Saikat Chakrabarti is a co-founder of Justice Democrats and former chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Today, he joins Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to discuss his 2026 congressional campaign to unseat Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party’s failure to respond to genocide in Gaza, and how decades of complacent leadership have left the party morally bankrupt and politically adrift.

Nathan J. Robinson

Now, here’s my first question. I’m going to ask you something very serious here, because yesterday I spent part of my afternoon emailing every U.S. senator’s press office, and I want to read you the email that I sent them. 

“Hello. My name is Nathan Robinson. I’m the editor in chief of Current Affairs magazine and requesting comment from the senator on the following: It’s now the consensus position of international human rights organizations that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide. Organizations that have reached this conclusion include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the International Federation for Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, the American Friends Service Committee, UN human rights experts, and the UN Special Committee on Palestinian Rights, as well as leading genocide scholars. Could you please comment on the following questions? Does the senator accept the conclusion of the international human rights community that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza? If they reject it, why do they reject it? Does the senator believe it’s appropriate for the United States to furnish weapons of any kind, offensive or defensive, to a state that the human rights community has concluded is engaged in genocide? Will they commit to opposing any further support for Israel now that Israel’s own leading human rights organizations have concluded the state is conducting genocide?”    

Now I ask you that first because I think genocide is probably the most morally serious and urgent issue that can face the world. I don't expect to get any replies from any United States senators’ offices on that email. Maybe Bernie, if we’re lucky.¹ I want different politicians. I want politicians who answer those questions directly. So you’ve heard the questions, and I’m going to put them to you directly, and we’ll see how you would answer them if you were representing us.

Saikat Chakrabarti 

Yes, there is a genocide occurring in Gaza right now, and absolutely we should not be sending any weapons to further that genocide. It makes no sense. I don’t understand how you see what’s coming out of Gaza and not have your reaction not just be to not send weapons, but have your reaction not be to do everything you possibly can to stop that, to stop the bombing and starvation and shooting of children and civilians. I saw the interview with Krystal Ball and Saagar [Enjeti] with the whistleblower from the U.S. contracting agency. 

Robinson

Yes, Anthony Aguilar. 

Chakrabarti

Yes, it’s just harrowing.  It’s just so disgusting. And just in his conversation, there are something like 50 war crimes that were exposed. I think this is a moral position, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Robinson

Bernie Sanders just introduced this measure to cut off, I don’t think all weapons aid, but offensive weapons at least. He got, for the first time, the majority of Senate Democrats, but still not all of them. And I think what is disappointing is we’ve seen public opinion really shift, especially among Democrats, where overwhelmingly now the Democratic base, the Democratic voters, really don’t understand why the United States is supporting what is an obvious atrocity. But we haven’t really heard Democrats speak directly. And I think this is why there’s a lot of hunger among Democratic voters, among progressives, for a different kind of Democratic leadership, one that speaks directly, morally, forcefully, and uncompromisingly.

Chakrabarti

And I’d add one that acts on that. I feel like I’ve seen this play out before so many times, where public opinion shifts on something, and a bunch of Democrats realize they’ve got to say something about it. You even got Ritchie Torres talking about how Netanyahu is playing us wrong.

Robinson

Yes, that was amusing.

Chakrabarti

But then you don’t see the action. I don’t think you get that action unless you threaten their power and ultimately take their power. I think that’s really the only way. That’s why I’ve been working on primarying incumbent Democrats since the days of Justice Democrats. I think it’s the only thing they answer to, and they’re just saying what they have to say. I hope it doesn’t go this way, but I get the feeling that Netanyahu is going to do a little bit of a dog and pony show and air drop some aid. And then Elissa Slotkin and everybody else will be able to be like, they’re doing some aid.

Robinson

They’re committed to improvement, and so long as they continue to show—

Chakrabarti

Let the bombs flow again. I think people realize it’s bullshit, though. I don’t think it’s going to work.

Robinson 

Well, this kind of slides us nicely into your current campaign and what's going on in Democratic politics. And you’ve said the word bullshit there, and I think people don’t like political bullshit. They don’t like Democratic politicians. One of the things that I don’t understand about politicians is they seem to assume that people don’t know when they’re saying nothing. They give these statements that are vacuous, as if everyone’s going to go, oh, okay, now I’m fine. You gave a statement. It meant nothing, and I’m satisfied with nothing. But there was a poll recently in theWall Street Journal that came out that said, even though Trump’s agenda is very unpopular, the only thing more unpopular is the Democratic Party. They’re at their lowest level ever at the moment when they should be considering the rising unpopularity of Trump’s agenda.

