Experience is important, but it’s not the attribute which brings the win for the presidential candidates. Many people want the President to be someone who projects a certain image and gives the impression they can get stuff done. The President needs to be someone who can convince other people to go along with their vision in a way that’s unique to that position. Years of political and government experience doesn’t necessarily give people that kind of ability.
As an analogy, consider how an actor is picked for a part in a movie. Lots of people are very accomplished actors, but not every accomplished actor will bring a role to life in the same way. If they’re casting someone to be Superman, the movie will be much more successful with someone like Henry Cavill rather than Ian McKellen. But if they’re casting someone to be a Gandolf, the movie will be more successful with McKellen in the role than Cavill. Both roles need an experienced actor, but casting the role by just looking at just how experienced they are as an actor and picking the one with the most experience will not lead to a successful movie.
He’s been mentioned a number of times in the thread.
My take, as an Illinois resident, and liberal:
Pros:
He handled the state’s COVID response very well.
He’s clearly very intelligent and a good speaker.
He’s consistently championed important liberal causes, including abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights and opposing ICE activities in the state.
He has managed to get under Trump’s skin, while not resorting to overt parody as Newsom has.
He won re-election once, and is likely to be re-elected easily to a third term this fall: he’s running against the same guy (Darren Bailey) whom he beat handily in 2022. Assuming he gets re-elected, he’ll have held the office for 10 years in 2028.
He was very successful in the business world before turning to politics.
Though he never held office before becoming governor, he did work in Washington, on the staffs of several Democratic legislators, during the 1980s, and has been involved in Democratic politics throughout his adult life.
Cons:
Illinois has been losing population for the last decade, in part due to the cost of living here: in the last 10 years, the state’s population has declined by nearly 2% (though that apparently turned around, a little bit, in 2025).
The state’s economy has been doing all right, but arguably not great. Unemployment is around 5% right now, which is above the national numbers.
He is a billionaire, and arguably a nepo-baby in that regard (his family’s money came from the Hyatt hotel business).
He’s Jewish, and in the past, was a financial supporter of AIPAC (though he cut off his support of it years ago). Please note that I’m not saying that him being Jewish is a con, in and of itself, but it opens him up to particular criticisms, especially as a Democrat, in regards to Israel and Palestine.
He is, frankly, a big burly guy, which may turn off people who are more interested in image.
He clearly did play favorites earlier this year, during the Democratic primary race to fill retiring Senator Dick Durbin’s seat: he endorsed his lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, and gave millions of dollars to a super PAC which supported her.
As it happens, Time magazine has an interesting profile of Pritzker in its latest issue. I learned a lot, and like him more now, although I still lean towards Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky.
TLDR: Pritzker is not just a Jew, he is a scion of a rich and famous Illinois Jewish family whose name is all over hospitals and foundations in the Chicago area. He was instrumental in establishing the world-renowned Illinois Holocaust Museum. He is a former AIPAC board member.
IOW, no one can possibly accuse him of being antisemitic, and therefore he is the one who can lead the Democrats in our morally and politically necessary transition away from an “unconditional support for Israel” policy, a role he appears prepared to take on.
(O)n a recent episode of the popular I’ve Had It podcast, (Pritzker said) that as a Jew committed to upholding the values of social justice and people’s freedom, “I have to apply that equally to the state of Israel as I do to other countries that have committed atrocities.” From being an “unequivocal” supporter of Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7, he has taken a much more skeptical view.
(Jon Ossoff is also a Jew who has been highly critical of Israel, ftr)
Thanks for the clarification. The point still stands though, he used to support the organization before it went completely crazy, which gives him capital to criticize it now.
We have absolutely no idea. His whole public career has consisted entirely of saying whatever helps him suck up to power; who knows what he would do if there was nobody above him he needed to please? It’s possible he would turn into Mitt Romney, but he might just as well declare himself to be the legitimate Pope and marry a horse.
I had pretty much dismissed any Jewish candidates as contenders right now, given the rise of antisemitism in general, anti Israel/AIPAC in particular, and the conflation so many have of Jewish and Israel.
You really make me rethink that point of view.
A strong track record of criticizing Israel’s actions from a candidate who is an identified member of the American Jewish community neutralizes some of that, including the coded antisemitic attacks masked as anti-Zionist. And the portrayal of any positions that are very critical of Israel as antisemitic.
True coded (and explicit in some camps) antisemitism will be part of the campaigning as minimally the aftermath of this war will still be in progress, and baseless accusations of the same will be too. No matter who runs.
I do think that the proven ability to get things done (experience) is less important this round in particular than hitting a balance of “change agent” while not scaring old guard centrists too much. As a left of center liberal I suspect someone more progressive than my personal taste will be a best candidate this time.
No, he said that Trump was America’s Hitler. He never said that he considered that to be a bad thing.
I’ll never understand why people think this is a bad thing. He’s a politician. Of course he’s going to endorse other politicians he likes for various positions. One can certainly consider it a black mark which politicians any particular politician endorses, but not just that they’re endorsing people.
No one can sanely accuse him of that. The Republicans will anyway.
In a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose while promoting his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance called himself “a Never Trump guy” and said of the soon-to-be-president, “I never liked him.”
He told NPR that year, “I can’t stomach Trump.” He wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled: “Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation’s Highest Office.”
Vance said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and his former roommate shared images of a text message Vance sent him that year in which he called Trump “cynical” and said he could be “America’s Hitler.”
It really is far too early, still, but that doesn’t prevent speculation and debate.
In 2007/2008, Hillary Clinton was consistently the front-runner in opinion polls, by a wide margin, until the end of 2007, when Obama started getting serious attention, at least in part due to the support of Oprah Winfrey. Obama then swept the four January primaries and caucuses, and passed Clinton in the opinion polls (HRC is the dark yellow line, Obama the purple line, and John Edwards the orange line):
(FWIW, Bill Clinton followed a similar trajectory in 1992, not emerging as the front-runner until January of '92.)
I’m warming on Pritzker. He may come from a very privileged background, but his father died when he was 7, as did a sister Nancy (to suicide) and he lost his mom, an alcoholic who died by jumping from a moving vehicle, when he was 17.
I don’t wish tragedy on people, but it often instills a deep sense of empathy that we want in our leaders.
