The Current State of the Democratic Party

That’s David Hogg. He was a survivor of the Majorie Stoneham Douglas - Parkland shooting, which made him into a gun control activist, amoungst being involved with other political endeavors. In 2023, he co-founded Leaders We Deserve, a group dedicated to electing young progressives. Earlier this year, he was elected, along with Artie Blanco and Malcolm Kenyatta, as the Vice Chairs of the DNC.

Here’s the thing.

The purpose of a political party is supposed to be to get members of their party elected to various offices. As part of this, political tacticians will tell you, is to hold the seat once it has been won. `

Leaders We Deserve has a plan in 2026 to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents. Source. Even more information here.

I am gobsmacked.

Do we need to mentor and train young people to build a base of candidates? Absolutely. Do we need to engage young people, overall, as regards voting and other political participation? Critically, yes.

Is challenging Democratic incumbents in primaries in safe blue districts in 2026 going to have the effect of building the party and winning elections we need to win? Not a chance. There are FAR BETTER uses for the $20 million Leaders We Deserve is committed to spending.

First and foremost is the math. Hogg wants to run people in SAFE BLUE DISTRICTS. We already have those seats, and they do not add up to a majority in the House. If I were in charge of spending $20 million next year on election races, I’d spend it on seats Rethuglicans won BARELY because that would give us the majority with the least amount of effort.

Here are eight seats which we have a high probability of capturing/re-capturing. BTW, “PVI” stands for Partisan Voting Index. These races were really close last year. All of these districts have the ability to attract top-notch Democratic candidates. From Cook¹:

I seriously need someone to explain to me why it is better to challenge incumbents who will, with 99.9% certainty, hold their seats, when we are just a few seats short of the majority?

Primarying an incumbent is a crap shoot. It’s a lot of money, and win or lose, the eventual candidate is somewhat damaged. In the general, if the challenger wins, he/she loses the benefit of incumbency. While numbers vary, on average, incumbency is worth about 2.6 points, which matters when elections are close. The vast majority of incumbents are re-elected (data points) and who doesn’t remember the Eddie Murphy movie The Distinguished Gentleman? No? Murphy’s character gets elected to Congress only because he shares his name with the incumbent Rep, who died. More info. In the current environment, I don’t think it’s a good approach to put sure seats at risk.

Then there’s the age factor. Hogg’s group is committed to only running candidates for Federal elections who are under 35 years of age. That means if they wanted to, they could challenge Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because she’s not “young enough”. And they aren’t planning on challenging any Democratic Senators next year, but Bernie Sanders will be 84 next year: he’s not up for re-election, but if he were, would they want to challenge him? Jeez.

I hear you, members of the progressive left: The Democratic Party is fossilized. They’re not doing what they should be doing because they’re too embedded, and stuck in the past. They’re not standing up to the fascist regime. They’re not out and about daily giving news conferences, making speeches and holding town halls. If only we had better candidates, all of those Democrats who didn’t vote in 2024 would vote in 2026.

So let’s assume for the moment that the progressives are correct in what they want. What percentage of the Democratic Party is progressive, liberal, or moderate, and in which direction should the party move? These are important questions if our prime directive is to win elections. We also need to think about the people who WERE Democratic voters who voted for the regime last November. This is the crux of the schism about what the Democratic Party needs to do to bring back voters, and win the types of elections, up and down the ballot, that we lost last November.

So, where does the party stand? Good question, because the available data is in some ways contradictory. Most Democrats currently self-describe as Liberal: (Source.)

HOWEVER² (Source.)

It makes little sense. Do current Liberals want to BE more moderate, or do they want the party to be more moderate while they stay Liberal?

But no matter how you slice and dice the numbers, we all know that what we need as a party is action NOW, along with finding ways to work together, and not as a circular firing squad. Eating our own is not a good thing, unless there is someone who is really terrible³.

A vice chair of the party should NOT be working against incumbents. If Hogg wants to do that, he really should resign from the party. Leading a charge against the party regulars is only going to split the party more than we are discombobulated now, and will end up costing us seats we really shouldn’t lose. Potentially directly, but moreover by spending money on what should be safe races when those dollars should be going to tight races where the money would make the difference.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Sigh.

Tomorrow, for the Friday Potpourri — few words and lots of pictures I’ve been collecting.

1. Larry Sabato of UVA says 13 Rethuglican seats are in play.

2. I cut off the Rethuglican responses because I don’t care.

3. Even then, it often doesn’t work: I’m thinking of YOU Henry Cuellar, sole Democratic House member who votes against any abortion rights, and yet has won against the last two from-the-left Democratic primary challengers, and has held the Texas 28th since 2005.