Chakrabarti 

Yes, I think there are two things honestly. One is people see the Democratic Party, and they just see fecklessness—nobody with any fight. Even Republicans can’t respect the party as it is today. And then beyond that it’s like, what do they stand for? What is their answer? I don’t think Trump is delivering any sort of answer, but Trump kind of ran on his version of an answer for this decades-long economic decline that’s been happening for working people in this country. And his answer was, let’s shrink the pie and kick the immigrants out. We’ve spent too much time focusing on immigrants and other people, and not enough time on America—America first. And the Democrats, I don’t think, have an answer to that, and even if they did—even if Chuck Schumer came out and said, we’re going to get rid of the billionaires, we’re going to stop this big donor money, this unbelievable thing, no one would trust him. It has to be new people who go into a party to change what this party is. And I do think that’s possible. That’s the hopeful side of this, because we did see Trump basically remake the whole Republican Party, pretty much by himself.

Robinson

There’s another thing that I’ve noticed and written about a fair amount, which is that even when the existing Democratic leadership is confrontational with Trump, it’s often in weird ways that don’t make the moral lines clear. Chuck Schumer had a video a couple of months ago where he was saying Trump is soft on Iran. That’s was what he was saying. 

Chakrabarti

I know. 

Robinson

What a bizarre criticism of someone who is doing illegal airstrikes and violation of international law. It’s like, yes, you’re fighting Trump. But it’s not really clear what your set of ideas is. Are you coming at him from the right on foreign policy?

Chakrabarti

Yes. I think it honestly comes from this weird [place]. They don’t actually talk to a big swath of voters in the country. And yes, I’m running in San Francisco, but I grew up in Texas, and I lived in Tennessee for a while. Chuck Schumer has some idea that saying things like that is going to convince those people in Texas, but it doesn’t make sense—it doesn’t actually line up with what’s on the ground. And so I think that’s part of it. I think the other part, as you alluded to, is the Democrats, for so long, have just done these kind of bare minimum shows of opposition, like the paddles during the State of the Union address, or like Cory Booker’s big speeches that he does. But then they don’t actually fight when it comes to action, but the Republicans often do fight. They use their power. So you poll Americans, and even if they hate the Republicans on policy, they just see them as effective. And that’s a big problem. People want an effective government. They want a party that, when they get into power, will give you a chance. We don’t care. It’s change. We’ll give you a chance. But you have to actually build, deliver, and do something.

Robinson 

Now, we have been in our conversation criticizing the present leadership of the Democratic Party, and I think it’s fair to say that if anyone is known for taking on the Democratic leadership within the party, it’s you. Obviously, you ran AOC’s campaign against Joe Crowley and became her chief of staff. And that was a campaign to dethrone a feckless, useless entrenched Democrat who had been around too long. Justice Democrats is about doing that. And I think if people read Ryan Grim’s book, The Squad, they will find out that even within AOC’s own office at the time that you were there—I don’t know if this is fair—you come across as the one most spoiling for a fight with the Democratic leadership and sometimes getting into some trouble for your willingness to confront other Democrats.

So yes, unity is important. At a time of Trump’s authoritarian nightmare, it is important to focus on the real enemy, which is Trump. But you have long made a point that we have to aggressively confront those in the party who are not doing what we need them to do. And so let me just put to you what the criticism of you would be, which is when they saw you in AOC’s office, why were you taking on other Democrats? Why were you criticizing the party leadership? Get in line, basically. And so tell me why you reject “get in line, we have to fight the right.”

Chakrabarti  

At the end of the day, I think we’re in a crisis in the country. I really do think it’s been a slow, boiling crisis for a while with just the struggle that most people in this country have had. It’s so obvious to me. It feels like, yes, of course, people are voting for Obama when he pitches big economic change. He didn’t necessarily govern that way, but it’s what he pitched. Of course, they’re voting for Trump when he pitches economic change. And then I go in, and two things, really, sort of piss me off. One is that there’s just no recognition of reality within the party. There’s no recognition of, what is the larger thing going on here? What do we do? I still remember going to my first chiefs of staff meeting. They do these weekly chiefs of staff meetings in Congress. And I thought this was going to be the place we show up and we’re going to make our game plan. What do you do about Trump? And it was bizarre. It was like a big room office space. It was like the members were all complaining that there were too many staffers in the members’ elevators. Really, this is what we talk about at this meeting where you have all the chiefs of staff together?

