The Democratic Party's David Hogg Problem: Right Solution, Wrong Reasons
They absolutely needed to get rid of him, but they don't understand why he was such a problem.
The Democratic National Committee made the right call when 75% of its members voted to oust David Hogg from his vice chair position this week.
But like so much of what Democrats do these days, they did it for entirely the wrong reasons, and in doing so, revealed exactly why their party continues to hemorrhage credibility with ordinary Americans.
The Procedural Theater
Let's start with what actually happened, because the official story is political theater at its most transparent. Kalyn Free, an Oklahoma committee member who lost to Hogg in February's vice chair race, filed a challenge claiming the election violated gender parity rules through flawed ballot tabulation. The DNC's Credentials Committee dutifully found procedural violations, recommended a do-over election, and the full committee voted overwhelmingly to vacate Hogg's position.
Hogg himself wasn't buying the procedural excuse.
"It is impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote," he said in his statement. For once, the 25-year-old Parkland survivor was absolutely right.
This wasn't about parliamentary procedure. This was about a party establishment recognizing an existential threat to their electoral viability and moving to neutralize it, while being too intellectually dishonest to say so publicly.
The Real Threat Hogg Represented
Here's what actually spooked Democratic leadership: Hogg announced his organization Leaders We Deserve would spend $20 million to primary "out-of-touch, ineffective" Democratic incumbents in safe blue districts. His target? Older lawmakers he deemed insufficiently aggressive in opposing Trump, particularly those who weren't meeting the expectations of young progressive voters whose approval of congressional Democrats has cratered to 23%—a 19-point drop since 2017.
DNC Chair Ken Martin tried to frame this as a neutrality issue, arguing party officers can't be "both the referee and also the player at the same time." But as Hogg correctly pointed out, other party committees regularly intervene in primaries, and past DNC vice chairs have endorsed candidates without consequence.
The truth is simpler and more damning: Democratic leadership looked at Hogg's agenda and recognized it would push their party even further from the political center at precisely the moment they desperately need to move back toward it.
The Wrong Kind of Reform
This is where the story gets complicated, because while the DNC was right to get rid of Hogg, they were right for reasons they're either too cowardly or too clueless to articulate publicly.
Hogg positioned himself as a reformer responding to a legitimate crisis. And make no mistake—the Democratic Party is in crisis. Trump won decisively despite being a twice-impeached former president facing multiple criminal cases. Democrats lost ground with virtually every demographic group. Their brand is toxic enough that even their own young base increasingly rejects them.
But Hogg's solution—primarying incumbents for being insufficiently progressive, elevating younger candidates who would pull the party further left—represents exactly the wrong diagnosis of what ails the Democratic Party.
The problem isn't that Democrats haven't been progressive enough. The problem is that progressive politics, particularly as practiced by younger activists like Hogg, has become increasingly disconnected from the concerns and values of the working-class voters Democrats claim to represent.
The Immune System Response
What we witnessed with Hogg's ouster was less like a referee making neutral calls and more like an immune system fighting off a perceived virus. The Democratic establishment instinctively recognized that Hogg's brand of reform would accelerate their march toward political irrelevance.
But here's the tragic irony: they couldn't say so honestly. Instead of making the substantive argument that hard-left progressivism is electorally suicidal, they hid behind procedural technicalities and neutrality principles. This cowardice reveals exactly why Democrats continue to struggle—they lack the intellectual honesty to confront their own strategic failures.
The Generational Divide Trap
Hogg framed his mission in generational terms, arguing the party needed younger leaders to energize younger voters. On the surface, this makes intuitive sense. Surely a party led by octogenarians needs fresh blood?
But this misses the deeper problem: the generational divide within the Democratic Party isn't just about age—it's about ideology. Democratic voters under 30 have moved dramatically leftward on issues from capitalism to foreign policy to social issues. Meanwhile, older moderate voters—including many Democrats—are increasingly uncomfortable with this progressive drift.
Elevating younger progressive candidates doesn't solve this problem; it exacerbates it. Every AOC-style primary winner in a safe blue district might energize the young progressive base, but it also provides Republicans with another example of Democratic extremism to showcase to moderate suburbanites.
The Electoral Mathematics
House Democrats like Hillary Scholten understood this instinctively when she criticized Hogg's plan: "Fighting Democrats might get likes online, but it's not what restores majorities." She grasped what Hogg apparently didn't—that in a closely divided country, Democrats can't afford factional warfare that moves them further from the center.
Hogg argued his approach was a "controlled burn" to prevent "a wildfire that burns everything down." But controlled burns only work if you understand the terrain. Hogg's burn would have cleared out the very moderate voices Democrats need to remain competitive in purple America.
The Path Forward for Democrats
It may irritate some of you, but I want to be as objective as possible here. The good news is that because I’m right of center, no Democrat reading this is going to think I am giving trustworthy advice. So we’re safe.
The Democratic Party does need reform desperately. They need leaders who can articulate a vision that appeals to working families without alienating suburban moderates. They need to rediscover economic populism that doesn't come wrapped in cultural progressivism that turns off half the country.
Most importantly, they need the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that their current trajectory leads to permanent minority status in a country that has drifted center-right.
But that's not the reform David Hogg was offering. His brand of change (more progressive, more confrontational, more ideologically pure) represents doubling down on the very approaches that have left Democrats struggling to connect with ordinary Americans.
The Deeper Dysfunction
The real tragedy of the Hogg episode isn't that the DNC removed a disruptive vice chair. It's that they did so while refusing to engage honestly with the substantive questions he raised about party direction.
Instead of explaining why progressive purity is electorally toxic, they hid behind procedure. Instead of making the case for pragmatic centrism, they invoked neutrality principles. Instead of defending their strategic vision, they simply expelled the dissenter.
This cowardice—this inability to engage in honest strategic debate—is exactly why the Democratic Party continues to struggle. They know instinctively that Hogg's approach would be politically suicidal, but they lack the courage to say so publicly.
Until Democrats develop the intellectual honesty to confront their own strategic failures directly, they'll continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, alienating voters and losing elections they should win.
David Hogg was the wrong messenger with the wrong message at the wrong time. The DNC was right to get rid of him. They just need to find the courage to explain why.