that they would sooner watch him destroy our country than lift a hand to save it.”
“Our military service members don’t deserve to be told by a washed up Fox TV commentator who drank too much and committed sexual assault before being appointed secretary of defense, that they can’t serve their country simply because they’re black or gay or a woman,” he continued.
“Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now,” he said. “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we with every megaphone and microphone that we have, we must castigate them on the soap box 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—that you will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”
“And when the courage of our civic leaders wavers when they fail to stand up for our country in its moment of greatest need,” he concluded, “then we should remind them that cowardice always comes at a cost.”
Pritzker’s speech, which also touted his success as a Democrat governor in cleaning up messes from Republican predecessors, was widely seen as a stump speech for his eventual presidential candidacy. Pritzker was widely thought to be on a short-list of possible running mates for the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket.
The Human Rights Campaign’s Director of Communications Laurel Powell praised Pritzker’s speech, telling Advocate, “Gov. Pritzker talks the talk and walks the walk when it comes to LGBTQ+ allyship…. We’re lucky to have him and a number of other governors—like [Maine’s] Janet Mills and [Kentucky’s] Andy Beshear—who have been willing to stand up for our community as we face attacks from the MAGA regime.”
Some Democrats have tried to abandon trans rights in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory.
After the election, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) both told the New York Times that they did not support trans girls playing on women’s sports teams and accused Democrats of pandering to progressives rather than focusing on fixing Americans’ problems – this despite the fact that both Suozzi and Moulton have historically supported trans rights.
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