Robinson

Oh no.

Chakrabarti

They don’t take this crisis seriously. They don’t take our moment in history seriously. They don’t take the job seriously, even if you’re just a Democrat who’s just in there to do legislation, do the work, and do your committee hearings. That’s not what most of the people in there do. They spend eight to 10 hours a day calling donors for money, they take a break, and their whole view is like, we’re just going to keep our heads down, vote the way leadership says, and then work our way up the ranks. In 40 years, I’ll get to be chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee. That careership mindset.

Robinson  

And the last six months of my life, as we saw recently with Gerry Connolly.

Chakrabarti 

It’s unfortunate. It’s unfortunate you’re in that position. It really drives me crazy, because I feel like there’s this real problem that needs to be solved. And you’ve got all these people in this room who’ve worked their whole lives for what? For this? Just to go in there and what? Keep your head down, vote with leadership, and not actually try to solve stuff? So as someone who really likes to solve problems, it just drove me crazy. It really did.

Robinson

Tell us about this. You are a very satisfying character in Ryan Grim’s book because you’re the guy who sort of shows up periodically in the book and goes, but why are we doing it this way? I was just re-reading the fight over the PAYGO rule where Pelosi is very pro this rule that everything has to pay for itself, and it’s a terrible rule that that prevents you from doing many important changes. I’m getting it all wrong, but there’s this scene where you’re being told, don’t worry, the PAYGO rule will be waived routinely anyway. And then Chakrabarti says, well, then why can’t we just get rid of it? So can you tell us a bit about those kinds of interactions that you had there?

Chakrabarti

When things happen that make no sense to me, I question it. And one thing that I really learned from that whole fight, because that was one of the very early ones—the rules package is the first thing you pass when you get into Congress—was the folks from the leadership staff would just lie. They would just say things. And I remember I had the ear of a senior staffer who had worked in Congress before, who wasn’t there anymore, and so he had nothing to lose. And so I just would run stuff by him with like, is this true? And he’s like, no.

But that’s how they try to get you in line. And most people who are just trying to build a career in Congress and a career in the Democratic Party, of course, just go along with it. But I don’t understand why we preemptively give up our leverage. The Democrats are controlling the House, so why not pass the rules package that you want to pass, as opposed to preemptively reaching some consensus with the party that’s not even in power? It makes no sense. And that’s the second part. In my opinion a big part of what I’m running for and what I think needs to happen is policy. We have to actually do these structural reforms. These broken systems have just been breaking worse and worse for decades. But the other part is, I just think the Democrats’ approach to politics is short-sighted and is going to lose. Even their approach to how they do campaigns is just to focus on these purple districts that are shrinking every year. And if you look at the demographic shifts, by 2032 we’re in deep trouble if that’s your strategy. If you can’t figure out a strategy to win beyond your purple districts, we’re hosed.

Robinson

Well, I thought about that when I saw this thing about Texas redistricting to rig things in favor of Republicans. And I thought, yes, that’s bad. But also, there’s this presumption that we can’t win. Those districts have been rigged against us. Those are Republican districts. We don’t really compete in those. And my thinking is, okay, they’ve done redistricting, but [there’s] this idea that we just don’t fight the Republican districts. I wrote an article, I think, back in 2018, and there was a congressional district in Georgia where it had been fairly competitive. The last Democrat runner got within about six points, but they deemed it a red district, so they didn’t even bother to run a candidate. Some guy signed up who nobody could even find. The local newspaper couldn’t even find out who this guy was, and they basically surrendered. There were no pictures of him even. And they surrendered because the Democratic Party had decided we’re not contesting that seat, even though they’ve gotten within six points, which suggests to me that if you don’t think you can close that gap, you don’t have any confidence that you can move people in any way.

