Did The 26TH Amendment Fail: Looking At America And Trying to Answer The Question, Part 1

 

Last year I published for this site a series of articles asking the question as to whether the 26^th Amendment – the one which granted suffrage to 18-21 years olds – had failed. While doing research for that article I wrote the following passage which I will quote here:

“There was compared to other voting rights acts relatively little opposition. Emmanuel Celler, one of the biggest forces behind the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, insisted that youth lacked the ‘good judgment’ essential to good citizenship. Some academics argued that the ‘exaggerated reliance on higher education as well equated technological savvy with responsibility to intelligence were being used as an argument for voting. Tellingly he argued that common sense and the capacity to understand the political system grounded voting age restrictions.”

Using Celler’s argument was, for this writer, looking at the entire world with new eyes because it fundamentally explained so much about activist movements from the Vietnam War right up until the campus protests this past year with crystal clarity. It also explained why, despite being on the morally right side of so many causes for social justice, these activist movements have never led to overwhelming political success and in fact have been an underlying factor in the conservative movements dominance of political power ever since the election of Nixon.

Long before the establishment of Fox News as a cable channel, the Republican Party has been supremely skilled at utilizing ‘the backlash movement’ in getting the white working class voter, Democratic since FDR’s first election, to move increasingly towards the Republicans. This movement has been routinely categorized by the leftist publications as a move of pure bigotry and while that is true, from a cold-blooded political perspective it has worked wonders for the GOP ever since then. They have mastered framing the Democratic Party as being the full-throated supporters of the loudest and angriest voices of the movement for justice and equality on every single demographic issue and as a threat to the white working-class voter. And because the Democrats have needed to essentially hold on to every single part of the identity groups from African-Americans to LatinX to the LGBTQ+ community in order to merely be competitive in national elections they have had to walk a delicate balance when it comes to admonishing these coalitions who have rarely chosen to listen anyway, increasingly argue that dissent is tantamount to throwing in with the bigots and feel that any person who is NOT a member of their immediate circle – including age-wise – is not worthy of being considered anyway.

The consequences of that behavior were very clear in the aftermath of the 2024 election. Harris carried just over a third of the white working class voter – the lowest percentage in history for a Democratic candidate – and just over 8 percent of rural America. It doesn’t take much intelligence to know what the Democrats have to do if they have a hope of a short and long term future in a post-Trump electoral world.

But  to the left, and particularly those young people who will be entering the electorate soon, they don’t see things that way. In their mind the failure is, as always, a version of the same tune: the Democrats refused to go sufficiently to the left. The idea that the voters are simply not where they are at any level – a conclusion that would seem obvious by the results – is a reality they continue to deny. And it may very well lead to a schism in the Democratic Party.

In  order to try and analyze this approach – and more importantly, explain the flaw in the thinking – I have begun a new series that will look at the basic flaws underlying the way that this new generation seems to view the world of politics and why it is critical that all institutions – not limited to simply political ones  - realize how wrong-headed it is. And the place start, appropriately enough is with a battle that’s going on right now in the DNC itself.

 

Part 1:

Why David Hogg Has No Idea What He’s Doing

 

There are many people – mostly his contemporaries and certain segments of the media – who consider David Hogg the voice of the future of America. I am not one of those people and I find it somewhat ridiculous that so many do.

I don’t deny the reality of the trauma he underwent at Parkland or the nobility of the cause he fights for. The fact remains he represents by far the worst aspect of what I’ve previously referred to as performative activism. It is not about trying to pass legislation, win votes or anything that could solve the problem. It barely falls under the nature of ‘raising awareness’ and even that is under the metric of ‘no publicity is bad publicity’ – a term that Gen Z in particularly doesn’t agree with. For Hogg and so many of his colleagues the point is about creating viral moments or trending on social media. In that Hogg is an absolute wonder. By any other standard he is a complete failure.

