David Hogg and the Performative Politics of the Democratic Party

Normally, a vice chair (they don’t use “chairman” or even “chairperson”) of the Democratic Party isn’t a particularly newsworthy position. I mean, there are four of them. Can you name the other three? Forgive me if I don’t wait for you to Google their names. Hogg is newsworthy because he’s vowed to spend $20 million from his “Leaders We Deserve” PAC to challenge Democratic incumbents. As Karl Rove suggests, this might be more of a publicity stunt (of course) than a plausible threat. In the last cycle, the Leaders We Deserve PAC raised $11.9 million while spending a mere $266,000 on the leaders we allegedly deserve, Rove writes. That’s 2.2 percent. The other 97.8 percent went to operating costs, including Hogg’s salary. If those ratios stayed constant, they’d have to raise $909 million. Of course, the need to find leaders we deserve might induce them to up the percentage from 2.2 percent, even if that meant skimping on media bookers and hair product. 

Before I continue with the rank punditry, let me return once again to a regular theme here about weak parties, but also about weakening institutions.  With the possible exception of Yuval Levin himself, I think I might be the foremost promoter of his analysis of institutional decay in A Time To Build. The problem, as Remnant listeners and loyal G-File readers will recall, is that people use institutions as stages to perform on. Institutions are supposed to mold character toward the interests of the institution. Instead, people use institutions as platforms to get attention. You can think former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was a hero or a jerk for kneeling during the national anthem, but it’s indisputable that he used his membership in the NFL to promote his agenda at the expense of the institution that employed him. Meghan Markle used the institution of the British royal family to promote her own celebrity and cult of personality. Sometimes, the people who do this are careful to limit the harm to the institution they are exploiting for their own purposes. Sometimes, harming the institution is the point, because it is that very disloyalty that attracts attention. 

The examples of this kind of thing are legion. And Hogg is just the latest example. He is using his position within the Democratic Party to garner attention and money for his own agenda. Political parties are not mystical entities. They only exist for a few interrelated reasons. But the primary one is to simply get members of their party elected. You can gussy it up with some gauzy aspirational secondary rationalizations about ideology and principle. But those things apply to politicians, not apparatchiks of the party itself. If Hogg wants to support politicians more to his liking, that’s fine. But doing it while an official of the party is indefensible. 

There is nothing wrong with Lutherans trying to convert Catholics to Lutheranism. But a Catholic priest trying to dragoon Lutherans into the Catholic Church—not to make them Catholics but to make the church more Lutheran—is not, shall we say, consistent with the job description. 

Okay, back to the rank punditry. 

You might not think this is a big deal, in part because it might not end up being a big deal. Also, he’s getting most of what he wants from this stunt by announcing it. And I don’t just mean attention. Older—by which I mean just plain old—Democrats are getting the message. Like when the Denny’s manager signals that the Early Bird Special window has closed by stacking the chairs on the table, old Democrats are getting the hint that it’s time to start working on their memoirs. We’ve entered the Logan’s Run phase of Democratic internal politics. No, they’re not putting their elders in weird bodysuits and blowing them up as the kids shout “Renew!” But the young’ns are making themselves heard.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durban, 80, announced this week that he’s retiring. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, also 80, is expected to announce her retirement soon. San Francisco’s Democratic Party is considering mandatory retirement ages. Rumors that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is taking Steve Buscemi’s “Hello Fellow Kids” online courses, and has hired food tasters in furtherance of his desire to become the Deng Xiaoping of Democratic politics, could not be confirmed. 

Of course, one of the reasons the young’ns have the wind at their back is the debacle of Joe Biden. It’s not just that he was too old or infirm to run again—or really stay president. The whole Weekend at Bernie’s subterfuge understandably pissed off a lot of Democrats. The other reason is the generally hapless and feckless state of the Democratic Party. The theory seems to be that the reason the Democrats aren’t fighting back against Donald Trump more effectively is that it’s hard to march for justice while using a walker. Or something like that. It should be noted that if the Democratic Caucus in the House or Senate looked more like the cast of the Gilmore Girls than the Golden Girls, they still wouldn’t have the votes to thwart Trump. 

Now, despite my biases against Hogg and youth politics generally, I think the progressive Red Guard have a point. (That doesn’t excuse what Hogg is doing. You can simultaneously think Kaepernick had a good point about police abuse and think it was inappropriate for him to behave the way he did.)  There are too many oldsters in both parties. It’s not as dramatic as you might think. The median age of the House is 57.5. In the Senate, it’s 64.7. But as is always the case with youth movements, youth serves as cover for the real priorities—a desire for power and an ideological agenda. The desire for power part is not hard to explain. Politicians desire power. Young politicians always exaggerate the importance of youth because it’s their comparative advantage. Older politicians emphasize experience because that’s their comparative advantage. 