Chakrabarti

Right. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less you compete in those districts, the worse you lose them, and so you stop competing in those districts. I think it’s part of this general mindset in the Democratic Party of just really short-termism. You just pay attention to this next election, and it’s really numbers-based. It’s like, these are the five targeted districts we found where if we do this exact right messaging, we might win. But then you look at the Republican side, and they do long-term plans. They’ve had long-term plans to take over the Supreme Court. Trump was out campaigning in the Bronx. He wasn’t going to win the Bronx, but he knew that it was good for him to start building some sort of support for the long run there. And on the Democratic side, at New Consensus we’ve been working on this thing called the Mission for America, which is really like a long-term strategy. The next time we have a Democratic administration, here’s our Project 2025: how do you do a massive rebuilding project and build into high-wage industries in America? And we had so much trouble getting people within the Democratic Party to care about something like that, just because it was one election cycle away. That’s been my experience. So even watching the Democrats in Congress when I was in there, that was my experience even then. It was always very reactionary, just [against] whatever Trump’s doing right now, not any sort of strategy, not any sort of forward thinking. And that has to change. We really need to be a little smarter.

Robinson 

I think we need to talk about dear Nancy Pelosi. She is no longer the leader of the Democrats, but she still was when you were serving as chief of staff. There’s some weird stuff about Nancy Pelosi's politics. Again, I was just reading the Ryan Grim book, and people were shocked that she was talking about how “Abolish ICE” was a slogan introduced by the Russians to divide us. And the Green New Deal, which you’ve worked on. Climate change is the defining challenge of our generation. It’s the most serious, urgent issue. There’s a war here between the fossil fuel industry and those of us who want a livable future. You would think having a clear, good, and comprehensive plan to deal with that massive problem would be the thing. And Pelosi was the one who called it the “green dream.”

Chakrabarti  

Yes. I got this reputation as a fighter within Congress, but I was trying to be constructive. 

Robinson

We like that!

Chakrabarti

I was trying to be a constructive fighter. I really was trying to be productive here. We were trying to propose real ideas. It wasn’t just yelling at Pelosi for being Pelosi. And the thing about the Green New Deal, is it was a political strategy. If we just passed the resolution, that wouldn’t have accomplished anything. It was really about inserting these ideas, talking about solving climate change as the same project as building up wealth and industry. It was this idea of how we’ve got to up the ambition, way more than we had at the time. The original ask for the Green New Deal was actually to ask Nancy Pelosi to create a committee to make a 10-year plan, something she could have done. She didn’t quite do that, but she did make a committee that did some planning. And part of the result was, when they did the Inflation Reduction Act, they had some real ideas to work from. So we sort of pressured them into having to do some forward thinking that paid off. But, yes, I don’t understand why her reaction was the way it was. She could have embraced it in any sort of way and run with the energy on it.

Robinson

One of the things that comes across in what you’re saying is you talked about how you’re a fighter, but you actually care about getting things done. There is this way of talking that I’m sure you heard when you were working in Congress, which is, “you just want to burn things down. We want to be pragmatic. We’re the people who care about getting things done.” And what you’re saying there is, actually, this is the opposite. You don’t get anything done. I care about getting things done. And I’d have to tell you, if people go on your congressional campaign site, you have a much more detailed policy agenda than many candidates have on theirs.

Chakrabarti 

I think it’s so clear that the practical thing to do right now is to actually solve these problems that everyone in the country is saying are huge problems. If you look at healthcare, it’s not practical, actually, to do some random little reforms around our current healthcare system, which is skyrocketing in cost. It’s going to collapse it on itself in 10 years, and we’re just pretending like that problem doesn’t exist. So we have to actually rebuild it. We have to do something like Medicare for All and a universal healthcare system. Every other country can do it. This is very practical. 

That’s just my approach. It’s very practical to me. It often gets framed as like, you’re just pushing these far-left ideas. But if you poll all this stuff, it’s very popular. It’s all above 60 percent. If you look at the anti-corruption stuff, it’s like at 90 percent with Republicans. So why is that stuff not getting done? That is where the vast center of the country is at. So that’s what we should actually be fighting for, just as Democratic representatives. But no one is interested in that. I get very suspicious when I see bipartisan bills, because it tends to be bipartisan bills that are just in favor of a corporation. I saw a bill coming down last week. It’s really niche, but it’s an amendment to the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act. This is bipartisan; let’s see what this is all about. And of course, it’s just about giving UFC a monopoly over boxing and all of fighting [sports]. That’s the kind of stuff that happens that’s practical, and that’s ridiculous. That’s the stuff that actually is destroying trust in our government and destroying trust in Congress, and it’s pissing everybody off.

