David Hogg, Victim of Wokeness
No wonder the Democrats are having a young male voter problem!
David Hogg is a 25-year-old political activist and, for now, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. A survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Hogg first drew national attention for speaking out vigorously in favor of gun control. He has since become an all-purpose progressive campaigner.
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He is controversial, even among Democratic circles, because he has clashed with the party's establishment. He previously pledged to spend $20 million to primary members of his own party, though he insisted that he would only target Democrats who reside in safe districts. His thinking is that elected Democrats are too old and that the current iteration of the party fails to appeal to younger voters, particularly young males. Hogg is definitely onto something there: Donald Trump made huge inroads with Gen Z voters, in part because Democratic messaging to young men failed to resonate with them.
Hogg made a version of this argument on Bill Maher's show last weekend, and the comedian was impressed enough to give Hogg a standing ovation and shake his hand. Hogg also won over centrist Democratic strategist James Carville, who had previously called him a "twerp."
But Hogg has not won over everybody. On the contrary, the DNC is trying to oust him as vice chair. And the reason for that is, frankly, hilarious.
Kalyn Free, a 61-year-old woman with Native American ancestry and a rival candidate, filed a complaint that Hogg's election as vice chair had violated certain DNC bylaws designed to promote gender-based equity. Essentially, she argued that the process was unfair because it was not sufficiently rigged in favor of her as a woman. For now, the DNC is buying it and has taken steps to void Hogg's election. The party may schedule a redo, which would require Hogg to rerun for the vice chair position.
What's funny about all this is that it illustrates the DNC's precise problem with appealing to young male voters. Essentially, the DNC is clinging to its principles of identity politics, affirmative action, and gender-based preferencing—concepts that are toxic to most voters, including many Democratic voters—to undo the election of a younger, more rebellious political actor in favor of an older woman.
I don't know whether Hogg's ideas for winning elections are better than Kalyn Free's. But I suspect that constantly overlooking and overriding younger Democrats will continue to hurt the party's appeal. Moreover, voiding the election of a young, male Democrat for an explicitly identity-based reason does not exactly suggest that the party is trying hard to shed its image as an enforcer of culturally woke orthodoxy. The DNC can't complain that voters, particularly Gen Z males, are skeptical that Democrats have their best interests in mind and actually value them as potential sources of support. Unless they make a much more strident effort to distance themselves from extremely unpopular—indeed, cringe—progressive norms like pronoun policing, identity politics, land acknowledgements, and all the rest of the woke milieu, the Dems might as well be the Ruthkanda Forever Party.
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