Two more candidates who are proud to align themselves with socialism are running for important House seats in solid blue districts in Democrat-controlled states. The secret sauce fueling this phenomenon is a widely perceived belief among the progressives who dominate the grassroots of the party that the Democrat “establishment” is corrupt to the core and must not just be reformed but thoroughly eradicated.
“In my opinion, the real moment right now in the Democratic Party is, do we want to go back to the politics as usual?” Saikat Chakrabarti told NBC News in an interview for an article that ran Nov. 19, labeling his prospective main political opponent for the position he is eyeing as “part of that normal establishment politics.”
That foe is none other than California state Sen. Scott Wiener, one of the most culturally extreme hard-left figures in Golden State politics. But Wiener is also considered to be plugged into the party’s mainstream, something that may prove far more damaging to him in the Bay Area than his controversial views on transgender youth “rights” trumping parental authority or the urgent need for “sex workers” to be allowed to freely prowl California street corners.
Chakrabarti and Wiener are both seeking the Democratic nomination for the seat held by retiring former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). While the political zeitgeist may have favored Wiener three or four years ago during the Biden administration’s White House heyday, the winds of change are clearly blowing Chakrabarti’s way in 2025.
‘We Gotta Primary Folks’
The 39-year-old wealthy Silicon Valley software engineer is a founder of the Justice Democrats, the rebellious progressive group that rose to prominence when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) emerged as a rising star of the political left in November 2018.
A Politico Playbook “Power List” of influential figures on the political spectrum for 2019 featured a profile on Chakrabarti, then serving as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff.
“Two years ago, after working for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, Saikat Chakrabarti co-founded an organization called Brand New Congress with a lofty goal: Launch hundreds of progressive candidates into congressional races,” Politico wrote. “Though they’ve been in Washington for only a few weeks, [AOC and Chakrabarti are] already making a splash – clashing with incoming committee chairmen, joining a protest in Nancy Pelosi’s office and agitating for newly empowered Democrats to stake out ambitious goals on climate change. Chakrabarti turned heads by saying on a call, ‘We gotta primary folks,’” the article noted.
Fast forward to today, and Chakrabarti is more determined than ever to topple the party’s fading Old Guard.
“When I look at the moment today, the appetite for change, it completely dwarfs what I saw in 2018,” Chakrabarti told progressive establishment UK newspaper The Guardian in August, referencing his former boss Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning victory. “We’re at the point of a dawn of a new political era.”
Though he refuses to openly identify as such, for Chakrabarti, who publicly relishes Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race, that era clearly embraces socialism. Chakrabarti “hopes to build a national movement around an ambitious program called the ‘Mission for America’ that aims to transform the US economy through aggressive government planning and investment – a kind of spiritual successor to the Green New Deal,” socialist magazine Jacobin wrote in July.
“I’m running because I want to help spark a national movement of candidates who are willing to fight for a new economy and society that will dramatically improve working people’s lives,” Chakrabarti told the publication. “No single candidate can do this alone, and I am recruiting others around the country to join me – a handful for 2026 and a wave for 2028.”
Socialism Eager to Take More Bites Out of the Big Apple
One such fellow traveler is New York City Council member Chi Osse, who is mounting a primary challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Osse, 27, left the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) due to a policy dispute after taking office in 2022, but rejoined the organization this past summer.
Osse is quite open about his affinities. In November, he penned a piece for Jacobin bluntly titled “Why I Became a Socialist.” The driving force is more Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) than Donald Trump.
“Establishment politicians want you to be satisfied with platitudes, while they turn around and receive their cut from the wealth corporations hoard,” he wrote. “We successfully launched and won our grassroots campaign for New York City Council in 2021 because my community was fed up with this small-minded and self-serving standard.”
Here we have another example of a blue revolutionary acknowledging he was radicalized by an insider-driven Democrat ruling elite. It’s a crucial point. An ossified center is not holding in US politics anymore, and tens of millions of Americans of all stripes, especially among the young, do not feel it deserves to.
“Socialism offers not just a structural strength to resist fascism but also a positive vision worth fighting for,” Osse proclaims. “As a membership organization, DSA is unbought and unbossed. We wholeheartedly believe that the world can look different, that there can be enough to go around, and that we can make that our reality.”
Power to the people! But is it really as easy as that? The Democratic establishment hasn’t run the show for decades by dumb luck. It still has potent cards to play. The mystique of incumbency and the assertion that capturing vital offices can be achieved only by supporting the pecking order already locked into place still carry pragmatic pull even among the most inflamed pitchfork-carrying progressives.
“A key group within the New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter narrowly voted against endorsing City Councilman Chi Osse’s Dem primary challenge against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries,” the New York Post reported Nov. 23.
Guess who was key to scuttling Osse?
“The decision not to endorse Osse was a victory for Mayor-elect and DSA member Zohran Mamdani, who advised the DSA against backing an Osse primary against Brooklyn Rep. Jeffries during a meeting last week … Mamdani is trying to strengthen ties with Democratic leadership in Washington and Albany to promote his affordability agenda.”
Ah, yes. He’s in the Big Game now. In the end, this may be the establishment’s ultimate ace in the hole. If it can’t beat the usurper in an election, it can always hope to absorb and digest him afterward within the sprawling system itself.