Robinson  

AOC ran on this kind of anti-establishment platform. We just saw the Zohran Mamdani campaign in New York City. Obviously, your campaign against Nancy Pelosi has echoes of these. In fact, we hope to get the trifecta here, but Pelosi is really the big fish here. She is 85 years old and no longer in the Democratic leadership, but nevertheless, she symbolizes the existing [Democratic Party establishment]. I’m 35, and I believe she got into Congress before I was born. But tell us lessons from Mamdani. So Mamdani just pulled off this incredible upset. Obviously, you watched that campaign closely and were taking notes, I’m sure. So tell us what notes you’ve taken from that and what we learn  from his success.

Chakrabarti 

Yes. First, he’s a great candidate. He’s so good at just staying on his message. I read his Pitchfork interview where they’re talking about Kendrick Lamar, and he took it back to affordability. And I’m like, oh my god, this guy.

But yes, he found the message that worked, and he just hit it, hit it, hit it. And it wasn’t just that he talked about affordability, because many Democrats talk about affordability. He had concrete things he was saying that people understood for how well they directly hit affordability. And I will say a second piece of it was, he made the case not just for investing in government—big government programs, which I think a lot of progressives do—I think he also talked really well about how to make that stuff actually work well. If you look at his halal cart video or his small business video, he was talking about this real concern a lot people have: I don’t trust government because it’s this bureaucratic mess.

I think he allayed that fear and tried to make the case for investing in government to make it effective as well. But the other thing, just from a campaign strategy standpoint, he did the mass canvassing operation and mass movement operation so incredibly well. I think it really showed how it’s all tied together. People in campaigns tend to have this tendency to be like, what is the thing I will focus on? But it really is that you have to build this sort of mass movement through social media and other media that gets excitement, which is what creates the volunteer army. And this is kind of the experience I had on the Bernie campaign and on the AOC campaign. It’s not like you just focus on field and you have a good field program. You have to do all the other stuff to get people excited to join your field program, which gets people more excited, and more people join your field program.

Robinson  

It sounds difficult and tiring. 

Chakrabarti  

It’s difficult and tiring, sure, but it’s also so exciting that it happens, and you’ve got to build this infrastructure because a lot of that happens in the last two weeks. So you have to build this infrastructure to be able to handle it. This generally was the theory in the case for Justice Democrats, for this race, and for Bernie’s campaign. There is a cycle that occurs when you have an exciting campaign where people start paying attention. Money and people come in, and that feeds into the media narrative, which gets more excitement, which feeds it. And if you get that cycle going, that’s how you build these mass movements. I’d say the place where his campaign is different from mine, and where I’ve got to do something a little different, is first, Andrew Cuomo was really hated in New York in a way that Nancy Pelosi is not in San Francisco.

Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed 13 women and resigned in disgrace. It’s crazy that the whole establishment was trying to back him. And the other part is he did move a large number of votes, but overall turnout in New York is still quite low. I think the overall turnout in the primary was around 20 to 25 percent. He got about 9 percent of the electorate, which is still really impressive. He changed the electorate. They keep talking about how they turned out all these new people. In San Francisco, we have a really high turnout rate. It’s about 40 or 50 percent, so I have to actually convince people to change their vote. But the good news is, we’ve started our canvassing operation. I’ve been doing these voter calls every day at noon. I’ve talked to so many lifelong Pelosi voters who love and respect her, but they’re like, well, clearly, whatever the Democratic establishment has been doing didn’t work, so it’s time to try something new.

Robinson  

Yes, she probably doesn’t campaign that much, right?

Chakrabarti  

She’s not going to campaign. Something I love about races like this is the establishment never campaigns because it’s a show of weakness to campaign. I’m like, sure, continue ignoring. That’s what Joe Crowley did.

Robinson  

If people haven’t seen Mamdani’s interview where they try and get him to talk about the Kendrick-Drake beef, he’s like, well, like Kendrick, I stay on message. I admire his ability to stay on message, and that’s why I’m going to pivot to housing, which is great. But I think we have to be careful of the word “message,” because I just saw Pete Buttigieg say a very fishy thing where he’s like, the lesson I take out of the Mamdani campaign is you have to sound like you care about people. And I’m like, yes, you should sound like you care about people, but it should be because you have a plan for how you’re going to address their lives. You put together this giant policy platform, so could you hit just a couple of points of what you think are the most important things? We were talking earlier about how people don’t know what the Democratic Party stands for and what they’re actually going to do. So when you were thinking about what to present to people so that they know what you’re going to do, what did you come up with and why?

