Eyes on the White House? JB Stumps in NH

Written by David E. Smith

Lost in all of the news last week, you may have missed the reports about JB Pritzker’s appearance at a convention of New Hampshire Democrats on Saturday, June 18, 2022. Making the most of the opportunity to float his POTUS balloon, he endorsed New Hampshire U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan and governor candidate Tom Sherman, both of whom are facing tough fights this fall.

Pritzker was well-received by east coast Democrats, even getting a standing ovation after telling a story bashing Trump. Not that it was fact-checked or anything. This only stoked the buzz about Pritzker’s true political ambitions. The fact that he delivered a careful speech full of red meat for left-wing Democrats to cheer about at this first-in-the-nation presidential primary state is almost as important as the fact that he is a potential king maker for like-minded candidates up and down the ballot and across the nation. His funding capacity and acumen is not lost on pundits everywhere.

With four months to go before the 2022 Illinois gubernatorial election, JB  gave an updated version of his stump speech, saying:

“My friends thought I was crazy to run for governor. They told me state government couldn’t be repaired. And anyway, who would vote for someone like me? Look, I’m a Ukrainian American,” Pritzker said to the room full of friends. “I haven’t finished the list yet, and it gets worse from here. A Ukrainian American Jewish Democratic billionaire businessman. That’s not exactly the archetype that the party was looking for to run for governor. That’s okay with me. I know who I am and where I come from.”

It is good to know with certainty how JB wants to be identified going forward. For some reason, in his list of intersectionalities JB failed to mention that he is also white, male and a heterosexual, which of course add to the “privilege” label he gets for being a billionaire. But his speech was really an ode to abortion “rights,” bragging that Illinois has enshrined Roe v. Wade into law to protect it from U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike it down as unconstitutional. While many of us believe he was testing the waters, we cannot ignore that he was also doing some favors for his “progressive” friends, as he campaigned the next day for Democrat Gov. Janet Mills of Maine.

Regardless, does anyone seriously believe that Joe Biden is going to run again? For the next year and a half they are going to prop him up and tell him what he has to say, hoping that he hang on and be as relevant as he can.

In fact, at least some of the 150 delegates Pritzker addressed thought Pritzker should run for president in ’24. “He’s got great energy,” one said. With the current occupant in the White House, that probably is at the forefront of Democrats’ minds for ’24.  But that’s a pretty low bar.

Just how left-wing is JB Pritzker’s politics? Well, you can watch his entire speech on our YouTube channel here, if you can bear it: