The Keith Edwards Show - Interview with DNC Vice Chair David Hogg

Episode Date: April 26, 2025

Keith Edwards discusses his interview with David Hogg, now DNC Vice Chair, about the backlash he's facing from the Democratic establishment for pushing to primary ineffective members of Congress and bring in younger leadership.

David Hogg, thank you so much for joining the channel. I have to say, when I announced this on Tuesday this week, the chat lit up. People were very excited to know that you were going to be here. And I know you're getting a lot of heat right now. And I kind of just want to talk to you about your thoughts around all of this, because I think it's super interesting. I think this is the dynamics of a party that actually has disagreements,

which I think it's good, unlike the Republican Party, which has to align itself to one person's personality. And so let's talk about it. So you had this, first off, you got elected to DNC vice chair. Congratulations. That's kind of that conflict now with this idea that you've had where you want a primary Democrats who you say are not doing a good job. Can you give me some more insight on that?

Yeah. So what's interesting about this is that there have been vice chairs before that have been involved in primaries and have had leadership packs and other things that helped to spend money in races like primaries. And this isn't in the bylaws at all. It's not officially in conflict with any rule whatsoever. When I was running for this position, I was also simultaneously running leaders we deserve.

My organization that I co-founded with Kevin Lata and Maxwell Frost's campaign manager to kind of be like an Emily's list for young Democrats running for state legislature in Congress. And I wanted to be sure that I was going to be able to do it. So I looked at previous vice chairs to see had they been involved in primaries. And they had. And then I read the bylaws. And there was nothing in the bylaws that said that we can't be involved in primaries by any means other than the presidential, which totally makes sense to me. I don't want to repeat of 2016, obviously.

And because I'm not breaking the rules right now, they are changing the rules so that I am. I was shocked that they actually had decided that they were going to be changing the rules. It seems very Republican to me that they have a certain set of rules. And then when someone is doing something they don't like, they're actually kind of doing the thing they're accusing you of. which is they're saying like, hey, we're going to, we're going to reorganize this to make it, make it so that the incumbents are better protected. Yeah. And look, I'm doing this because I want to build the strongest Democratic Party possible.

And I think there's some misconceptions out there about what we're doing exactly. So I want to clear that up, too. We are not just spending this money in primaries. We obviously want to support candidates that are in purple districts, It's critical for us to break a Republican majorities in state legislatures and break the Republican majority in Congress and get Hakeem Jeffries the gavel to make him Speaker of the House. And what my view of it is right now is last election, we had a 27 percent approve. We have a 27 percent approval rating despite the fact that Donald Trump is disappearing people. He is destroying our economy and he's being so reckless as he is.

And last election, we spent $2 billion only to get a result where we lost. And what I'm thinking here is that sometimes it's not just a matter of messaging. It's a matter of who we are as a party. And I think one of the strongest things that we can do is in our safer seats, have a competitive process to ensure that we have the best Democrats possible serving us in seats where we do not risk potentially losing the majority, for example. So going back to your question about how they're going about this process, my view on it is that I ran under the bylaws as they were. It's not like I tried to hide the fact that I worked for leaders we deserve. I literally talked about it in every single form in how we raised $11.5 million last election cycle and how we supported young people, young Democrats running for state legislature and Congress all over the country.

And to me, that's the view of the situation. Look, if they change the bylaws and they force me out because of that, I have no control over that. And I don't take this stuff personally. This is a strategic disagreement ultimately. But what I'm doing is in this moment of crisis that our country is in, we need to do everything that we can to be the strongest opposition party possible. to Donald Trump. And we need to show people an alternative vision to Donald Trump that is not just not being him. We need to show them what we're doing to revive the American dream and build the strongest Democratic Party possible because last election cycle, and I think this is the biggest

reason overall why this is necessary, we lost voting share with almost every single demographic, except predominantly people that are older and people that are highly educated. And that is despite having $2 billion. So sometimes it's not just your messaging. It is who you are. And what trying to do is ensure that we have the best representation possible. And it's not just about older people. There are old people who are great and there are young people who suck and vice versa. Unfortunately, it's not like you just get above a certain age and then you're terrible. It's not that simple. What we're doing is it's not out with the old and in with the new. It's out with the ineffective and in with the effective. And it's a healthy process, just giving voters an option.

