lkjlk
My colleague Tom Knighton wrote about Hogg’s interest a couple of weeks ago, when Politico reported that Hogg was a “potential” candidate for one of the DNC’s multiple vice chairs, calling it “too glorious not to hope for”.
Hogg’s entire repertoire of political insight revolves not around original ideas but in simply saying things other people said before that he can repeat and try to sound smart. Yeah, he graduated from Harvard, but as we know how he got in, we have to recognize that the school probably isn’t all its reputation suggests.
If he were to make a run for vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, it would just be more of the same.
Realistically, though, I do have to say that if he does run, he’s making the smarter decision to run for vice chair rather than anything else. If the DNC does decide to trend younger, as the article is actually suggesting, then Hogg would provide a younger counterpoint to Zogby in a race that isn’t as attractive to a lot of folks as the chair might be.
As it stands, he has absolutely no real experience, so a vice chairmanship is about as high as he should probably reach.
Granted, I’m not exactly following the DNC’s leadership elections all that closely, but I haven’t noticed any groundswell of grassroots support for Hogg as vice chair on social media over the past two weeks. Still, while the anti-gun activist hasn’t officially thrown his beanie into the ring, he’s keeping his options open.
Asked about this report Thursday on CNN, Hogg confirmed that it’s legit.
“I’m considering it because I think that, one, obviously, I think we need a new generation in the DNC if this election has taught us nothing else,” he began. “I think we need an intergenerational coalition as a party.”
“The thing that I’ve realized more than anything is that we have a number of problems in the party, but I think the main one overall is that we would rather live in a comfortable delusion than an uncomfortable reality. And I think what the party needs to do is open its eyes and take its fingers out of its ears basically,” he added.
So what is that delusion? Hogg told CNN its that “we can just surround ourselves with people who agree with us a lot of the time, in terms of party leadership and also within the party itself and think that’s who we need to be talking to constantly instead of listening to people who don’t agree with us.”
Not that we inherently agree with them, but I think that so much the issue we have as a party right now is a kind of condescending tone that we have in a number of ways where we’re seen as elitist, as out of touch, and I think there are real conversations that we need to have and we also need to help more, not just young people, but people from normal backgrounds runinng for office.
Hogg tried to do that this election cycle, but his Leaders We Deserve PAC faired poorly. Of the 12 candidates for various offices it endorsed, just five of them won their campaigns, and only one could possibly be considered an upset.
The only competitive race that a Leaders We Deserve candidate won was a state House seat in North Carolina. Dante Pittman, who didn’t include gun control in his list of priorities on his campaign website, was elected to HD-24 in a 51-49 victory over Republican Ken Fontenot. Less than 1,000 votes separated the two candidates, but Pittman still managed to knock off an incumbent… just like Fontenot did two years ago. Fontenot was actually the first Republican elected to HD-24 in twenty years, so Pittman’s victory isn’t a complete surprise either.
Still, that’s the only race where Hogg could conceivably argue that his political organization made a difference. In every other race Leaders We Deserve was involved in, their candidates either won safe seats in Democratic strongholds or were defeated by their Republican opponents; a decidedly unimpressive performance for the gun control activist and his PAC.
If the DNC wants to hitch its wagon to David Hogg, I don’t think they’ll get too many complaints from Second Amendment advocates. Personally, I’d prefer that both major political parties treated the Second Amendment as a fundamental civil right worth protecting.
I’d also like a cure for cancer and the repeal of the NFA, and I don’t expect either of those things anytime soon either. So long as the Democrats are marching in lockstep with the gun control lobby, it’s better for us and our rights if they have ineffective and polarizing figures at the helm.
Read the full article here
