The Pritzker Moment
The jury’s still out on Governor Pritzker. Can he carry the fight to Donald Trump? Is he brutal enough to defeat Sauron, Jr.? Will there be an election in 2028 or will the Republicans run another insurrection in the Capital and simply install J.D. Vance by acclimation? Stranger things have happened in history. We are closer to a bloodless (or bloody) coup than I have ever allowed myself to imagine.
Whatever turns out to be the deal with Pritzker, he certainly won my heart this week. Standing like a silverback in front of the cameras, he dared Donald Trump to send the feds to Chicago. “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here." He looked real and serious and reassuringly large, like the proverbial Mack Truck (or Humvee) of Illinois. Speaking as a tiny-ish Jewish man, I am rarely seduced by the size of another guy. It all feels like excess height/weight to me, but this week, I was inclined to make an exception. Pritzker looks like he could pound the crap out of Trump, and he called Stephen Miller a “complicit lackey.” There are times when you just want to say “Get off my property.”
So who, you ask, was missing in action? I’ve taken a lot of grief over my obsession with Barack Obama. He did his job! He deserves a rest! The etiquette calls for a dignified retirement. But I keep beating the drum on the issue of his disengagement. We are in the middle of the greatest political crisis I have known. The stress test of Trumpism gets more dangerous by the day, and the institutions that should be protecting us are beginning to fail. Harvard has more money than God, but it could not stand up to the Tin Man in the White House. Instead, it held up its ample rear end and asked the President where to send its check. If this is not a five-alarm fire, the Santa Ana winds are merely a breeze.
That means that Obama has a job to do. He should have been standing next to Pritzker in front of the cameras in Chicago. He should have been speaking beautiful and uplifting words and repudiating the pablum of Michelle’s great speech. When they go low, we scrape the muck at the bottom and begin flinging it in the faces of the enemies of democracy. Chicago is the city that gave us Barack Obama. Should he not have mobilized to protect it from the President?
I am under no illusions. One single guy, however gifted, will not save us from the rolling catastrophe underway, but Obama has an obligation to inspire the rest of us to action. What should we do about tyrants, Mr. Former President? I’m still waiting to hear a single word.