The man trying to unseat Nancy Pelosi: ‘Mainstream democratic politics is dead’
Former Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti is challenging Nancy Pelosi in 2026, arguing the Democratic Party needs "radical change" to survive. The Silicon Valley veteran believes mainstream Democratic politics is "dead" and wants to recruit a new generation of leaders to rebuild the party.
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In brief:
- Saikat Chakrabarti is running against Nancy Pelosi in 2026, arguing the Democratic Party needs "radical change" and that "mainstream democratic politics is dead"
- He blames Democrats' 2024 loss on lacking a coherent story about why Americans' lives are getting harder, while maintaining a "status quo" culture that leaves them unprepared for MAGA politics
- His solution focuses on economic investment and job creation, combined with recruiting a new generation of leaders to "completely redefine" what the Democratic Party stands for
What’s the story?
The Democratic party needs to “radically change,” and Saikat Chakrabarti believes he’s the man to make it happen.
“Mainstream democratic politics, I believe, is dead,” he says on The News Agents USA.
His plans for reviving it are ambitious, and begin with his running for Congress in California's 11th congressional district in the 2026 election, vying to unseat former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
At 39 years old, Chakrabarti has already had a full and interesting career, having spent years working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley working on successful tech start-ups.
But, he’s not your typical tech bro.
In 2015, he entered the world of politics, first joining Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and then as Chief of Staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - and unlike Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, he didn’t jump on the Trump bandwagon after his 2024 election win.
Chakrabarti describes seeing some of the tech industry’s biggest bros in prime seats behind Donald Trump at his 2025 inauguration as “disgusting” and “craven cowardice”.
“I think it was political opportunism from these folks trying to get something for their businesses or for their crypto holdings,” he tells Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel.
So what’s Chakrabarti’s plan for the Democratic party, and how does he hope to achieve it?
Dethroning Nancy Pelosi
Challenging Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker who has spent decades at the top of politics, is no mean feat.
But, while Chakrabarti says he has “a lot of respect” for the veteran politician, he describes her as a “a keeper of the old guard and a keeper of the status quo,” at a time when politics needs fundamental change.
“I don't think new ideas and a new movement and a new coalition are going to come from Nancy Pelosi,” he says.
When Pelosi came into politics, he adds, the Republican party still believed in democratic elections and climate change.
“I think she still believes that that Republican Party is there somewhere - that they're going to come around any day now,” Chakrabarti says.
“I think the Republican party we have today is, frankly, completely nuts.”
Where did the Democrats go wrong?
When MAGA won the 2024 election it was because they had a cohesive story of why Americans' lives were getting harder - largely, because of immigrants, Chakrabarti says.
The Democrats' problem was not only that they didn’t have a story for why things were getting harder for Americans, but worse, that many didn’t believe things were.
“People actually don't like the Democratic Party even more than they don't like Donald Trump,” Chakrabarti says, referring to recent polling.
He believes that first the party needs to acknowledge that the problems Americans are facing are real, and then they need to work on communicating how the country got to this place, and how they plan on getting out of it.
“The centrist position in America is that the current system is not working, and we need something that's not just little reforms and tweaks around the edges.”
In his time working with AOC, he says the pair tried to work with the Democratic Party, who wasn’t using social media at the time, to modernise it.
But the Democratic party, he says, has a culture of “keeping the status quo together”.
“It's the seniority culture. It's this cautious culture… and in the face of Maga, they're like deer caught in headlights.
“Instead of coming out and actually trying to go on the attack, do something proactive. They're just trying to figure out how to keep this thing they've got going together.”
What’s Saikat Chakrabarti offering as an alternative?
While Chakrabarti does advocate for expanding the social safety net, he says he wouldn’t describe his politics as “socialism.”
He believes the answer to fixing America's woes lies in building its economy.
“We’ve got to get the country unstuck from the stagnation that we've been feeling for the last several decades,” he says.
“What I'm really talking about is investing in industry, building up jobs, creating wealth in the country again, because if you look at how every modern, developed nation got to where we are today, it was often through these phases where we did massive amounts of investment in our economy to build up whole new economies, build up new industries, and I think that's what we got to do.”
Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is projected to significantly increase the national debt - this, Chakrabarti says, is a “huge issue” which has resulted in the need for increased revenue.
“Which does mean taxing the rich,” he says.
“I'm not saying that just calling for taxing the rich is a winning political theory, because I don't think anyone believes that's going to fix the underlying economy.
“But our inequality is a problem, and I believe is actually a winning solution to talk about taxing the wealthiest. It polls incredibly well.”
Chakrabarti acknowledges that his vision for transforming the Democratic Party won't happen overnight, and that unseating a political heavyweight like Pelosi is just the beginning.
“I don't want this new era to be the Maga Trump era, where even Democrats are going to have to govern in that sort of frame,” he says.
“I believe we've got to pitch what the new era has got to be on Democratic side. And I've been very clear that's not going to come from just me defeating Nancy Pelosi. I'm trying to recruit people to run all across the country.
“I think we need a whole new generation of leaders to completely redefine who the Democratic Party is and what they stand for, and who they stand for.”