As for the ideology part, well, it’s worth noting that Bernie Sanders, who is 83 years old, recently filed paperwork to run for his Senate seat again … in 2030. And the Youth Brigades haven’t said boo about it. In other words, age is being weaponized against the Democrats the base doesn’t like, which is another way of saying age isn’t really the issue at all.         

I am torn.  Yesterday, I listened to Jamie Weinstein’s interview of Larry Diamond, an esteemed student of democracy and authoritarianism. I’m only exaggerating a little so I can use this clip from Monsters Inc., but Diamond’s position might be boiled down to, “It is my professional opinion that now is the time to panic!” Diamond, a very serious scholar, believes that Trump is moving in the direction of authoritarianism. He laid out his argument in an essay for Persuasion last February, “The Crisis of Democracy is Here.” No, he’s not Hitler. But Diamond sees Trump and his minions as moving in the direction of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

I find much of his argument sober and compelling. 

But I also read Bret Stephens’ New York Times column, “The Face-Plant President,” and heard him discuss it on the Commentary podcast. While he doesn’t put it in exactly these terms, he makes a convincing case that Trump is effectively destroying his presidency—and the GOP—on his own.  He opens with that famous quote from former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan that what statesmen fear most is “events, dear boy, events,” and, rather remarkably, Donald Trump is being undone by events of his own making. I agree with that, though I will annoyingly note that it’s not confirmed that MacMillan uttered that quote. 

The two views are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Diamond allows for Trump’s incompetence, and Stephens concedes Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. But there is more than a little tension all the same. If the strongest version of Diamond’s argument is right, finding reassurance in Trump’s determination to undermine his own presidency seems like a risk not worth taking. If the strongest version of Stephens’ case is right, then Trump will continue to step on garden rakes and his presidency will unravel on its own accord. Stephens nods to this in his concluding paragraph:

Democrats wondering how to oppose Trump most effectively might consider the following. Drop the dictator comparisons. Rehearse the above facts. Promise normality and offer plans to regain it. And remember that no matter how malignant he may be, there’s no better opponent than a face-plant president stumbling over his untied laces.

Take the advice to Democrats out of it for a moment. The most obvious problem with this sentiment is that Trump’s incompetence could very well be the reason he doubles down on authoritarianism. Indeed, this is often how it works. Authoritarians screw up the economy, which invites criticism, and because the authoritarian cannot fix the economy (for the same reasons they screwed up in the first place) they decide to silence the critics. Outrage over the crackdown and dissatisfaction with the economy threaten the authoritarian’s hold on power, so the authoritarian uses even more extra-legal mechanisms to stay in power. For every “successful” authoritarian like former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, there are a dozen unsuccessful ones who follow something like this pattern. Even discounting for non-authoritarian motivations—Trump doesn’t want to seem like a lame duck, Trumpists love trolling, Trump loves to monetize trolling—it’s not a great sign that Trump world is rolling out the Trump 2028 merch. It’s going to be a gas watching Republican senators explain why they are for Trump pursuing all legal options to run again rather than take their spines out of cold storage and explain that there are no legal options for him to run again. 

Indeed, that’s always been the pattern with Trump. It is his unfitness and incompetence that drives the effort to shore him up rather than discard him. His obvious ignorance has to be spun as a greater genius that we cannot see. Rather than marshal the moral courage to defend the rules and the institutions elected Republicans have quite literally sworn to defend, they pretend that some deus ex machina will kick in and solve the problem for them. This was true of the Republican Party in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Like Steve Gutenberg in Diner, they simply say, “It’s out of my hands.” Diamond rightly says this is the crux of the problem. So long as civic-minded Republicans, particularly in Congress, act as if they have no duty or obligation to say “Enough!” Trump and his willing accomplices will keep testing the system in pursuit of staying in power. 

