An earlier version of this column—and the one that ran in the print edition of our Summer 2024 issue—cited some striking data showing that voter interest in the presidential election was at a 20-year low. I declared that the Biden-Trump rematch was shaping up to be “the quietest presidential election year in memory.”
Then the June 27 debate happened, followed by three tortured weeks of agony and indecision in the Democratic Party, followed by the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Finally, on Sunday, July 21, President Biden bowed to pressure and dropped out of the race. So much for quiet. All of a sudden, we have a real race, with a late switch that’s unprecedented in the history of American politics.
This turn of events immediately energized the Democratic Party at the highest level, where it needed it most. But in statehouses and municipal governments across the country, enthusiasm for politics and policymaking had never really flagged. That crucial work—which is now being done by members of Gen Z who embrace public service as a career path—is the focus of this issue’s cover story.
Remember David Hogg? After the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, he and his classmates mobilized millions in the fight against gun violence. Hogg took a gap year after high school; helped launch March for Our Lives, a nonprofit that lobbies for gun control legislation; and went on to Harvard, where he worked to figure out why conservative activists have been so much more successful pushing their agendas than liberal ones. Soon after graduating a year ago, he cofounded Leaders We Deserve, a political action committee dedicated to getting young progressives elected to office.
As Devin Gordon reports, that is no easy task. Hogg’s challenge “is to find young people willing to embark on a career path that appears more futile, draining, demoralizing—and even dangerous—than ever before.” Gordon’s article is about politics, yes, but at heart it’s a career story. Hogg has channeled his considerable charisma into persuading the most talented young people in America that public office is still, in spite of it all, a job worth holding. And he’s helping them win. Hogg was once a teenage activist who believed politicians “all sucked.” Now he is an avatar of his maturing generation. “I’ve come to realize that power doesn’t shout,” he tells Gordon. “It whispers.”