Chakrabarti  

I think it basically boils down to making life affordable, which, to me, is universal healthcare, universal childcare, and building tons and tons of affordable housing. I have a plan in there for doing that through recreating something called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and publicly financing and developing tons of housing. It’s something we used to do. We’ve basically stopped doing it. 

Robinson

You’re a New Deal nerd, aren't you? 

Chakrabarti

Oh, I'm a big New Deal and World War II mobilization nerd. I can talk a lot about it. And this is very niche to San Francisco: public power in San Francisco. We have an investor-owned utility, PG&E, in California. In Sacramento, just north of us, they pay 40 percent less in utility bills than we do because they have municipal power. We are federally required to have public power in San Francisco. This was something that got put into law federally about 100 years ago, and PG&E just owns the lines and has never given them up. And as a congressperson, I can threaten to enforce that law. As Speaker of the House, Pelosi could have done that to force public power. So that’s one, and ending corruption is number two. Ban members of Congress from trading stock, ban the revolving door between Congress and lobbying, and end big money in politics. And number three is—this is more what I talk about in general for the country, not so much in San Francisco-specific campaigning, but I do pitch the Mission for America to really rebuild wealth. I think that’s a big part of this. We’ve got to actually build up broad-based wealth and create good, dignified jobs for a big part of the country that has seen their downtowns and towns just get devastated through neoliberalism over the last 30 to 50 years.

Robinson  

And you’re also running on Medicare for All, of course, and the Green New Deal. One of the things I liked is you talk about what your constituent services will be. You talked about how as a member of Congress, you should be the representative of the constituents. And actually, in Britain, I think the MPs have this role a little more clearly defined, where you’re supposed to be there for the people to come to you with problems, and you try and solve them.

Chakrabarti  

Right. That’s something a lot of people don’t even realize your  congressperson’s supposed to do, but we’re supposed to be your representative. And if you have any problem with the federal government, so say ICE detains your spouse, or you don’t get a social security check, you’re supposed to be able to come to your congressperson. We advocate for you, and it really works. All the stuff in my platform, of course, I’m going to fight for, but with Trump in the presidency in my first term, this will be the biggest part of my job: defending San Franciscans from overreach by the federal government. And it really works.

I helped build this out for AOC in 2018 when Trump was president and was doing an all-out war on immigrants, and she was in the most immigrant-heavy district in the country. And it was amazing to see how you could just pick up the phone and call DHS and get people out of detention or get a naturalization application moving. One thing I talk about a bit is Pelosi is sort of checked out. As you mentioned, she’s no longer Speaker. She’s the only member of Congress not on a committee, so she’s not doing any legislating either. She used to have a decent constituent services office, but I keep hearing people on these voter calls saying they reach out to the office, and they don’t hear back. There was someone on a call from a month or two ago who was in a department that had gotten defunded by DOGE. They reached out to Pelosi, and never heard back. They reached out to the senator, and the senator fought for it and got the money back. So you can play defense like that.

Robinson  

You said members of Congress can help intervene, even in immigration detention cases. People might be skeptical of that. They might think, well, not anymore. But in fact, just yesterday it came out—there’s a news item—a 25-year-old Mexican citizen who had been in ICE custody was released after John Kennedy, our senator here in Louisiana, made a phone call. He’s a Republican. But nevertheless.

Chakrabarti 

It really makes a difference. And part of it, honestly, is because everything they’re doing is this big bureaucracy. So if you’re willing to kind of have gumption and persistence and just fight it, you’re kind of relying on their inertia to not really stop you. So often the easier route is just to listen to the congressperson and do whatever they’re saying.

Robinson 

The thing that I don’t like about the Silicon Valley mentality, which is at its most extreme with Elon Musk and DOGE, is this idea of “I’m just going to break all the rules; I don’t care, I’m going to burn shit down; move fast and break things just for the sake of breaking things,” and they have such confidence in themselves. But there is a kernel. You came out of the tech sector. There’s some kernel of desirability in the startup mentality, which is, okay, we don’t have many resources, but we have energy, and we don’t care about the way things are supposed to be done. We’re going to care about how we get to the outcome we’re looking for.

