I never understood the problem with what Hogg is doing. No politician should ever think their seat is safe. Every primary should be contested. If the incumbant is doing a good job, they will win, and the party gets behind them. But if the incumbent loses a primary, then they were probably not doing a good job to begin with.
What’s wrong with that?
Running for local, state, or congress sucks balls. You’re basically a beggar, you have almost no power, you are beholden to your sponsors and party leadership, and you’re expected to work long hours campaigning for shit you barely care about while pet issues get lost in the shuffle. Most of your time is on the phone making promises you won’t keep to people who don’t believe you. The rest of your time is spent in transit. Everyone hates you, you’re surrounded by morons, and if you can’t even sneeze on camera without your opponents posting the ugly sneeze face photo on twitter.
Basically, the DNC has to beg candidates to keep them around. One reward they like to dangle is support from the national committee. Blocking primary challengers helps the candidate save some cash make makes their re-election seem inevitable. It’s a massive weight off, especially for younger politicians with few fonnections and fewer leverage options.
Is it right? Fuck no. I agree with you completely. But I can certainly understand why, if I were st the top of that ant hill, I wouldn’t want climbers to get a foothold, either.
I could see the logic being that you’d end up spending a lot of money and resources on primaries that could be used in the general, but that’s obviously only a problem because money in politics is a huge issue to begin with.
I’d still argue that the upsides (candidates that better represent the electorate, keeping the incumbents on their toes, …) outweigh the downsides in that regard.
My cynical take.
If we are to take this at face value that the complaint was filled in February, then I believe they were not taking it seriously until after Hogg’s move.
It should not take two and a half months to decide to address flaws in an election unless the organization is completely dysfunctional.
I have bad news about the DNC being a functional organization. There’s a reason Obama setup a whole separate organization and actually won. Neera Tanden runs the Center for American Progress again despite fucking it up last time and everyone they put on TV is somehow the least charismatic 75 year-old centrist in the entire caucus who just says whatever.
The DNC and entire Democrat establishment could just not exist and more Democrats would get elected. Their learned helplessness expired in like 2003 and they’re still putting it in their coffee as if nothing went sour.
I find Kenyatta’s comments to be pretty disingenuous, to be honest. He talks about how important it is that everything have the same source of truth, but then says shit like this:
“We’re not for the incumbents; we’re also not for the challengers,” he said. “We are for listening to our voters who make the decisions about who they want our nominees to be.”
That’s just laughably untrue. The DNC has almost always favored incumbents and establishment candidates, that’s why it’s so incredibly unpopular and why most Democrats don’t believe it represents their actual values.
“You look at every story that’s written about this, and it’s, ‘Oh, my gosh, the party is doing this to David.’”
No, I haven’t seen that narrative anywhere. What I have seen is a lot of disillusioned leftists pissed off on Hoggs’s behalf because of the intra-party double standard he has helped expose. Kenyatta harps about how unhelpful all the infighting is while he contributes to the infighting.
“But what we’re not for is putting our finger on the scale.”
The absolute gall.
As a life long democrat this is why I hate our party. They don’t want to change and would rather fight among themselves and wonder why tf they lost every time.
I hate saying it too but feel the right is more open to younger generations the DNC needs to step up their fucking game
Dem’s continue the infighting apace…
Rather than coalescing actions and messaging around the fucking important fight which is attempting to save what remains of US democracy.
Dems will not help/save us. We are on our own.
🤷♂️ 🤦♀️ 🤡 🖕
This couldn’t be more predictable or more obviously bullshit. The DNC is insistent on being villains. That’s fine. I’m with Hogg, I have primary contests in my district, I will be beating my feet for true progressives and there’s nothing the fucking DNC can do to stop me.