David Hogg’s most famous work has been openly criticizing Florida Senator Marco Rubio for alleging the Senator world not meet with him. He famously tweeted the Rubio voted against a bipartisan gun safety bill and took millions from the NRA. He later retracted that tweet after it went viral. I’m sure that for Hogg that was speaking truth to power. It didn’t hurt Rubio’s reelection one bit: he romped to victory with 57 percent of the vote over gun control candidate Val Demings.

Nor has Hogg made much of a ripple in Florida politics over the course of his advocacy. In both 2020 and 2024 Trump carried Florida by an increasingly larger margin, Ron Desantis romped to reelection in 2022 and Rick Scott trounced Debbie Mucarsel-Powell last year. There are only eight Democrats representing Florida in the House and the legislative bodies of both houses of Florida’s government have overwhelming Republican majorities. Considering how incredibly conservative Florida has become since Hogg became part of the political activism there, it’s very difficult to see what he and his colleagues have accomplished aside from being admired in certain circles in liberal media.

Considering the results of the 2024 election, which led to the biggest margin of victory for a Republican Presidential candidate in 20 years, the idea that someone who has no experience in any major political campaigns who has no success in getting a candidate elected anywhere as one of their Vice Chairs seems an idea of stupidity. Yet that is what Ken Martin did. Perhaps it was part of LBJ’s idea that “I’d rather have him pissing inside the tent then outside and pissing on it.”  And yet Hogg has demonstrated the immense gift of doing both.

Just this month the DNC began clashing with Hogg over his support of primary challengers to Democrats who according to him “had been asleep at the wheel.” He has raised a PAC trying to challenge Democratic candidates at the primary level.

Ken Martin announced, understandably, that he would propose changes to the DNC rules that would mandate its officers to remain neutral in all Democratic primaries, not such Presidential ones. Hogg responded that he would fight to remain in his position, even though he’d be willing to lose his leadership position through the process. This is the equivalent of throwing a tantrum and saying: “You don’t get to break up with me. I will break up with you.”

It's worth noting the idea of Hogg has been to challenge contenders in the bluest districts of Democratic Representatives. How this squares with his focus on winning back young voters who have drifted from the Democratic party to the Republicans, which was the thesis of his campaign for Vice Chair in the first place, is not something he has clarified on.

When James Carville, with more diplomacy then I would have shown, mentioned sarcastically that he thought that the idea was to focus on Republicans as the enemy, Hogg’s reply was that the only election Carville had won was thirty years ago: the equivalent of saying ‘OK, Boomer.” This is bold talk against a man who managed to get a Democrat elected President after twelve years of Republican rule from a man who has not only not been part of a single winning political campaign even at a Congressional level but who lambasted Mary Petola and said ‘good riddance’ after she lost her election.

 Petola is from Alaska where to put it mildly people have a different view on gun control and the average voter is not as progressive as Hogg is. That he chose a Democrat being replaced by a Republican even as he was about to run for a position of power in the DNC should have been a bigger warning sign that he cares more about a candidate being right than winning elected office.

Even as an activist Hogg’s success is mixed. His demand for a boycott of Laura Ingraham on Fox News cost her advertisers but ended up increasing her viewership. He has called out far right conservatives such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Andy Biggs for their policies and all of them repeatedly have been returned to Congress by increasing margins. The idea that he can get young people to return to the Democratic party is by any context laughable seeing as he seems very good at getting more and more people to vote Republican anywhere else.

Even Hogg’s approach is ridiculous because it is, for all intents and purposes, what the Tea Party managed to do in 2010 to the GOP. There seems to be a movement by some, including AOC and Chris Murphy, that the future of the Democrats must be to reject neoliberalism and become a left-wing populist party to counter the right-wing movement that has taken over the GOP. But the left wing ideology has always been counter to the right wing ideology and has historically had a much smaller reach then that of right wing movements. Kamala Harris went out of her way to go as much to the left as a National candidate has tried in nearly half a century and the results were horrific for the Democrats at every single level. The Democrats have been losing for years because they have been losing the moderates and rural America – all of which the progressive wing of the party has always been hostile to and sees as irrevocably tainted by Republicans. The Democrats need to expand their base and move outward; Hogg and his followers are trying to change from within.

