Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker may have been one of the first to rush to President Joe Biden’s defense in the wake of the debate debacle of June 27, even though he was one of the Democrats most prominently named to possibly replace Biden atop the ticket.
However, even Pritzker can’t ignore reality.
In a viral hot mic moment on Wednesday, Pritzker — one of the members of the wealthy hotelier family that owns the Hyatt brand — told an individual that he didn’t think that the party was in a good place.
“We’re just going to keep fighting. I don’t know what to say,” a resigned Pritzker told the man.
The governor added: “We’re going to do what we have to do. I don’t like where we are.”
Here’s the hot mic remarks from @GovPritzker “I don’t like where we are” – in contrast to his public support for Biden pic.twitter.com/b2jl2OsNvN
— Mary Ann Ahern (@MaryAnnAhernNBC) July 11, 2024
“Where we are” refers to the fact that Biden is down in virtually every poll to Donald Trump — even the national popular vote, which means nothing but which the president would likely need to be ahead in to have any reasonable chance of beating the presumptive GOP nominee in swing states — after the debate revealed Biden to be the cognitively withered shell of a human being that pretty much all of his critics said he was.
Intervening interviews have been no better, with Biden telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos he couldn’t remember if he’d watched his performance a week prior and that he “put NATO together.” (It’s been together since 1949.)
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He told another interviewer that he was the first black female president — and that was with questions his campaign had pre-submitted, which ended up getting the woman who hosted the interview canned.
And, as WMAQ-TV’s Mary Ann Ahern reported, this rather starkly contrasts with Pritzker’s public stance on the matter.
When neo Nazis marched on Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us”, Donald Trump called them very fine people. And now he says it’s all a lie. It’s not a lie, Donald Trump is just a liar. #Debates2024
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) June 28, 2024
Voters face a stark choice in November. A president with the experience to fight for hardworking families across the country vs a 34-count convicted felon who cares only about himself.
The choice is clear. #Debates2024
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) June 28, 2024
This is Pritzker during the debate dropping the Nazi bomb, and after it saying that American “[v]oters face a stark choice in November. A president with the experience to fight for hardworking families across the country vs a 34-count convicted felon who cares only about himself.”
That was his takeaway from the omnishambles performance Joe Biden turned in. And he expected people to buy it. And continues to expect people to buy it.
“Joe Biden is our nominee. I’m for Joe Biden. I’ve been campaigning for Joe Biden,” Pritzker has said publicly in the wake of the debate, WMAQ noted.
“There’s only one person on ballot that’s every beaten former President Trump, and that’s President Joe Biden,” Pritzker added. “He has a proven track record that is really unmatched and unparalleled.”
However, the station noted, “as he pushes Biden’s candidacy, Pritzker is busy increasing his national profile — speaking this weekend to gatherings of Democrats in Indiana and Ohio. As to whether that is to support Biden, or to raise his own profile, Pritzker said the message was ultimately more important than who was delivering it.”
“I suppose you could say that about any of the surrogates who are traveling around the Midwest or the country, that they’re introducing themselves some way or another, but importantly what we’re doing is talking about why it’s important to reelect Joe Biden,” Pritzker said.
The unsaid part of that quote is that Pritzker is very much in the discussion of people who might replace Biden at the top of the ticket at a brokered convention in his state’s biggest city, Chicago, come next month.
The Illinois governor was one of six people checked by name in a New York Times Op-Ed by Hollywood Democrat personage George Clooney asking Biden to step aside as nominee on Wednesday — including, in order, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Pritzker — who might be considered in a kind of unofficial “blitz primary” before the convention which would, in no way, turn into a spiral of negative campaigning and party infighting.
Of course it would; these are people who have built their entire careers standing behind political dirty-work operatives trying to look as clean as possible and trying to fail as little as possible, and Democrats are asking them to throw that entire skill set out the window and hold a kumbaya blitz primary in just a month.
Pritzker is more realistic; this is what he actually thinks. Maybe the nomination will fall to him, maybe it won’t. It might be worthless either way, given the amount of political blood that would have to be shed to reshape the Democratic Party at this late hour.
But at least he knows that the party itself is not in a good place where they are right now, which is with Biden at the top of the ticket.
