On television and social media, modern liberals put on a good act.
They know, for instance, that the political culture requires them to engage in good-faith debate. At the same time, however, they have no interest in the reasoning process that leads to persuasion.
Monday on CNN, gun-control advocate and former Democratic National Committee co-chair David Hogg demonstrated as much when he tried to link the ongoing government shutdown to expiring Obamacare subsidies, forcing conservative commentator Scott Jennings to embarrass the 25-year-old Hogg with a series of unanswerable questions proving the emptiness of Hogg’s argument.
“The entire reason the government is not open right now is because Democrats refuse to be complicit in having millions of Americans, including 100,000 in Kentucky, your home state, if I’m remembering correctly, Scott, that rely on ACA [the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”], that would see their premiums rise several dozen percent,” Hogg claimed in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
Every word of that, of course, rings hollow. After all, Senate Democrats could vote to reopen the government and then negotiate on Obamacare subsidies.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, however, mistakenly views the shutdown as a political boon to Democrats.
In other words, Democrats have shut down the government because they want to harm President Donald Trump’s administration. But they say they have shut down the government — thereby depriving military service members of pay and lower-income Americans of entitlement benefits — to protect Obamacare, as if that would be more defensible.
Either way, Jennings eviscerated Hogg’s lame and dishonest talking points.
“But David, you would admit that the ACA was a Democrat legislation, yes?” Jennings asked. “And you would admit that the subsidies that we’re talking about now were passed by Democrats, yes? And you would admit that the sunset provision in the subsidies, which comes up at the end of the year, was in place because of Democrats, yes? Now you want to make it a Republican problem. These are not the same issues.”
Are you a fan of Scott Jennings?
The conservative commentator added that Republicans would negotiate on the ACA, but not under a “hostage-taking situation.”
“And now you’re throwing SNAP onto it,” Jennings said. “You’re throwing all the federal workers who aren’t being paid onto it, all because of this fight that you wandered into, because of your wing of the Democratic Party.
“You all led to this SNAP crisis. You all led to this crisis of the government being closed, and you don’t know how to get out of it!”
Scott Jennings just made a FOOL out of 25-year-old Democrat wunderkind, David Hogg.
Hogg used his time on CNN to blame Republicans for the government shutdown, even accusing @ScottJenningsKY of not caring about people in his home state on ACA subsidies.
He was silenced pretty… pic.twitter.com/DVFFJP3v2D
— Overton (@overton_news) November 4, 2025
Jennings, of course, got the better of this exchange by a wide margin. After all, he spoke irrefutable truths.
But here comes the sobering point: Democrats have no interest in truth. It explains why they reason so poorly.
Reason, in their minds, amounts to theater. Only power matters.
Why, for instance, do they always appear so obtuse about legal versus illegal immigrants? They know the difference. They simply have no interest in persuasion.
Furthermore, when you lose interest in persuasion, you behave like tyrants. You embrace violence as an alternative to debate.
In short, Jennings won the argument, but such victories have little impact on people who have abandoned good-faith argument altogether.
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