In the summer of 2003, a relatively unknown Democratic governor from Vermont named Howard Dean electrified rally goers around the country with a simple message: The George W. Bush administration should be resisted rather than accommodated. He blasted Democrats who had rolled over for the disastrous and unprovoked invasion of Iraq and said that he represented "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," thrilling the woebegone party faithful yearning for someone to take the fight directly to Bush.

Dean's campaign for the Democratic nomination collapsed, of course, but the defeat of the party's eventual 2004 nominee, a "safe" Iraq War-supporting bore named John Kerry, offers a clear lesson for today's Democrats. Just as those who bucked conventional wisdom by opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq later looked like geniuses, Democrats who can prove that they stood firm from day one of Donald Trump's second term will have an enormous leg up on their squishy rivals.

Yet only a handful of Democrats have truly met the moment. With apologies to the barnstorming (but still quite young) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), no one with plausible 2028 ambitions has resisted the MAGA takeover of America more capably than Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. The second-term governor's withering attacks on the Trump administration's authoritarian excesses and........

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