The chairman of the Democrat National Committee threw a phone at a junior staffer's desk in early July.
That earned a formal HR complaint – and it's somehow not the most embarrassing DNC story this week.
Now the man who built Bill Clinton's presidency is recovering from hernia surgery in bed at home – and his plan to save the party is David Hogg.
The DNC Is Broke and Getting Broker
The numbers are not close.
Republicans have $130 million cash on hand.
Trump's super PAC has another $400 million.
The Democratic National Committee is $2 million in debt and its chairman is so paranoid about leaks he's forcing staff to sign NDAs before internal budget meetings.
Ken Martin – the 53-year-old DNC chair who won the job in February 2025 after Democrats lost everything – has watched his inner circle shrink to almost nobody.
He's been joking to colleagues about how long he'll keep his job.
The New York Times went to more than two dozen current and former DNC officials for comment.
https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2080353837336899931?s=20
Most wouldn't go on record.
The ones who did described a chairman operating in fear, cut off from his own staff, and privately asking vendors to hold their invoices until after the midterms – a maneuver designed to make the party's books look better than they are heading into November.
The party also pledged its Washington, D.C., headquarters as collateral for a $15 million line of credit, confirmed by NOTUS – a desperate move heading into a midterm cycle it cannot afford to lose.
Since January 2025, the RNC has raised $279 million.
The DNC raised $207 million in that same stretch – and still ended up $2 million in the hole.
Carville Has Seen Enough
James Carville, the 81-year-old Democrat strategist who helped elect Bill Clinton and has spent thirty years telling Democrats what they're doing wrong, weighed in Sunday from his recovery bed.
He wasn't gentle.
"It's dysfunctional. It's just difficult to do anything with it. And it's all true," Carville said of the situation laid out in the Times story.
His solution: hand the whole thing to David Hogg.
"If David Hogg wants to take it over, I ain't stopping you. Go ahead, man, I don't really care," Carville said.
This is the same James Carville who – just fourteen months ago – called Hogg "a contemptible little twerp" and suggested the DNC sue him for raising $20 million to primary incumbent Democrats.
"He is a contemptible little twerp, if you ask me," Carville said in April 2025. "I might give the DNC $10 and then sue him."
https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/2082143176995811700?s=20
Hogg seemed to enjoy the reversal.
"I'm old enough to remember when Carville called me a twerp for challenging asleep at the wheel Democrats and now I'm his DNC pick. What a year," he posted Sunday on X.
What This Actually Means
Here's what the Democrat Party is staring down right now.
They are running a 2026 midterm campaign – their single best shot at clawing back the House – with a broke party, a chairman who can't keep his phone in his hands, and their most prominent elder statesman endorsing a 26-year-old activist from a bed at home.
This is not incompetence.
This is collapse.
The Hogg saga itself tells you everything.
Democrats brought him in after 2024 as a symbol of youth and energy.
He immediately announced he'd spend $20 million primarying the old guard they still need.
Martin nearly broke down on a Zoom call with party leaders when the confrontation came to a head – audio that got leaked to the press – and eventually had the DNC void Hogg's election on "procedural grounds."
Hogg walked away.
Martin kept his job.
Six weeks later, Martin is throwing phones and hiding invoices. And Carville wants the twerp back.
https://twitter.com/DefiantLs/status/2080709596738630115?s=20
The NRCC internal memo got it right: Democrats have their weakest brand in decades.
Sixty-seven percent of Democrats say they're frustrated with their own party.
The civil war between the socialist wing – AOC, Zohran Mamdani, Hogg's network – and what's left of the moderate establishment is playing out in public, in real time, three months before the midterms Republicans need to hold.
So let's be clear about what a Hogg-led DNC actually means for you.
It means the party trying to take your House majority hands the wheel to a 26-year-old gun-grabber whose entire political identity is tearing down Democrats who aren't radical enough for him.
It means AOC, Mamdani, and their socialist network consolidate control of the one institution still standing between them and the 2028 presidential primary.
Go ahead and let them do it.
Every seat they think they're winning in November just got easier to keep.
Sources:
- Jonathan Weisman and Reid Epstein, "Inside the Phone-Throwing Drama at the Troubled, Broke Democratic Party," The New York Times, July 27, 2026.
- "James Carville Pushes New Pick to Lead Democrats," The Daily Beast, July 27, 2026.
- "Ken Martin Faces Call to Resign After Reports of Dismal Fundraising and Violent Outburst," Washington Examiner, July 27, 2026.
- "Ken Martin's Dysfunctional DNC Alarms Democrats," Axios, March 8, 2026.
- "Republicans Have 'Clear Momentum' Against 'Broke, Divided' Dems Heading into 2026 Midterms," New York Post, 2026.