Yeah, you mentioned this last night on CNN with Caitlin Collins. I just want to show a bit of this. I have anything to be worried about here. But if this makes you anxious, and you're a member of Congress, maybe you should think about why that is and how we can step up to meet the moment because the reality is here right now in order to help combat Donald Trump, we need to be the strongest opposition party possible to him. If you're doing a good job, yeah, so I guess my question is like, what is a Democrat that is doing a good job? What does that look like? Senator Van Hollen, for example, it looks like people like Maxwell Frost or AOC or, you know, even people, obviously nobody is, few people are going to be able to have the, the, the

charisma and name ID and notoriety of an AOC. And that's not what I'm asking for. What I'm asking for is for people to show up to their committee meetings. What I'm asking for is for people to show Democrats across the country how we're fighting not just in our competitive seats, which is obviously so important, but show our base in our blue strongholds, what we're doing to stand up to fight back against Donald Trump and not just sit on our hands and say, well, we're in the minority. We can't do anything. No, there are things that we can do to get out there and work to hold his feet to the fire and hold him accountable. and not just roll over and die, which I feel like far too many people feel like we've abandoned them.

They feel like we're not fighting hard enough for them. And I think in order to start to change that, we need to make sure that we're going to hold everybody in our party accountable because that is part of what makes our party different, is that we are not a cult that just says, you know, you need to agree with everything that one person says or else you're excommunicated from the party. We have a diversity of views.

And some of those views, you know, especially on guns for some of our candidates that are in tougher districts, I don't necessarily agree with, obviously. But I understand we're going to have different views in our party, but we're all working towards the same goal here, which is to get Democrats elected and defeat Republican majorities to help bring back this country and revive the American dream. And right now, I think it's hard to say that we are successfully giving people that vision to vote for. I, yeah, I think, first of all, I do love that the Democratic Party is many shades of blue. Like, it's not just one color. I think that's super important. I think that's one of our strengths.

it also can be one of our weaknesses. But I also, to your point about ineffectiveness, I was shocked that Democrats, elected leaders were shocked that Donald Trump started to enact Project 2025. And they had no answer for it. It's like they were flat-footed when it, like they literally handed us a book. They gave us a book. And none of the leadership, they're like,

I can't believe he's doing this. Well, I can. I read it. I read Project 2025. So to your point, like, it was such a bad moment and still is a bad moment that he was able to do everything that he said he was going to do with almost no pushback when we knew what was coming. Right. And right now, if you ask people in a focus group, if the Democratic Party was an animal, do you know what the most common answer is? No, tell me. A turtle. For Republicans, it's a shark or a lion. We need to, we know that we're fighting for the right things, but it doesn't sound like we truly believe. leave like we are a lot of the time. Far too often, it feels like we're just giving vague talking

points about lowering costs and fighting gun violence and these other things, but it doesn't feel real to people. It doesn't feel for far too many of our leaders in Congress, it doesn't feel like we actually care. And there are members who do care, obviously, like Senator Van Hollen, like AOC, like Macflowrest, like Jasmine Crockett, and others. But we need to do so much more in order to build the future of our party right now because we have lost so much of a voting share with so many demographics and it's not just a messaging problem. I can't emphasize that enough. We had, we spent $2 billion on our messaging last election cycle, but it doesn't matter if people don't feel heard from us and they don't feel represented. So what we're trying to do here is not just elect

any young person by any means. And it's not to say, oh, if there's an older person, we're going to run a young person against them. It's not that simple. There are great older leaders in our party that we need to mentor that next generation. What we need, though, is to give our young people and the future of our party the resources that are required in order. to get elected to put up a fight against Donald Trump because this generation, they understand the anxiety of being of the failures of our political system, right? People seem to be surprised when I announced this to some extent when the reality is my generation knows what it's like to live through the failures of our incumbents and our political system not doing enough

