Time to Play Hardball with Democrats Who Won't
"Don't change generals during war" is bullshit not successful military leader has ever believed and more...
On February 14, 1998, an armed, 19-year-old, former student attacked Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, outside Miami. The assault left 17 dead and 18 injured. It was a horror show, so much so that you’d expect the surviving students to retreat to heal. Thing is, humans are strange creatures. Sometimes when we meet trauma, we withdraw; but, often, trauma propels us to act. That is what happened with a group of Parkland survivors.
One of the students who rose up is David Hogg, who with his kid sister and some friends, became gun control activists. After some time lobbying political leaders and lawmakers, and finding little to no success with the Trump administration and Florida’s Republican power structure, Hogg got loud. He was attacked by right-wing politicians and others including Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who used her attacks on Hogg to help her get elected to Congress. Hogg and his family also endured swatting attempts and death threats. Hogg responded by organizing smarter.
Realizing that unless you have allies in power, your protests accomplishe nothing legislatively concrete, Hogg got involved in electoral politics. In 2023, he helped found a PAC called Leaders We Deserve (LWD), intent on “[helping] young, progressive candidates around the country get elected to state legislatures and the U.S. Congress." One of LWD’s successes is the election of 25-year-old Floridian and March for Our Lives activist Max Frost to the US House of Representatives. In 2025, at 24 years of age, Hogg was elected Vice Chair of the Democratic Party.
Since his election as Vice Chair, Hogg has pushed hard for Democratic Party leaders to stand strong against Trump. Met again with weak words and no action, Hogg has decided to become an even bigger pain in the ass. On April 15, Hogg started to apply big pressure: He vowed to use Leaders We Deserve to fund primary challenges to sluggish Democrats representing safe districts. The response to Hogg has ranged from “Finally!” to “Oh nooooo!” Centrists have accused him of attacking his own. Normally reliable progressives like Charles Pierce call Hogg’s effort “ill-advised and badly timed.” Me? I say, “Bring it on, David! Bring it on!”
We are four months into the second Trump administration and nearly everything has been a disaster. Top of the disaster is Trump’s rule, which is as cruel and unhinged as expected, but has come far faster and with less restraint than in the first Trump go-around. Trump’s success in trashing things so quickly is thanks in part to another disaster, Democratic Party leadership, which has given us weakness and nothing.
Chuck Schumer is lost in some fantasy land where simply lowering his glasses so he can appear serious while he does his school marm scold is effective opposition. Hakeem Jeffries is – hell, I don’t know what Jeffries is: inept, absent, absurd? He certainly isn’t the Nancy Pelosi of Trump’s first term, but neither is Nancy Pelosi. Yes, she took a shot at Schumer for his Trump budget cave-in, but a few days later, when no one was looking, she threw her full support behind Schumer.
Schumer’s second Dick Durbin has been his usual ineffective. Amy Klobuchar is Amy Klobuchar, which means most punches are pulled or pulled back once launched. Cory Booker has been good in the spotlight, but has nothing to show for it but headlines. The only “party elder” who has repeatedly spoken up is Hilary Clinton, who is genetically incapable of backing down to Trump, but her husband Bill? He seems to think folksy charm is how you confront MAGA. Al Gore? Is he even alive?
Barack Obama was silent until a couple weeks ago, when tens of millions took to the street. Then he went silent again until Trump attacked his alma mater Harvard. That B. Obama came out stronger in defense of Harvard than he has the Constitution or democracy does little to snuff accusations that Democrats are elitists. Michelle Obama is as bad, scorning politics for a lifestyle podcast, following her friends Oprah, Harry, and Megan down the path of fluffy narcissism and annoyance.
Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, and Bernie Sanders are technically in leadership roles, but nothing influential, so their efforts have been marginalized through lack of institutional support. Seriously, Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez – acting like a true leader – are drawing huge crowds in “hostile territory” like Omaha, Nebraska, Nampa, Idaho, and Folsom, California, with no support from the Democratic leadership, the DNC, or even state and local Dem leaders (though Folsom is a 45-minute drive from the State Capital, in traffic, was “Resistance governor” Gavin Newsom at the rally? Not that I can tell. Too risky for his political ambitions).
I’m not going to say that we’ve been abandoned by “The Democrats,” as there are plenty of Democrats, both elected and at the grassroots, who have been fighting furiously to save what we have from Trump and his henchmen. However, we have certainly been abandoned by leadership, the elders, and Democratic centrists at a moment when we need every single Democrat to emulate Mario Savio:
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
That is not happening. Instead, we’ve got Schumer playing Neville Chamberlain and every other Democratic leader and elder playing with their food, a message to their underlings to stay the course, without considering once that it is Trump who has set the course and that course is dictatorship, a goal of his that has been clear since 2016.
And, it’s not like Democratic leadership does not have an example of how to deal with Trump’s power lust. During his first term, when Trump played bully, Nancy Pelosi punched him in the face, not once, not twice, but over and over and over. Every time Trump needed to be punched, whether the Dems held Congress or not, Pelosi smacked him silly. At the very least, it kept him frazzled and distracted. As far as Dem elders go, only the late Jimmy Carter broke the obsolete “rule” that ex-president lay off the current occupant. Carter repeatedly criticized Trump. No former president has followed Carter’s lead. This absence of true leadership and the feebleness and silence by Dem leaders and elders has contributed to our constitutional crisis and the dawn of a Trump dictatorship.
In April 1861, the Confederate Army attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina to start the American Civil War. At that time, Ulysses Grant was a retired soldier working as a clerk in his dad’s leather shop. Grant was tapped to train soldiers and after a few months was given a minor leadership role thanks to his rep as a hard-ass obsessed with victory. A year later, some substantial victories led President Lincoln to appoint Grant major general, which gave him more responsibilities and led to more victories. In 1864, after important victories at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, Grant was promoted once again and given complete control over the Union Army. On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee was forced to surrender at the Appomattox Court House. The Union won the war.
The main criticism directed at David Hogg and Leaders We Deserve is that “you don’t change leadership during a war,” something that no successful military leader has ever believed, but which always gets airing by those who do not want to let go of power. It is something we’ve heard from Democratic leaders, especially centrists, every time they are challenged from within the party, no matter how politically peaceful or not things are…and it is complete bullshit.
When you are getting thumped and your leaders are not strong enough, competent enough, or willing to fight to win, you get rid of them and replace them with people who can do the job. Lincoln had absolutely no problem replacing failed military leadership with a strong fighter, which is why Grant rose up and up and up in the ranks, each time replacing someone who was far less effective than he was. And as Grant rose, so did others, who also replaced those who lacked the skills, drive, or will to win.
Replacing failed leadership in a time of war is not just a good thing, it is the necessary move, especially if keeping shitty leadership hurts the morale of the troops. I mean, why give it your all, if your leaders can’t or won’t?
Needless to say, I am whole hog on David Hogg and his mission.