David Hogg is Right--and Wrong--And Gone!

I Rise To Revise and Extend My Previous Remarks

[HEADLINE UPDATE: THURSDAY, JUNE 12] This piece was written this past Monday, when voting began among Democratic National Committee members on a conveniently-timed “procedural complaint unrelated to Hogg’s primary activities,” according to Politico, to void the election of David Hogg as DNC Vice Chair. Balloting is now over, and the vote to redo the election was 294-99.

Call me a cynic, but I suspect that the complaint from Kalyn Free, a Native American attorney and party activist who lost the February election to Hogg, might not have been awarded the “sure, let’s do the election over” treatment if it didn’t also serve another agenda.

As they like to say about building dramatic expectations (known as “Chekov’s Gun”) if you put a loaded gun on the stage in act one, some one is going to fire it by act three.

Bang, bang.

And bye bye, David Hogg—but I still hope you’ll stay inside the tent. (Yes, I realize this is an unfortunate metaphor. Oops).

After he lost the vote, David Hogg announced he won’t run again for vice chair, and everyone is making nice.

DNC Chair Ken Martin called Hogg a “powerful voice for this party” and released a statement

“commend[ing] David for his years of activism, organizing, and fighting for his generation, and while I continue to believe he is a powerful voice for this party, I respect his decision to step back from his post as Vice Chair. I have no doubt that he will remain an important advocate for Democrats across the map. I appreciate his service as an officer, his hard work, and his dedication to the party.”

And David Hogg said:

It is clear that there is a fundamental disagreement about the role of a Vice Chair — and it's okay to have disagreements. What isn't okay is allowing this to remain our focus when there is so much more we need to be focused on. Ultimately, I have decided to not run in this upcoming election so the party can focus on what really matters. I need to do this work with Leaders We Deserve, and it is going to remain my number one mission to build the strongest party possible."

As I wrote below, I think David Hogg can accomplish the “number one mission” of both Leaders We Deserve and the DNC—which starts with winning back the House, making Hakeem Jeffries Speaker and giving power to a new generation of leaders.

“If Congress had the same proportion of 25–30 year-olds as the US general population,” Hogg has said, “we would have over 40 members of congress under 30. Currently we have only one member under 30.”

(Yes, and that one member, Rep. Maxwell Frost, as I reveal below, may want to check out this movie).

I still stand by what I’ve been repeating here, and what I think David Hogg can do something about:

It’s the 42 percent solution—if you’re trying to “solve” how to keep political power in the hands of billionaires, special interests and oligarchs.

42 percent of young people ages 18-29 turned out to vote in 2024, according to data from the non-partisan research center CIRCLE, down from 50% in 2020.

But voters aged 50 or older were 52 percent of the electorate.

They’re the ones electing officials who won’t vote for gun safety, health care, voting rights, the environment, gender equality and racial justice, and all the other issues that younger voters care about.

{END HEADLINE UPDATE]

On a recent Zoom meeting with party officials, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin told his renegade Vice Chair David Hogg, according to Politico,

“I’ll be very honest with you, for the first time in my 100 days on this job … the other night I said to myself for the first time, I don’t know if I wanna do this anymore.

I don’t think you intended this, but you essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to. So it’s really frustrating.”

To review the charges against the 25-year old activist and survivor of the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Florida, who became Vice Chair of the DNC in February:

• Less than three months after his election to the DNC, David Hogg’s PAC—Leaders We Deserve, made headlines—and enemies— with their $20 million plan to primary Democrats

• He said, according to The New York Times, his party must squelch a pervasive “culture of seniority politics” that has allowed older and less effective lawmakers to continue to hold office at a moment of crisis.

• “This is going to anger a lot of people,” the Times quoted him saying. He predicted “a smear campaign against me” that would aim to “destroy my reputation and try to force me to stop doing this.”

• He was right.

• When the s$#!t hit the fan news broke, David Hogg said his PAC wouldn’t compete in the key battleground districts that will determine party control in 2026, nor would they go after elders who they admire, such as Nancy Pelosi and Jan Schwakowsky.

• The DNC is voting this week on whether to hold a second election for David Hogg’s post as part of a separate dispute (but conveniently coinciding with this one)

• Hogg says “we have to show our base right now that we are doing everything we can to fight back against Donald Trump, and that includes holding ourselves accountable."

• “The DNC has pledged to remove me," wrote Hogg. "This vote has provided an avenue to fast track that effort."

Meanwhile, along with the reaction from DNC Chair Martin (who says he is “not going anywhere and that he took “this job to fight Republicans, not Democrats”)

Rahm Emanuel

told Politico’s Dasha Burns that he’s mainly worried about that $20 million dollars.

