Politico reports that the DNC is about to issue an ultimatum to its spouse over Hogg's insistence on backing challengers to Democrat incumbents:

The Democratic National Committee is going to force David Hogg to decide: Get out of the primary game or lose his DNC post.

During a member call on Thursday, DNC Chair Ken Martin is expected to announce a proposal to change the party’s rules to mandate all DNC officers stay neutral in all Democratic primaries, according to a person directly familiar with the plan and granted anonymity to describe private discussions. The move comes after Hogg pledged last week to spend millions of dollars funding challenges to “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats in primaries, igniting a firestorm inside the DNC.

The proposal, if passed at the DNC’s August meeting, would effectively force Hogg to decide whether to step away from his DNC vice chair position or wall himself off from the group he co-founded, Leaders We Deserve, which has pledged to spend $20 million on challenging Democratic incumbents in safe blue seats.

Awww. Can't we keep these two kids together? At least through the 2026 cycle?

Actually, this relationship began to sour almost as soon as it started. A fortnight after having won his Vice Chair seat, Hogg used DNC contact lists to send fundraising requests -- not for the DNC but for his own PAC. You know, the one that pays Hogg a six-figure salary:

Barely two weeks into his tenure, Hogg has been leveraging DNC contact lists to blast out messages soliciting donations to his own political action committee — from which he draws more than $100,000 in compensation a year, according to Federal Election Commission records.

“David Hogg here: I was just elected DNC Vice Chair! This is a huge win for our movement to make the Democratic Party more reflective of our base: youthful, energetic, and ready to win,” reads one of eight texts he sent out to the DNC’s vast database of phone numbers. ...

Hogg co-founded “Leaders We Deserve” in August 2023 with the stated goal of electing young progressives to Congress and state legislatures across the country. It also provided him a six-figure income job right out of college.

Since the PAC was founded, Hogg has pocketed more than $175,000, records show, with more than $20,000 in salary payments coming in December alone, the most recent month for which public data is available.

That's the same org that the DNC will identify in its ultimatum. That raises the question as to why they didn't demand an annulment back in February, when Hogg leveraged the DNC lists to stuff money in his own pocket. Technically, it didn't violate DNC rules, but the abuse of power was clear and egregious nonetheless. So why did it stick with Hogg at that time, rather than allow him to keep building his own org at their expense?

(Not for nothing, but doesn't that sound a bit like the NGO spending patterns being uncovered by DOGE? Maybe the DNC should hire Elon Musk to do a deep dive on their leadership.) 

Had Hogg contributed some value over the last twelve weeks to the DNC, perhaps the damage would have been worth it. But what has Hogg actually contributed to the success of the Democrat Party? He's spent these three months fundraising for his own separate organization while plotting how to unseat incumbents in Democrat primaries, thus making elections more expensive and recruitment more complicated for the state parties. Why not just put Republicans into Vice Chair positions instead?

That's not to say that primaries against incumbents are a bad idea. It's a rare opportunity for a party's own voters to hold politicians accountable. However, the mission for the party orgs is to win elections by the most effective and cheapest route possible, which is why parties usually back incumbents or at most refuse to involve themselves in primaries. Having your own officers raise funds for challengers to the party's own incumbents is nonsensical except in the rarest situations, where an incumbent is caught up in a damaging scandal and refuses to leave. 

But then again, the whole Hogg project was nonsense on stilts from the beginning. His election as Vice Chair was a publicity stunt to attract younger voters, based on no experience at all except self-promotion. Hogg made a better candidate for political office than as a party official. He has no experience in party-building, no particular vision except anti-establishment nihilism, and no other priorities except "me, myself, and I." 

One has to wonder at the rest of the DNC leadership as well. Why would they allow this to drag on until August? Hogg should have been booted over the fundraising letters in February. This hardly sets a compelling example of governance for Democrats, in an era where they have no bench and no clue about the American electorate. If they can't govern themselves, how can they govern others?