It’s not just that Hogg and his colleagues have tried this approach repeatedly in the last three election cycles and it has failed; it’s that historically it has never worked for left-wing movements in America. The Democrats have not gone more to the center to punish the left but because as a national party they are obligated to go where the voters are. Hogg and his activist colleagues are convinced, with no evidence, that the voters would come out of the woodwork in Democrats went more to the left. Their conviction is based on the fact on little more than the idea that everyone they know is on their side. That people outside their circle might have a different view of issues – that voters in Alaska might have a different view on things than those in New York or Massachusetts – is not something that they can accept. That’s a bad view for an activist; for a politician it’s fatal.

And Hogg himself may soon learn that. Hogg turned 25 this past month and has promised he will run for the House of Representatives when he became eligible to do so. Theoretically he could have chosen to run for either of the open Florida seats this past month and chosen to wait until he came of age to accept the office but because they were deep-red districts he had enough ‘common sense’ not to waste it there.

As I said there are only eight Democratic seats in the Florida delegation. If Hogg is sincere about it he will put his money where his mouth is and primary one of those sitting Democrats. That he has not done so already and seems to be financing those who would, might cause some to question where he is backing away from this idea but let’s give him something that he gives no one else: the benefit of the doubt.

If – I’m sorry – when he chooses to run he will have to raise money and he will have to see if his brand of politics will work against established Democrats. The DNC might think otherwise, given his attitude towards them, so he might very well use his established PAC. That is no guarantee of success as Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush found out just last year, when the DNC targeted them for defeat. Perhaps he can get them and the rest of the Squad to campaign for him. Granted they failed to lift their colleagues to a primary win last year but I’m sure Hogg can prevail.

If he does he will bear the full weight of a GOP that can’t wait to tear him and his ilk down no matter where he runs. Even in blue districts Florida is turning conservative and he hasn’t exactly built a lot of goodwill in that state. If he wins the primary he will receive support from the DNC who wants to win the majority and damn the consequences later. That helped put them in this position, but they have to think short term as well as long-term.

Either way, he will be a problematic candidate and like so many of the Justice Democrats will no doubt bring a lot of self-inflicted wounds on his own head with the kinds of statements he makes on a regular basis. There is a different between an activist and a politician and it rarely works out that well.

And even allowing for a victory he will quickly find it is harder to be an elected official than an activist. He’s already become polarizing before he chose to become part of the DNC; it will be infinitely worse as a candidate or an elected official. He clearly would belong to the Justice Democrats and the Squad but that would basically be meaningless in a Republican administration and more problematic in a Democratic one. Either way, he will quickly learn that it is easier to shout for change outside then it is to make it possible inside.

And there is still no guarantee that the movement he is a part of will last. This very day an op-ed in a Minnesota by a fellow member of Gen Z has openly accused him of not representing her generation and that the anointment of him by the DNC is a huge blunder. “He hasn’t built coalitions, he built a brand,” this op-ed writes and that is completely accurate. There’s nothing new in this, of course, even before the age of social media there have been left-wing candidates such as Bella Abzug and Ronald Dellums who managed to make a name for themselves as far left representatives in deep blue districts and were known as firebrands more than any real accomplishments. Hogg no doubt has never heard of them but he fits into their model exactly. They didn’t achieve anything but they have been portrayed in movies and TV shows and as we all know, that’s the kind of person that Hogg would rather be than have any legislation named for him.

The fault is, of course, for those in the DNC who still believe that the ability to be technologically savvy is the key to gaining the support of the youth vote even though they consistently lack any common sense. Hogg represents the worst parts of this generation and he is not the solution to the Democratic Party’s ills, rather another part of the problem.