Chakrabarti 

Yes. I want to be careful here, because I’m definitely not advocating for whatever Elon was doing with DOGE. I think there are two things that I still have from that mentality. Maybe part of that is why, when Pelosi staffers were telling me that whatever I’m doing with PAYGO on the rules fight is bullshit and were lying to me, I didn’t just trust them. Because I do have this sort of distrust of authority figures to an extent. I want to question it all. I don’t know how much of it is a Silicon Valley mentality or what, but I do think there's something important to trying to imagine how things should be and also not being hung up, realizing that the other side is not playing by the rules. Trump and that administration are not playing by the rules, and so if we just do rules-based fights, that’s not going to do anything. They’re just going to ignore the rules. So we have to figure out other ways to oppose them, other ways to beat them at the game, and at least play defense until we can get back in power effectively.

Robinson 

Well, just to conclude here, many people may be feeling very demoralized right now. Just today, we got the news that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down. We also saw that the EPA this week is trying to get rid of any climate regulation. We kind of knew things were headed there. There’s the starvation in Gaza. There’s inflation. Trump just fired the U.S. Labor Statistics head because he was getting bad job numbers. It’s just a real bleak nightmare. But in some ways, when you see some things like the Mamdani campaign, you know it feels like the worst of times, but also it feels like in that moment new opportunities are are created. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I certainly think you must feel that way because you’re running a very positive campaign.

Chakrabarti  

I basically think the underlying causes for why people keep voting for anybody who’s pitching a huge change are not going to change with Trump. Trump is not going to suddenly make wage increases and make everything affordable. Nothing he’s doing is going to do that. And I think in a scenario like this, where things can shift so quickly, they could also shift quickly in a good way. And we do see across the world that there are these parties that are coming into power, unfortunately, often far-right parties, but not always. With Morena in Mexico, for example. That’s a working-class party that basically defeated the two-party system there and is enjoying some of the highest favorabilities in the world. And so I really think that is the huge opportunity in front of us.

We could actually get good, solid people into Congress, the kinds of people that I was trying to recruit the first time around with Justice Democrats and that I’m trying to recruit again this time around with my campaign. We could get amazing leaders into Congress—an amazing person, hopefully, running for president—and we can actually build these institutions back.

I hate saying “build back better.” I just realized I’m saying that as I said it, but we could actually build them the correct way. Because if you look at how they originally got built, again, a lot of it was built in this New Deal, World War Two, and immediately after the war era. And they were built around this mission of what we’re trying to do as a country. They’re built in the context of this larger thing we’re doing. And that’s how they all had support. That’s what gave our science institutions the support to get built. Everybody knew that this was the way we actually create wealth and prosperity for people. I think the job in front of us is to do that again. And all of us know that these agencies were our last line of defense, but they weren’t perfect. They weren’t actually working perfectly well in a lot of cases. So here’s our chance to actually build them back in a way that has the reforms that we all wish they would have had over the last 50 years or so.

Robinson 

People might be feeling quite pessimistic at the moment, and their initial reaction to your campaign might be that it is quixotic, given that Shahid Buttar, whom I interviewed when he ran against Nancy Pelosi, only got 22 percent of the vote. But things change. And I think people might need to realize that, just like Mamdani kind of surprised people because they didn’t notice that things had changed. There’s a new analysis from a website called GrowSF of your campaign, and when I read it, I was like, this is interesting. They were analyzing this race, and they said: “Pelosi remains a powerful leader and unmatched fundraiser, but she’s seen her support wane in recent years as younger voters have become more influential. The Grow SF poll from February 2025 showed her support at just 52 percent among San Francisco voters. So we think Chakrabarti”—that’s you—“might have a shot at winning, or at least a better shot than any challenger in many years.”

So it’ll be difficult, but it might be different this time.

Chakrabarti 

I think it will be different this time, because the appetite for change right now is nothing like I’ve ever seen in my 10 years of campaigning. People are really ready for something new.

Robinson

I don’t think Nancy Pelosi reads this magazine or listens to this program. If she happens to however, I would say this is my one service to Nancy Pelosi: I would warn her that this time her complacency may serve her ill. That’s all I'll say to her. And if she doesn’t heed the warning, well, that’s on her.

Transcript edited byPatrick Farnsworth.

1: Since the interview was conducted, Current Affairs has received one response, from Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV). It was an evasive non-answer, available here. (August 8, 2025)