to stand up to incredibly important issues like gun violence, climate change, student debt, housing, whatever else it might be. And we must be fighters in this moment. A lot of people i think one of the criticisms that you've gotten is that why are you focusing on democrats when republicans are so bad we should be beating republicans not democrats um what is your response to that right now there are far too many people who believe that we're just you know that we're just the less bad of two bad options that is not enough we need to be the best option that people think of in the first place and that starts with acknowledging the fact that we simply just going out there in spending a couple hundred million dollars in districts that we need to flip from

red to blue for Congress is not going to be enough when our approval rating is as bad as it is right now. And also in the generic ballot, we're up about 0.7% to 1% when typically you need to be up 2 to 3% in order to be able to win. And when people walk into a ballot box and they look at who they're voting for, the first thing that they're thinking of isn't necessarily that person, but they're thinking of what does this, what about the party that this person says that they are part of that deed that is next to their name. And that is the culmination of our 200 plus members of Congress. It's our governors. It's our other elected Democrats around the country and what they, the average and aggregate of what they hear about them and what they think about them. We need to

do everything in our power to make sure that we have the strongest Democrats possible that are getting elected. And people know that if they're failing to meet this moment, that there's going to be an expectation that they either step aside or they're going to get challenged. Because we just had, unfortunately, two of our members of Congress pass away, and we lost, we had some of the largest cuts to Medicaid in American history because of that happening. We are not in a moment in our country where we can just say, well, you know, it's this person's turn and risk hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people having their lives severely impacted because, oh, it's just this person's turn. Nobody is entitled to their position. We need to make sure that we're getting the best

people elected, and all we're doing here is giving people the option to have that possibility. in the first place because far too many people feel like our party is failing to meet the moment right now. I mean, I agree with you that incumbency should not be the most important part of whether or not someone is allowed to stay in office. Incumbency is a huge factor in whether or not someone is able to get reelected at such a strength to be an incumbent. Your party supports incumbents all the time. Yes.

Yes. I mean, that's what's interesting to me about all this is the DNC, is basically an organization to help incumbents, you know? And so it, and so you're trying to say, well, well, maybe we should be an organization that just helps get the best Democrats elected. Yes. Right. Exactly.

I, I think it's an interesting, it's an interesting thing to debate on. To be, to be fair, I'm not sure what the right answer is. I do think that incumbency, obviously like anything else, it can, it can, if you're, if you think you're just going to have this seat forever, you're probably not going to be as effective as someone who is thinking, okay, I have to really, you know, it's like anyone else's job. You know, like if you feel like your job is on the line or if you feel like you've got it, you've got this job for 20 years, you know, probably have a different work ethic.

And I would say, too, that the, uh, what's really remarkable to me is how so many of the people that are critical of this are people that got to their positions of power. because they primary Democratic incumbents. Hakeem Jeffries multiple times, primary Democratic incumbents. Oh, is that true? Yes.

Imagine what would happen if we didn't have him right now. Imagine what would happen if we didn't have AOC right now. Imagine what would happen if we didn't have Corey Booker or Rokanez or Eric Swabal, all of whom challenged Democratic incumbents in order to get into their positions. And for me, what I think the view is is when it comes down to philosophically kind of what the DNC is trying to push here, I understand the point behind that of wanting to remain unbiased and remain neutral, but here's the deal. This has been such a non-issue that this issue in particular of being involved in primaries other than the presidential has not been addressed, even though we've had multiple vice chairs who were involved in primaries previously.

And what ways were they involved? Because I think you're obviously, you're like a much bigger name that I think most vice DNC chairs. I couldn't really name them. It was I couldn't... Whitmer and Tammy Duckworth. Okay, well, there you go. Well, I didn't know that, but I certainly know that you were... I didn't know Vice DNC chair was really a thing until you ran.

