Democrats Need Primaries, Maybe Even Gladiatorial Combat

Yes, it’s reached that point.

Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg announced his support last week for primary challenges against incumbents in safe seats who he felt aren’t rising to the occasion during Donald Trump’s second nightmare term.

This is an obviously controversial position for a DNC official, and it resulted in predictable backlash. Charles Pierce at Esquire wrote, “The one thing that this time in history doesn’t need is a well-financed primary campaign against safe incumbents.”

With respect to Mr. Pierce, this is the most appropriate time for primary challenges. Democrats lost the presidency, the House, and the Senate. No winning occurred. When a sports team has suffered major losses, you don’t stop having training drills because you’re worried that they’ll be too tired for the actual game. (Besides, Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman all held “safe” seats and still faced primary challenges in 2024.)

DNC vice chair Malcolm Kenyatta announced in February that Democrats should “get to work rebuilding our party: for our future and for our working families!” In the private sector, when an executive talks about “rebuilding” the company, that usually means employees should update their resumes or at least explain what it is they do here. However, in Democratic politics, “rebuilding” apparently means a new coat of paint on a crumbling edifice.

Democrats’ Amazing Technicolor Dream Resistance

Of course, there’s an inherent conflict in the pro-democracy party arguing that incumbents — who by their own admission are “safe” in the general election — should effectively have their seats for life and occasionally even beyond that. There’s also no evidence that Democrats holding safe seats feel any more emboldened to defy Trump’s regime. They’re just leaving Al Green out there alone. Ten House Democrats voted to censure Green for disrupting Trump’s lie-filled address to Congress.

“I don’t mind being one of 10 Democrats who said, no, there’s a deeper principle at stake here, which is reverence for this institution,” Jim Himes said after Green’s censure vote. He told CNN that Democrats need to act “with the decorum and with the civility that says to the world that we are a serious country.” Not surprisingly, sitting politely while a fascist leader rants unchallenged has not shown the free world that the U.S. is serious about democracy.

“I have no love for Donald Trump, but I do have reverence for the Office of the President,” Himes said, as if he represents a hard-fought seat in a swing district. Instead, he easily won re-election by North Korean margins. The other Democratic censure votes who weren’t from safe seats nonetheless fear mythical decorum-loving swing voters more than the (shrinking) Democratic voter base. That needs to change.

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If Only Democrats Were In Disarray

Primary them all

There’s also the plain fact that the Democratic Party has issues that can’t be resolved by flipping the few swing seats necessary to win a House majority. It’s not as simple as regaining power, like Democrats did in 2020. What matters is how they wield it. The damage Donald Trump and his MAGA goons have done is so severe that Americans need an opposition party that can fight, not like it’s 1999 but 2025.

Forgive me for quoting Newt Gingrich, who declared in 2012 that the Republican establishment couldn’t simply continue “managing the decay.” However, it does seem that Democrats have a skewed view of how Republicans have defeated them over the past couple decades. I’ve seen it argued that Republican voters are consistently reliable and don’t make unrealistic demands of their representatives. Their support of leadership is unwavering, no matter the results in elections and legislation. This is all objectively untrue.

The Tea Party movement, supported by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, rocked the GOP establishment, with sweeping primary victories. By September 2010, the media was filled with stories about a “Republican civil war,” which then DNC chair Tim Kaine told NBC “creates opportunities for us.” It did not. Republicans flipped 63 seats in what a humbled Barack Obama called a “shellacking.”

Mainstream Republicans in 2010 feared Pat Toomey was far too conservative to win the 2010 Senate race in Pennsylvania, a state Obama handily carried. Toomey would defeat perfectly normal Democratic candidate Joe Sestak.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio entered the Senate in 2010 as an avatar of the Tea Party movement. He challenged sitting Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in the GOP primary on a platform that attacked the recent stimulus and rejected any conciliation with Obama, who’d decisively won Florida.

Bill Cassidy defeated Mary Landrieu with significant Tea Party support. He sunk her with her support for Obama. He’s now considered a “moderate Republican,” because he is moderately sane.

The point here is that conventional wisdom is often wrong, and timidity doesn’t deliver significant rewards. Still, Democrats seemingly believe they can skip straight to the “shellacking” stage without the primary shakeup. They point to 2018, where despite some major upsets — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeating Joe Crowley — Democratic leadership at least remained unscathed. But that doesn’t seem realistic for where we are now.

A political theory of circular recurrence argues that Democrats shouldn’t waste time with introspection or any constructive self-assessment. The party doesn’t need to change. It’s the voters. On an episode of Law & Order, District Attorney Adam Schiff warned prosecutor Ben Stone, “Never ask a jury to think.” You should also never expect voters to change.

The fossilized thinking among the Democratic leadership and consultant class did the Harris campaign no favors, and the only way to most past it is with new candidates or incumbents who’ll actively express a vision for the future that isn’t focus group tested talking points.

Professional Cloud Yeller James Carville Slams ‘Preachy Females’ In Democratic Party

James Carville called Hogg a “twerp,” but as Hogg countered, Carville hasn’t worked on a winning campaign since before he was born. That’s actually generous, as Carville’s political success predates the Macarena. He’s a relic who blames “wokeness,” “preachy females,” and progressives in general for Democratic woes. Primaries are the only way Democrats will finally lose this guy’s number, because the consultant class is entrenched.

Democratic political consultant Drexel Heard, who worked for the Biden and Harris campaigns, posted on social media: “Let me tell you how this David Hogg situation is going to go down — Hogg and his people gonna put up some people young people to run (sure, great- whatever), the voters are going to reject them (as they usually do - for multiple reasons), then they’re going to run around blaming the PARTY for being out of touch and not “meeting the moment” even when the VOTERS said ‘try again’ and then we’re going to be in a continuous internal fight once again and losing races.”

Dismissing younger candidates as “sure, great, whatever” reinforces the party’s problem. Voters start to cement their party identification early in their lives. Democrats hemorrhaging young and non-college educated voters of color is a path straight off an electoral cliff. Heard is also wrong that internal debates is why Democrats lose elections. This is scar tissue from 2016 that ignores the enthusiasm a contested 2008 battle generated.

I should clarify we don’t need younger candidates so much as bold ones — candidates of any age and background who have different perspectives. We need people who are willing to try new things and most importantly engage with voters wherever they are. Politicians rarely do this when they never have real elections. Inertia is not a strategy.

The current party establishment has failed — that includes everyone — centrists, progressives, the guys who order the coffee. Democrats had a trifecta in 2021 and four years later, Trump is back and more dangerous than ever. It’s comforting to blame the voters, but the voters still make the call.

No one should feel comfortable in 2026. After Trump’s re-election, every elected Democrat should enter the Glengarry Glen Ross “Cadillac/steak knives/you’re fired” contest.