Democrat Saikat Chakrabarti decided to challenge Rep. Nancy Pelosi for her San Francisco congressional seat when he watched in disbelief last year as his party chose a 74-year-old member she had backed to lead the House Oversight Committee over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, his 35-year-old former boss and one of the party’s most powerful communicators.
For Chakrabarti — a 39-year-old software engineer turned political operative who ran Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset primary campaign in New York — it was another sign that the Democratic Party is dominated by an older generation of leaders who he says have lost touch with Americans’ day-to-day struggles. Though Pelosi, 85, stepped down from leadership in 2022 to elevate the next generation, he argues that nearly four decades in Congress “is enough” and that the party needs younger leaders who can do away with a “culture of caution.”
“People are looking for fighters,” said Chakrabarti, who rankled many House Democrats with his confrontational tactics while briefly serving as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff in 2019. “This old generation of leadership, they’ve been around for so long that they don’t recognize that this Republican Party is a completely different Republican Party. They’re just hoping that the backlash of Trump will build up and we’ll let the pendulum swing back our way.”
Chakrabarti is just one in a growing group of Democratic candidates who are launching 2026 campaigns rooted in those themes — and forcing the party to face an uncomfortable conversation about the role that its gerontocracy has played in its declining popularity.
Monday, April 7, 2025
Democrats' Generational War
Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