It's a volunteer role, and it's largely ceremonial, and we don't have that much power, to be frank with you. No, I know, but you do have a lot of power, and I think that's the thing that is making people a little nervous. Yeah, and frankly, they should be. Our party is failing far too many of our leaders in Congress. If you think that this is the best that we can be doing right now, you need to get a bigger imagination. There's so much more that we need to be doing to stand up to fight against Donald

Trump. And I'm not willing to just let us hope, sit on our laurels and hope that just being the less bad of two options is going to be enough. And let me be clear, too. I understand philosophically the point behind what they're pushing here. But what I would say to that is that we had an election where I read the bylaws. You know, I understood what was there and what the rules of that election were. I looked at the precedent that had been set by vice chairs who had been involved in primaries previously. And I said, all right, are they going to ask me if I, you know, about my involvement in primaries? Because I'm not hiding this. I'm talking about how I literally my job, because the vice chair role is a volunteer role, my job is to help elect young Democrats to state legislatures in Congress.

And part of that include primaries, right? And my thinking with it is that you can't change the rules of an election after there's been an election. And that's what happened. Well, Ken Martin wrote, voters should not, should pick their candidates, not party bosses, which, okay, sure. But what happened last election? What happened last election? Yeah, what happened? $100 dollars. So it's like, okay, well, this time, I guess, like, but not before. Like, it's okay then, but not, like, it just doesn't, it's like, it's not, the math isn't

mathing for me. You know, it's like, it just seems like they, they essentially, we're like, they're just like, hey, it's so cute. We got elected. Congratulations. Can you just go be quiet over here now? You know, we actually have to go do the real work. And not actually represent young people that we are dramatically losing.

And the reason why I know that what I'm doing is the right thing is, I don't look for for what just makes everybody in D.C. happy. Those are the same people that got us here, right? They're not going to get us out of here. What I look at is what are people saying to me on the street? Are there young people coming up to me talking about what we're doing, what the party is doing? And I have never had so many young people come up to me in public and say,

thank you for what you're doing. I was losing faith in the Democratic Party, but you have reinstilled it in me and I have hope and I'm not going to leave because of that. And what we need to do right now is understand that, we are facing a real risk in our party of losing people. In states like Florida, the fastest growing political party isn't the Republican or Democratic Party. It's no party affiliation whatsoever because people are losing faith in our institutions because they feel like they don't really represent things a lot of the time. And what I'm trying to do here is show our young people how they have a voice in the Democratic Party,

how there is somebody fighting to create dramatic change and empower our generation and bring them in. And I understand there are going to be people that are upset and made uncomfortable by that. But like I've said, we're not challenging people in critical purple districts that could cost us the house. I'm trying to make sure that we are handling the conflicts and divisions within our party in a safe place where we do not risk losing a majority. And I think it's a healthy process. Iron sharpens iron. There is no potential downside to the situation where we potentially lose the house because of this because we're focused on safe seats. And the only potential, the upside here is enormous of having truly generational leaders that are ready to make. meet this moment. Well, my heads off to you, you know, like I said, I know you're getting a lot of

heat from people within the Beltway. But I do know that the Democratic Party base, and a lot of them are supporters of this channel, are extremely interested in this idea because we all know that what we're doing is not working. We lost to a criminal, someone who tried to steal an election. and we have people in office who don't understand the severity of the moment. And I don't know if that's an age thing. I don't know if it's just been there for 40 years thing. I don't know what it is, but it's got to change. And if you're making people upset in politics quite often, you might be doing something right.

So thanks for joining us. And I look forward to seeing what happens. Like, are you going to be DNC vice chair in a month? Who knows? But regardless, we will see. And thanks for joining. And if anybody would like to support our work, because our candidates that we support, they don't take corporate money. We obviously don't take corporate money either.

We rely on predominantly small dollar donors, over 100,000 of them around the country. People would like to support our work. They can go to Leaders We Deserve.com. Awesome. Sounds great. Well, thanks, David, and I hope to see you again. Cool. Thank you.