J. B. Pritzker Gives the Game Away

On Monday, Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker ill-advisedly exposed the hollowness of Democratic appeals to voters’ sense of civic propriety with their claims that “democracy is on the ballot” in November.

“It’s simply a question of whether you like your MAGA Trump agenda wrapped in the original packaging or with high heels or with lifts in their boots,” Pritzker added. If anyone needed further confirmation that Democratic lawmakers and political professionals alike do not actually believe that Donald Trump represents a unique threat to the American constitutional order, Pritzker provided it.

Partisan Democratic voters can rationalize themselves into seeing no inconsistency here. They will convince themselves that the broader GOP’s adjacency to Donald Trump renders them at least complicit in the former president’s sui generis attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another. But persuadable voters are more likely to be puzzled by the claim that even Trump’s opponents, some of whom are running against the former president on the claim that he is a reckless chaos agent, are indistinguishable from Trump. The contradictions in charging that Trump is a special menace who compels us all to put politics to one side and also that every other Republican is just like Trump in that regard are irreconcilable.

Democratic political professionals might think it advantageous to erase the distinctions between “the Trump MAGA agenda” and conventional Republicanism. But then, why do they draw those distinctions when it suits their interests? When Joe Biden hits the stump to rail against “election deniers,” he does so amid cloying appeals to Republicans’ consciences. “MAGA Republicans” are a special breed, according to the president. But “not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans,” he explains.

At least, that’s what Biden says when he wants to present Republican voters with a moral conundrum. In the president’s formulation, either Republicans must subordinate their qualms over Democratic policy preferences to the imperative of denying Trump and his acolytes access to power, or, it is implied, their commitment to democracy is contemptibly skin-deep. It is an ultimatum, not an ask. The GOP’s defectors will get nothing in return for their acquiescence — no policy concessions, no power-sharing agreements, nothing. And, really, should Republicans even need an inducement to accept Democratic premises in whole? Their civic duty should prove sufficiently compelling.

It has been apparent for some time that Democrats believe we should take the threat Trump poses to democratic conventions far more seriously than they do. Joe Biden’s party bemoans the rise of Republicans who retail poisonous claims about electoral malfeasance and for whom the levers of government are only instruments to be wielded against their enemies. But they do not mourn when those Republicans win their party’s nomination to high office. Rather, they facilitate those candidates’ ascension by airing ads on their behalf — often compensating for those candidates’ lackluster fundraising among actual Republicans.

Democratic partisans have a habit of bristling when accused of having any influence over Republican psychology. They maintain that conservatives sacrifice the personal agency they supposedly champion by claiming that anyone other than Republican voters is to blame for the party’s evolutionary trajectory. Republican voters do own their choices, but nothing happens in a vacuum. If Democratic efforts to boost the MAGA movement’s signal weren’t effective, they wouldn’t be committing precious resources to that project. If claiming that there were no meaningful distinctions between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley wasn’t a productive way to mobilize their voters and donors alike, they wouldn’t waste their time.

The strategic approach to campaigning that Pritzker endorsed is a profoundly cynical approach to electoral politics. Maybe it works in the short term. But we know what kind of effect this conditioning has on Republican voters in the long run. If you maintain that every Republican is an authoritarian monster, Republican voters will stop listening to warnings that there are authoritarian monsters in their midst. Democrats seem to believe that mortgaging their credibility is worth the risk, but the bill always comes due.