David Hogg on next-gen Dem politics

**Brian Lehrer** (0:05)
From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast. It's Tuesday, August 18th.
Now we continue our three-part series this week on debates within different political groups in this country. We discussed the Democratic Socialists yesterday. Tomorrow will be the Conservative Heritage Foundation. Today, right now, the Democratic Party. This, of course, has been very much in the news this year, right, with the various primaries between candidates who often get labeled moderate or progressive, even though that shorthand can be incomplete or misleading. But the Democratic Party itself as an institution is also going through turmoil and division. Just this weekend, as the AP reports, maybe you heard this, at the Democratic National Committee summer meeting, the committee approved dueling messages on whether ICE should be abolished or reformed. In May, the party released its long-awaited autopsy report on why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump and the party lost both houses of Congress in 2024 The rollout was such a disaster that the party released and disavowed its own report at the same time. It didn't mention Joe Biden's decision to run for reelection in the first place, despite his various medical conditions. It also did not include the words Gaza or Israel. Then two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that according to the man who wrote the autopsy, there was an actual missing chapter. It says the chapter raised pointed questions that were notably absent from the draft that the party put out, both about Biden's decision to run and the sway of an operative class that had become what the autopsy writer Paul Rivera described as, quote, generationally wealthy off-politics, generationally wealthy off-politics, unquote, while steering Democratic strategy.
Our guest today is maybe the lead voice in the United States for generational change in American politics. He was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee for a while, but is now doing politics outside the organization. It's David Hogg who first became a public figure fighting for unregulation after being a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people in 2018
That year, by the way, Time Magazine put David Hogg on its annual list of the 100 most influential people. He has since started a group called Leaders We Deserve, which he led even while he was a DNC vice chair. Leaders We Deserve describes itself on its website as a grassroots organization dedicated to electing young progressives. As a political action committee spending money to support and oppose candidates, it says, we run a well-funded independent expenditure program, and reflecting internal divisions among Democrats, the website says things like, our party is avoiding accountability. David Hogg joins us now. David, we really appreciate some time today. Welcome to WNYC.

**David Hogg** (3:12)
Thank you so much for having me and for the excellent summary of the moment that we're in.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:17)
I was just going to invite you to say if I characterize Leaders We Deserve fairly enough, so I guess you think so. But do you want to add anything to give listeners a fuller picture?

**David Hogg** (3:27)
Yes, absolutely. Leaders We Deserve got started because I helped my friend, Maxwell Frost, run for Congress.
A lot of people were writing off the race because he was 24 when he was running.
Obviously, he ended up getting elected despite running against two former members of Congress and a well-funded, well-known state legislator. After his election, I just thought about how many other young people there are that are out there that have everything that we want in a member of Congress, but feel like they have to sell themselves out to some special interest in order to get elected. I wanted to build an organization with Maxwell's campaign manager to help elect that next generation of young people where we take grassroots dollars with an average contribution of about 20 bucks from 260,000 people around the country and use it to substantially fund candidates who reject the influence of corporate PAC money to put their constituents first and stand up for their interest instead of special interests. We don't just work in Congress, challenging Democrats in safe blue seats. Where we believe it's essential to building a culture of competition in our party to make sure that we have the best Democrats elected in safe blue seats possible, and we defeat Republicans at the same time in purple seats. We're also working in state legislatures. That doesn't get as much attention, but that's actually where the majority of our endorsements are. People like Abir Kawas and others who are leading the fight in state legislatures to prove that they can do a great job there before they potentially run for Congress in the future. That's what we do. We try to give the good guys the resources they need to go up against people that are funded by massive corporate PACs.