David Hogg, the 25-year-old vice chair of the Democrat National Committee (DNC), admitted on Friday that his party spent $2 billion in 2024 in an attempt to trick Americans into voting for former President Joe Biden.
"People said to us that 'Joe Biden is too old,' and they said that 'prices are too high,'" Hogg said on Real Time with Bill Maher.
"And we said, with the power of $2 billion behind us, 'No he's not,' then 'Yes he is' and then 'No they're not, look at this graph of the stock market,'" he claimed.
Maher argued with Hogg that woke talking points gave the election to President Donald Trump, but Hogg thought it was more tied to voters believing that Trump heard their concerns while Democrats wanted to argue with them.
"I think the reason that worked though, Bill, is because people felt like they weren't heard by us," Hogg argued back.
It was so obvious that Biden was in decline, Hogg said.
"If you tell people not to believe their eyes and their wallets, you're going to lose."
Hogg said he didn't think it would have made any difference if Biden had left the race sooner, however.
"We left at a time when we had a good candidate," Biden said about former Vice President Kamala Harris in an interview on Wednesday. "She was fully funded."
Harris ultimately lost after a brief campaign, however.
Hogg wants to see younger, more progressive candidates take over for some of the longtime candidates that have dominated Democrat politics for decades--like Biden.
He argued that young people don't see established Democrat candidates as a "real alternative to the Republican Party."
"That will not change if we keep the status quo," Hogg said. "We have no other option but to do the hard work of holding ourselves and our own party accountable."
To that end, Hogg has pledged through a political action committee separate from the DNC to raise millions of dollars for Democrat primary challengers to longtime incumbents.
It's scary that Hogg doesn't see current Democrats as left enough or radical enough, and that he thinks young people will abandon Trump for even more progressive candidates. Let's hope he's not right about that.
