The Democrats have decided to cling to the worst of their coalition, and to forefront it.

Some words of wisdom from David Hogg, youthful anti-gun progressive activist and now — after this weekend — vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee: “I’m never planning on having kids. I would much rather own a Porsche and have a Portuguese water dog and golden doodle. Long term it’s cheaper, better for The environment and will never tell you that it hates you or ask you to pay for college.” My Democratic friends, behold your new official brand ambassador!

A brief note, because Jim Geraghty addressed David Hogg’s election once already for us here at National Review. For those of us unfortunate enough to have witnessed Hogg’s entire bildungsroman — from the day he used his status as a survivor of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., to vault himself to national political fame with the “March for Our Lives” — his continued ascent in the ranks of party power is dismaying to many but riotously funny to me. In no way is it unexpected, however.

Because Hogg — I would very much like to call him “Boss Hogg” from now on, but it’s hard to imagine this kid in charge of anything, even the fumbling effort to bring down those ol’ Duke boys — might as well have been struck from a mold for this position: young, semi-competent, desperate to be “in the game” in some fashion, and pliable. An easily guided novice, in other words, one who has actively aspired to this role since adolescence.

Now I’m going to level with you and say that I don’t think the Democratic Party’s fortunes in 2026 depend one iota on what David Hogg does or does not do. He is a figurehead, a prow sculpture carved out of balsa wood helming a leaky, lashed-together Democratic boat. Jim’s piece mentioned above spent most of its time on that aspect of things — the process that led to the selection of Ken Martin as head of the DNC was a embarrassingly public revelation of a party in disarray — and I would add only that it might not even matter. There are far better reasons than the presence of some semi-anonymous functionaries within the DNC to suspect that Democrats will have a solid 2026, including historical patterns and the potential for Trump’s sweeping policy changes to backfire.

But there is one other interesting aspect to the selection of Hogg. Beyond any doubt he is meant to be a symbolic sop to the young voters in the Democratic coalition — or at least what the old folks think kids are looking for these days — and in that sense it’s worth pointing out that his pessimistically gloomy worldview (as quoted at the start) does represent a real segment of the Zoomer generation: the losing segment.

For it really is quite amazing that after the 2024 loss and all the “what went wrong” hand-wringing among Democratic commentators and grandees — “we went too far with woke!” and the like — the choices the Democrats made to lead their party suggest they’ve not moved an inch off their old positions yet. Hogg is an avatar of the past, not the future. The Democrats either looked back at their failures with complete incomprehension, or decided they simply can’t quit being who they are.

In a psychological sense it’s understandable enough; Democrats aren’t prepared to abandon the woke-ist parts of their coalition at this paralyzing moment in time, precisely because they’ve already been abandoned by most everyone else. If you’re floating in the ocean on a plank of driftwood after a shipwreck, do you let go of the one plank of driftwood in the hopes a life raft will come bobbing by? No, you cling to what you have, for your life.

So the Democrats have decided to cling to the worst of their coalition, and to forefront it. Friedrich Hayek once pointed out that the problem with all large, powerful, nondemocratic institutions — particularly those with left-wing underpinnings — is that empirically, the worst inevitably tend to get on top. It is the nature of the machine, a product of its operation and existing incentive structures. Which is why I re-emphasize how unsurprising David Hogg’s political ascent to internally elected power has been: Given the party’s sclerotically hidebound decision-making apparatus, of course the DNC would find itself turning to someone like Hogg in a desperate attempt to connect with the “youth vote.” David Hogg is an old person’s idea of a young person.

And with that in mind I would like to end on one final quote from the Democratic National Committee’s newest vice-chair: “I’m one of the most politically toxic people in the country and I’m too radical for American politics. No, I’m not running for office. We have enough straight white men in power. It’d be nice to see some people who actually look like our country and not privilege.” I’m glad Boss Hogg changed his mind a mere two years after he wrote that, and that now we’ll have him to kick around for the next few years. But he had it right the first time.