David Hogg to the Democratic Establishment: Get the Message or Get Voted Out
to active and Organizer David Hogg says the future of the Democratic Party is clear: Candidates and establishment leaders “get the message or get out the vote.”
Speaking to WIRED Senior Political Editor Leah Feiger at The Big Interview in San Francisco on Thursday, Hogg said he “doesn’t think the Chuck Schumers of the world understand” how dire things could be for moderate, corporate-backed Democrats in 2026 and 2028.
“They think there’s going to be some sort of Democratic Tea Party, and a bunch of progressive leftists who are younger and super angry, and we’re going to vote for all these people, but I actually don’t think that’s the whole picture.” Haag said.
Boomers are probably the group most out of touch with their generation in Washington, D.C., Haug said. “Do you know why I say this?” Haag said. “That’s because the people who are marching by the millions right now in the Day Without Kings demonstrations aren’t young people, they’re people from Chuck Schumer’s generation who are very angry with him.”
Schumer’s rebukes of Haag weren’t his only anti-proliferation jabs during his speech, likening the current structure of Congress to “the end of the Soviet Union” when he said “leaders were dying over and over again because they were too old” and complained about establishment leadership at the recent Democratic National Committee, where Haag was vice chairman. While Hogg acknowledged that there are “a lot of big increases there,” he said part of the work we deserve as co-founders of the Leaders Group is a shift in the age and political focus of elected officials.
“What we’re trying to do with the leaders we deserve is not to choose younger versions of those who are already there,” Hogg says. We want to elect younger people who have a chance to be really honest, to back them with millions of dollars, for example to make sure they don’t take money from companies, [and ask] “That they support gun safety laws and that they can actually represent their constituents and not special interests.”
Hogg says young people want a candidate who they see as an outsider, which is why they were among New York City Mayor-elect Zahran Mamdani’s biggest supporters. Voters want a Democratic Party whose message is not “vote us because we’re not as bad as the Republicans,” but “vote us because we’re here to do for you,” Haug said.