Politically, I agree with Stephens—and James Carville—that the smartest thing for Democrats to do is let Trump continue to face-plant. But I can’t help but think that in 10 or 20 years, this might look like part of the democratic decay Diamond frets over. I don’t have a lot of confidence that a party being taken over by the Hoggses of the world will suddenly embark on rebuilding the guardrails Trump has torn down. Biden didn’t, and he was elected to restore “normalcy.” Biden’s lawless attempt to forgive student loans and his bullying of social media companies are part of the apocalyptic narrative the Trumpists use to justify Trump’s lawlessness. This sort of “you did it, so can we” logic has been the defining spirit of our politics for a decade now. When you point out that Trump’s targeting of political opponents is outrageous, the response from MAGA world is, “They tried to put Trump in jail!” I think some of the cases against Trump were wholly justified. But that’s not the point. Each side follows a version of the Chicago Way of politics. They bring a knife, you bring a gun. It doesn’t matter if the reality is not what the opposing side claims—what they imagine is all the permission they need. Biden didn’t pack the Supreme Court, but the belief that he might cave to the Hogg types partly fueled the panic on the right and further justified rallying around Trump. 

I’ve complained a lot about how Trump has taught a generation of young Republicans that politics is all about “cry more, lib” tactics. But he’s also taught a whole generation of Democrats that they should fight fire with fire. I mean, Hogg launched a pillow company to compete with Mike Lindell. You know, because that’ll show the MAGAs. It’s all so stupid. But it’s also dangerous. 

Canine Update: So the other morning, I put Zoë in the car for the morning walk. But I left Pippa out of the car while I put the trash cans out for pickup. While I was doing that, a man came by with a pit-bully dog. Zoë went ballistic inside the car, like some action movie hero trapped outside the airlock while the alien threatened the crew. Pippa rose to the occasion.  She had her ball in her mouth, as per procedure, but knew she had to defend our turf. So she got on our front lawn and barked at the bemused intruder, all while upholding her fiduciary obligation to keep her ball in her mouth. You try to shout, “Get out of here mean dog!” with a ball in your mouth. It’s not easy. Meanwhile, this morning, I found Pippa watching what we call the Dog TV (an open window in the guest room). She was contemplative. But when I approached her, she agreed to come on the walk if I paid the spaniel geld an extended belly rub. Zoë eventually came upstairs and yelled at us for allowing such decadence to take precedence over the morning mission. Speaking of quadruped extortion, we are still willing victims of Chester’s extortion racket. In other news, out of respect for Easter, Zoë suspended rabbit-chasing for 24 hours. And Kirsten captured a rare smile from Dark Pippa. 

Owner’s Name: Michael Green

Why I’m a Dispatch Member: I appreciate The Dispatch because its politics match closely with my beliefs, but it is much more than that. The articles have a sophistication and depth that is difficult to find these days. I was a Republican for a long time, but I am ideologically homeless now. If The Dispatch started a political party, I would be one of the first to join.

Personal Details: We live in Bermuda because that is where my wife is from. I grew up in Texas and lived in D.C. for 15 years before coming here. Bermuda is a great place to raise children because it is basically a small town with beautiful scenery, mild weather, and an international airport. One difference with the U.S. is that new 16-year-old drivers can only drive motorbikes. My son is about to turn 16, and it makes me nervous to know that the worst drivers are forced to use the most dangerous vehicles.

Pet’s Name: Indy, short for Indiana.

Pet’s Breed: Bernedoodle

Gotcha Story: Bermuda has no rabies. In order to get a new puppy, one must get it directly from somewhere that also does not have rabies, which generally means the U.K. Our pup came from Scotland after overnighting at the airport in Heathrow. He still loves to be outside when the weather is gray, drizzly, and windy. We named him Indy because we already had backyard chickens with state names, and it seemed like a good trend to continue. There also is the line from the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “We named the dog Indiana.”

Pet’s Likes: His favorite game is to be chased, which is very annoying after he has grabbed the TV remote or something off the counter. He also loves socks. If you leave a sock on the ground for even a moment, he will pounce on it and joyfully run around the house. He also likes to be cradled in my arms on his back like a baby, which is really weird when you consider that he weighs 60 pounds.

Pet’s Dislikes: Our backyard chickens. He can’t understand why we let them live. He also dislikes the heat because he has a lot of fur, which we shave in the summer. 

Pet’s Proudest Moment: He is very fast and seems to mock me when I can’t catch him. When he was younger, he proudly showed off his collection of sticks, rocks, and leaves at the backdoor.

Bad Pet: Property boundaries in Bermuda often are marked with thick hedges. Indy figured out how to climb through the hedge into the neighbor’s yard and proceeded to poop by their pool. After he did it for the third time, our patient neighbor had some stern words and we had to install an electronic fence system.

Do you have a quadruped you’d like to nominate for Dispawtcher of the Week and catapult to stardom? Let us know about your pet by clicking here. Reminder: You must be a Dispatch member to participate.

—But why haven’t we gone back??

—Not in Trump’s back yard!

—What’s really going on here?

—The Monkees go girl group