Hogg threatens he will accept removal and martyrdom rather than tolerate interference in his quest to unseat the insufficiently progressive.
It’s time for a quick update on everybody’s favorite whisper-thin activist David Hogg, once known for his ineffectual anti-gun demagoguery as leader of the post-Parkland “March for Our Lives,” but now making waves — okay, gentle ripples, perhaps; the man weighs 110 lbs and has arms like matchsticks, after all — for his recent election as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee. I’ve been tracing this jolly journey all the way from its inception, back when Hogg was awarded the position in an internal DNC election by the sorts of electors (desperate to reclaim a disenchanted 2024 youth vote) out of touch enough to decide that this guy was the solution to their problems.
Since then, of course, Hogg has proven to be more than a mere cipher, an easygoing “front” for the real decision-makers in the party power structure. (I have to laugh, because this would actually have been the clever long-term move.) No, instead, this dumb kid really means it with all that damn youth activism nonsense. He set up his own Super PAC — concurrent with his role at the DNC — to fundraise against his party’s own incumbents. Using the access to DNC fundraising lists his official position affords him, he has announced that come hell or high water, he is going to help take out “asleep-at-the-wheel incumbents” in safe Democratic districts, to make the party more progressive, younger, and woker.
If you aren’t at least chuckling grimly at this, then I’m afraid you may be reading the wrong publication. You’d have to be completely bereft of a sense of humor not to appreciate the boomeranging irony of it all: “O cursed monkey paw, grant us a political influencer who will make media headlines and stir up young activist progressives!” Wish granted, Democrats!
I concluded my column last week by writing, “Expect the rest of the party to move swiftly to suppress Hogg’s efforts to play a cynical inside-outside game with the official party.” The DNC was either going to nip this sort of open rebellion in the bud or face the prospect of blowing a remarkably winnable 2026 midterm election in a civil war with its own freak-set. And today the DNC lowered the boom, delivering an ultimatum to Hogg: Either drop your association with the Leaders We Deserve PAC (which he co-founded) or quit immediately.
The verdict is as yet undetermined — though Hogg threatens he will accept removal and martyrdom rather than tolerate interference in his quest to unseat the insufficiently progressive — and I can’t quite tell you which outcome I would prefer more. There is a certain joy at seeing Hogg forced to officially bend the knee, but ultimately I suspect I’d prefer the chaos of civil war as he quits in a furiously principled huff and goes to war with Chuck Schumer or one of any five inattentive California Democratic House incumbents next fall. (I will remind you: He has been able to fundraise off the DNC’s full contact list for his private PAC.) I root for Democratic chaos in all events, and I’m happy to say that in this case either outcome promises what I crave most: either political or moral collapse.