We’re thrilled to have Former AOC chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti on the podcast this week! Nancy Pelosi has been the rep of the Democratic old guard for decades and decades, so it’s both exciting to think of an alternative to her status-quo, establishment role in American politics and challenging to see how to unseat her after all of these years. Saikat is taking on that challenge, and in this exciting conversation about his candidacy, we unpack everything he plans to bring into office if he wins his race, the problems with gerontocracy in American politics, how he plans to win, and more.

Saikat is a co-founder of Justice Democrats as well as AOC’s former chief of staff. That’s to say that he’s played a hugely important role in progressive politics over the past years and has his finger on the pulse. By his own account, he decided to run when he saw Democrats doing nothing as Trump ascended to power a second time. After all, Nancy Pelosi, the incumbent and his Democratic opponent, has long been recognizable as part of the #resistance, more popular for taking performative stances than actually delivering for her constituents in one of the most unaffordable parts of the country. Now, with an authoritarian in power, Saikat is both a talented, experienced progressive activist and an observer of everything that’s failed about establishment, gerontocratic politics in California’s 11th congressional district. Unlike Pelosi, who has refused to assess how the Democrats let the people down leading up to and after the 2024 election, Saikat is ready for the Democratic Party to hold itself to account.

Saikat sees Pelosi as a “manager of decline,” basically holding things together as much as possible while the Republicans come up with new, ingenious, and terrifying ways to pull people away from the Democratic voter base and attack democracy. By his account, the way for Democrats to move forward isn’t denying that this erosion of the Democratic voter base is happening; the Dems need to confront the erosion head-on in order to win people back. In the age of Trump, and especially as Trump destroys our social support system, filling in political potholes won’t be enough. Renewing faith in our political institutions, as he suggests, will. Getting money out of politics will, too. Those are the things Saikat is interested in accomplishing in office, and we’re excited to see the rest of his campaign.

Thanks for tuning in, and thanks for your continued support of the podcast! You can listen to this episode when it’s released tomorrow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and more.