He wants to spend $20 million on winning primaries, while Donald Trump is sitting on $600 million. We have to win the House!

What makes you so confident there's going to be other resources that are expendable on the targeted swing districts that you can go spend 20 million beating Democrats? In my view it’s an incredible waste of resources.

We don’t have $20 million to waste on Democratic primaries. Give me that $20 million in a targeted race, and you’ll pick up a seat—and you’ll stop Donald Trump dead in his tracks.

I have a history with Rahm Emanuel—in fact, we both began our political careers at the same time, winning election to the Sarah Lawrence College Student Senate.

That was my last campaign, but it wasn’t Rahm’s. He’s right to say that money can make a difference, and winning versus not winning one or two seats in the House means stopping or not stopping Trump.

I give Rahm credit for reinvigorating the Democratic Party in Congress with strategies that won back the House in 2006, and again in 2018. He is 100 percent right to be laser-focused on building another blue wave in 2026.

I’ve been saying the same thing here, responding to all the chatter about what Democrats should do, could do, are doing wrong or not doing at all.

The best way to feel better about what Democrats are doing is to get them the power they need to really do things. Otherwise, complaining about their messaging is just another conversation we’re having with ourselves.

It’s easy to find fault with the Democrats when they have no power to show what they’re made of.

Put Hakeem Jeffries in the Speaker’s Chair and give Jamie Raskin and other dynamic Democrats the power to set a new agenda and see what real leaders can do. In the meantime, watch them bring an alternative, powerful message that gives people who are turned off by politics something to vote for.

I understand Rahm’s point about not having $20 million to spare, but I’m not sure he’s on the, er, money. He and I both have worked as Democratic fundraisers, and we know what makes donors tick.

There’s going to be plenty of money in 2026 and 2028 to beat Republicans, particularly if the House remains a cluster bleep, with party control as gossamer as a strand of cotton candy. We’re in less danger of being outspent than we are of being outsmarted again, as we were when Trump and the Republicans built a new voting bloc no one saw coming.

It’s all going to be about those swing Districts, and I trust David Hogg not to put those in jeopardy. But I don’t fault him for making the point that representation matters.

And as Nancy Pelosi always says, no one hands you power, you have to seize it.

If that means that sometimes a long—very long—serving member of Congress in a solid blue safe Democratic district might be challenged by a Pelosi, an Ocasio-Cortez, or a Raskin,¹ that’s not the end of the world. Most of the time, big-city Democratic politics being what they are, the long—very long—serving member of Congress will win. But if they don’t, as Jimmy Buffet might say, it’s their own damn fault.Right, Joe Crowley?)

If David Hogg keeps his post at the DNC I hope he turns his attention to what I asked him about in this Spectacularly Ill-Timed Substack, which I posted mere hours before the story broke about his intention to challenge incumbents.

It’s the 42 percent solution—if you’re trying to “solve” how to keep political power in the hands of billionaires, special interests and oligarchs.

42 percent of young people ages 18-29 turned out to vote in 2024, according to data from the non-partisan research center CIRCLE, down from 50% in 2020.

But voters aged 50 or older were 52 percent of the electorate.

They’re the ones electing officials who won’t vote for gun safety, health care, voting rights, the environment, gender equality and racial justice, and all the other issues that younger voters care about.

David Hogg, Ken Martin and Rahm Emanuel want the same thing—to win back the House in 2026.

It’s not only about younger candidates. They’ll get elected in solid blue Districts, but what about where Republicans usually win? How do we get young people to vote not just for a Maxwell Frost, but for someone who can win in a swing District? (And build a path for a new generation to gain power in those places, too).

“Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty” didn’t make it as a political slogan, and the 1968 movie “Wild in the Streets” didn’t turn out to be prophetic—yet.

“If you’re under 25, you’re in the majority! And you can run the country!”

That was the message of the movie, starring Richard Pryor, Shelley Winters and Christopher Jones as a rock singer and revolutionary named, um, Max Frost, who calls for the voting age to be lowered to 14 and is elected President, and then makes 30 a mandatory retirement age and sends people over 35 to “re-education camps.”

The oracle Wikipedia prophesizes:

Max withdraws the military from around the world (turning them instead into de facto "age police"), puts computers and prodigies in charge of the gross national product, ships surplus grain for free to Third World nations, disbands the FBI and Secret Service, and becomes the leader of "the most truly hedonistic society the world has ever known".

On the other hand, we could figure out a way to increase Gen Z voting by four or five points, and win back the House.

1. I have history with Jamie Raskin, and was one of a small group that helped him win his first election, a primary challenge to Maryland State Senator Ida Ruben. Here’s the cover of our brochure. I’ve used the slogan, “The Democrat We Need” many times to convey the thought that there’s also a Democrat we don’t need.