David Hogg’s controversial initiative targeting incumbents is only part of a much larger struggle.
David Hogg’s controversial initiative targeting incumbents is only part of a much larger struggle.
O n April 15, 82-year-old former President Joe Biden delivered his first public speech since leaving office in January. While railing against his successor’s efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy, he had enough halting “Bidenisms” to make any Democratic operative wince.
The same day, 25-year-old Democratic National Committee (DNC) Vice Chairman and anti-gun activist David Hogg announced that his group, Leaders We Deserve, will commit a $20 million initiative to target “ineffective, asleep-at-the-wheel” Democratic incumbents in deep-blue seats by supporting younger primary challengers.
The contrast in age between both party figures was enough to highlight the post-2024-election generational tensions that have emerged in Democratic circles over how to revamp the party. “We have a culture of seniority politics that has created a litmus test of who deserves to be here,” Hogg said in announcing the initiative, which infuriated other members of DNC leadership. “We need people, regardless of their age, that are here to fight.”
Hogg’s stunning multimillion-dollar spending commitment represents the growing dilemma that is emerging among out-of-power Democrats: How can they deliver an anti-Trump resistance that appeases activists without turning off the working-class voters who will be crucial to their 2026 electoral efforts?
Given the Republican trifecta in Washington this year, Democrats are struggling to find ways to signal to grassroots progressives that they are fighting the Trump administration at every turn.
For Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.), that meant delivering a 25-hour speech on the Senate floor. For Senator Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), that meant traveling to El Salvador to demand the return of deported illegal alien Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. Other Democrats have sought to demonstrate their resistance by holding rallies, signing court briefs, voting against government-funding legislation, and heckling President Trump’s joint address before Congress earlier this year.
“When I see folks like Senator Brian Schatz saying, ‘Let’s do blanket holds on State Department nominees,’ or Senator Blumenthal wanting blanket holds on VA nominees, that’s great,” said George Hornedo, a young Democrat who is primarying 50-year-old Representative André Carson (D., Ind.) this cycle. “And we absolutely should be using every lever that we have when the reality is we have a lot of symbolic power, but not a lot of actual power.” But he says his party must hold Republicans’ feet to the fire by channeling the grassroots energy of Democratic voters.
Many progressives agree with Hogg’s assessment that electing new faces in Congress is a natural next step to their recent disastrous presidential cycle.
“If Democrats are perceived as representing the status quo, and we don’t have vibrant new faces that represent change, we will lose over and over again,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told National Review. The fight isn’t so much about age as it is about tactful minority opposition, he said. “Nobody is hanging their hat on age, as much as hanging their hat on fresh vibes that stand for change for our party.”
After all, 83-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) spearheaded the progressives’ “fight oligarchy tour” alongside one of the party’s youngest rising stars, 35-year-old Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.). In Green’s view, the victory of 78-year-old Senator Ed Markey (D., Mass.) in 2020 over his much younger primary challenger, Joe Kennedy, is another prime example of an older politician having his “finger on the pulse and being perceived as a better change agent for people” despite his age.
Behind closed doors, some Democrats in Washington believe that Hogg’s effort to oust “asleep-at-the-wheel Democrats” in solidly blue seats is well intentioned but may end up as mostly a vanity project to boost Hogg’s own brand rather than a meaningful shake-up of the status quo.
Others shrug off the effort entirely, telling NR that his burn-it-all-down approach is nothing more than a distraction from the more important work of ousting Republicans in swing seats at a time when the Democratic Party’s approval ratings are at a record low.
Looking ahead to the 2026 midterms, centrist Democrats are focused on figuring out how to push back against Trump without shifting the party so far left that Democrats only further alienate the working class and minority voters who have warmed to Republicans in recent elections.
This camp of moderates believes that the path to power for Democrats is addition, not subtraction, and that the party promotes anti-Trump purity tests at its own peril. Rather than swing at every pitch, these Democrats say, party leaders should be strategic in their resistance efforts.
“Democrats have a lot to prove to middle-of-the-road voters across this country — that we care about working people and that we are actually focused on working people and not cultural issues,” said Morgan Jackson, a North Carolina–based Democratic strategist. “I’m in the camp of we should be focusing on the economy, tariffs, trade, prices all the time.”
Democracy, due process, and contested Democratic primaries aren’t a winning strategy for his party, he says. “Real voters are focused on their pocketbooks and their wallets, and they don’t care about deportations,” Jackson added. “I wish they did, but they don’t.” The solution? Focusing on the uncertainty that has emerged from Trump’s trade and economic policies. “What moves the needle is ‘You promised to lower prices and your actions are directly raising prices on our families.’”