Nancy Pelosi is Democratic party royalty: 38 years in Congress, eight as Speaker of the House of Representatives and the first woman to hold the job, she is one of Washington’s toughest political operators.
Yet for Saikat Chakrabarti, Pelosi, 85, has come to embody the malaise at the heart of a party he said has lost touch with Americans and failed to muster a coherent resistance to President Donald Trump. He wants to oust her from Congress and has launched a primary challenge for her seat.
“People don’t like the Democratic party now even more than Donald Trump,” said Chakrabarti, a former chief of staff to leftwing representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He is calling for others to join him in a “full takeover of the party”.
Chakrabarti’s insurgency offers a snapshot of the civil war engulfing the Democratic party after Kamala Harris’s defeat to Trump in November, when Republicans took control of the House, Senate and White House.
“If we want the party to change, it’s got to be something that people think is a completely new entity, which will only happen if it’s being run by completely new people,” said Chakrabarti.
Democrats’ approval ratings are in the gutter. A recent NBC poll found just 27 per cent of Americans had a positive view of the party, the lowest figure since the survey began in 1990.
“It’s a nadir for the party,” said Jeff Horwitt at Hart Research who carried out the poll. “There is a leadership vacuum.”
More than a dozen interviews with senior Democrats revealed a party gripped by factional fighting over how to respond as Trump executes his agenda, from dismantling US federal agencies to his sweeping new tariffs on trading partners.
Chuck Schumer, the party’s leader in the Senate, faces calls from a host of House members and liberal advocacy groups to step down after he led a group of Democratic senators in backing a Republican budget bill earlier this month — a move that averted a federal government shutdown.
Tens of thousands of angry voters have gathered at rallies Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders have hosted across the country — where the two standard bearers of the left have been almost as scathing of their own party as they have been of Trump.
“I’ve never seen anger at the political class this strong,” said Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative. “There is anger at Democrats for our country being in this situation where we let Donald Trump win — and for not putting up a bold and tough enough fight.”
The party has been “spineless” in failing to speak out on the “corporate greed” that has “hollowed out working class”, Khanna said.
Trump stormed to victory in November by winning support among groups once considered staunchly Democratic: younger voters, Black voters and Latino voters all shifted right.
“I would say that this was a time to step back and fundamentally reconsider the question, why isn’t the Democratic party connecting culturally with a rather large section of this country?” said Pennsylvania congressman Brendan Boyle.
The fissures running through the party are multifold: should Democrats move to the centre or further to the left; fight Republicans at every turn or seek compromise; and does their message need a total reset?
“It isn’t just the usual progressives versus moderates,” said Kris Balderston, a former deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton. “The divide is more about the level of conflict with the Trump administration — it’s a tactical, strategic battle.”
The party’s base is spoiling for a fight: 65 per cent of Democratic voters want to see their leaders hit back against the president, versus 32 per cent favouring compromise — a stark reversal from Trump’s first term, when 33 per cent wanted conflict and 59 per cent backed compromise.
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are the leading proponents of a scrap. The New York congresswoman accused Schumer of “betrayal” for backing the Republican budget bill — and has not ruled out an attempt to unseat him. Others say fighting Trump at every turn will only pander to the base and alienate moderate voters.
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman blasted “extreme voices” in the party for “yelling and screaming and demanding new leadership” and urged the party to listen to the voters in swing districts — not liberal enclaves.
Calls to move the party in a more radically progressive direction, said Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton, came from those who “want to be in the minority forever and stand on their pedestal and think that they’re right and just alienate more Americans.”
He added: “We have this perception of being this elitist party that talks down to America, where if you don’t agree with us, you’re not only wrong, you’re a bad person.”
“A lot of folks simply don’t think Democrats respect them,” said Jason Crow, a Colorado congressman.
“We’ve got to show an understanding of how people are living their life and start the process of re-engaging — and it’s going to take some time,” he added.
Cautious voices argue the party should play it safe and wait for popular blowback against Trump. James Carville, who made a name as Bill Clinton’s strategist, suggested Democrats should just “roll over and play dead”.
Small signs suggest voters are coming around. Democrats this week made in roads into Republican margins in deep-red Florida, while a liberal judge in Wisconsin trounced a candidate backed by Trump and his billionaire lieutenant Elon Musk in another special election.
“People are seeing what’s going on,” said Laura Sasiadek, 57, a special-education teacher who voted for the Democratic candidate in Daytona Beach on Tuesday. “I don’t know why they didn’t see before, but they are now — and they are voting.”
Suzan DelBene, head of the Democratic congressional campaign committee, tasked with getting candidates elected to the House, said a focus on “kitchen table issues” had won the party 13 seats in November and staying the course would see it win back the chamber in the midterms.
“This is going to be a referendum on Republicans because of the damage they’re doing already,” said DelBene.
Brad Schneider, head of the New Democrat Coalition, the party’s moderate grouping in the House, said there was room to work with Republicans on border security, healthcare and the economy.
“The centre of gravity in the House has moved to the middle,” he said. “The election in November was about the economy. [Voters] want government to work to improve the standard of living for the nation, to lower prices and make it easier . . . to get ahead.”
But many want a more radical rethink about what the party stands for.
Moulton said: “There’s way too much denialism among establishment Democrats, who make all sorts of excuses for how we didn’t lose by that much and therefore don’t have to change.”
“That’s utterly ridiculous,” he added. “We lost to a convicted felon. This should have been a Democratic clean-up across the board, so the fact that we lost at all means we lost terribly.”
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