David Hogg, the 25-year-old survivor of the Parkland shooting who was just elected vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, has a new mission: taking down incumbent Democrats. He’s started a new committee, Leaders We Deserve, dedicated solely to that purpose.

Here in Maine, it’s been obvious for quite some time that Democrats have internal divisions that have been swept under the rug.

We saw it back in 2018, when Gov. Janet Mills, who should have easily been the consensus nominee for governor, nonetheless had to deal with a large primary field. We’ve seen it throughout Mills’ tenure as governor, which has often been a story of her repeatedly restraining the more liberal segments of her party. She’s even opposed bills sponsored directly by members of legislative leadership. We’ve also seen it when Democrat Jared Golden either didn’t oppose Donald Trump enough or, at times, even agreed with him, like on tariffs. He was widely denounced by his fellow Democrats all over the state when he predicted Trump would win the election and that he was “OK” with that.

That is certainly not the attitude that David Hogg and other activist Democrats want now — or ever expected to see — from their elected officials, and that’s understandable. We, of course, saw this at the national level as well throughout the presidential election, but especially when liberal activists mounted the “uncommitted” campaign in the primaries against Joe Biden over the war in Gaza.

In Maine, Biden only got 82% of the vote; 10.2% went to uncommitted, and 6.4% went to Dean Phillips, a month after he’d withdrawn from the race. Nationally, uncommitted got 4.25% of the vote, and Phillips got 3.19%. To be sure, that’s still an overwhelming victory, but it’s not exactly impressive for an incumbent president in the primaries.

By comparison, Barack Obama got 90% of the primary vote nationally in 2012, uncommitted got 5.0%, and some random guy named John Wolfe got 1.3%. Maine Democrats didn’t even bother having caucuses that year. Instead, they simply awarded all of the delegates to Obama at the state party convention. Bill Clinton got similar numbers in 1996, when he was running for reelection. Ninety percent is basically par for an incumbent in the primaries, and Biden didn’t manage to hit that nationally; in Maine, he was closer to 80%.

Keep in mind, that’s even after the Democratic Party did everything in its power to insulate Joe Biden from any serious competition in the primaries. It rearranged the calendar to suit him, placing one of his strongest states, South Carolina, first, ahead of the traditional first state, New Hampshire, which was won by Bernie Sanders in 2020.

The party did everything it legally could to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off the primary ballot in every state in the country, causing him to abandon his primary bid and run as an independent instead.  At the time, these highly aggressive tactics seemed foolhardy and unnecessary, but after the fact they looked wise.

At least, they looked wise for Joe Biden, if not the Democratic Party as a whole.

Now, though, the Democratic Party as a whole faces the consequences of those decisions, and Hogg’s new group, like Biden’s early apparent weakness in the primaries, should be an early signal for them. Given his purported mission statement, his organization probably won’t be on the ground much in Maine.

Sen. Angus King, despite his obvious leanings, is an independent who won’t be on the ballot, while 1st District Congresswoman Chellie Pingree is a devoted liberal. Indeed, she’s seemed to recognize that herself, having passed on running statewide on multiple occasions. Should Rep. Jared Golden decide to run for reelection, he may find himself the focus of Hogg’s efforts, but he’s in a swing district and he now supports an assault weapons ban, shoring himself up on Hogg’s signature issue. (He probably saw the writing on the wall on this one.)

It’s not necessarily that Hogg’s group specifically will be active here, but that it represents a broader Democratic division that will play out in the gubernatorial, U.S. Senate and congressional races. With Mills termed out and Golden possibly eyeing higher office, a whole host of new opportunities may present themselves for ambitious younger Democrats.

Drawing from the inspiration of a party leader challenging incumbents, they may not be willing to defer as they would have in the past. The times appear to be changing for Democrats. We may well be headed for quite a few interesting primaries in Maine next year.