I’m not a “socialist for Pritzker.” I doubt that very many people really are, although a Socialists for Pritzker Twitter account has more than 12,000 followers. The whole phenomenon is drenched in irony and ambiguity. But there is at least some genuine left-wing enthusiasm for J. B. Pritzker.

The Illinois governor would be a strange candidate for the role of Bernie Sanders’s political heir. For one thing, he’s a billionaire. For another, he’s never claimed to be a social democrat or socialist. And although he made one vaguely positive comment about Sanders’s support for Medicare for All in 2017 — two years before Pritzker became governor — I haven’t been able to find anything more recent to indicate that he supports the policy, and there’s at least some reason to think he doesn’t.

So why is this thoroughly mainstream Democrat warming some leftist hearts? Simple. The Democrats have set the bar so low it feels remarkable that Pritzker, after running on a handful of popular progressive positions, actually followed through when he was in office.