Another Indian Origin Left Democrat Saikat Chakrabarti Is Creating Waves In U.S.

Arabian Post

2 days ago

By Nitya Chakraborty
The Left wing section in the Democratic Party in the United States of America led by Senator Bernie Sanders is on upswing even though the party establishment seems clueless to deal effectively with the challenge thrown by the second term President Donald Trump to the very existence of its rival party. After the stunning victory of the 33 year old Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for the New York mayoral election in November this year, another Indian origin Democrat Saikat Chakrabarti is creating waves in the American politics by announcing his intention to stand against the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the veteran of the Democratic Party establishment in the November 2026 midterm elections.
This has created furore in both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party leadership as Saikat carries a background of a successful activist who has been playing an important role in transforming the Democratic Party since the 2016 presidential elections in which he was associated with Bernie Sanders's campaign .Sanders could not win the nomination butSaikat was noted for his expertise in leading the election campaign.
Starting with Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential run, Saikat Chakrabarti has played an important role in the left-wing insurgency that has recently attempted to remake the Democratic Party. After working on Sanders's 2016 campaign, Saikat managed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (AOC) successful 2018 challenge against Joe Crowley. He went on to serve as her chief of staff, launching her Green New Deal proposal.
Now Saikat is running for Congress himself, challenging former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, in California's 11th Congressional District. Saikat says that the Democrats' embarrassing loss to Trump last year inspired him to run. He 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.
In a recent interview to the American left magazine Jacobin, Saikat said, back in the 1970s, America felt unstoppable. We had just put a man on the moon, built the interstate highway system, had decades of rising living standards and wages, and were including more and more people in society through the civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, and other movements.
We were doing so much that we actually had immigration offices all over the world that were recruiting millions of people to come help build this country. That's how my parents got here. One of my dad's friends took him to one of these offices in Calcutta where a nice staffer pitched him on the American Dream and got him to apply for a visa right there on the spot.
Elaborating on his immigrant background , Saikat says 'My parents came here with less than $20. They grew up poor in India, especially my father. After being displaced during Partition, his family of ten squatted in an abandoned house before 'upgrading' to a one-bedroom apartment. He often went days without food. But he was lucky to have a solid education because my grandfather was a teacher who ended up starting the local public school for all the neighbourhood kids.
Saikat said ,In the United States, my dad was able to get a job within a week of arriving despite having no connections, and, on a single income, was able to afford a solid, middle-class life for me and my family. Growing up, I had everything I needed: a roof over my head, food on the table, and a great public school education in Fort Worth, Texas.
He said 'My parents' story has always stuck with me precisely because of how common it actually was. Millions of immigrants who came here during that time had a similar story. So did hundreds of millions of Americans who, starting with the New Deal and all the way to the 1970s, accomplished one of the biggest leaps in incomes and living standards that humanity has ever seen. I've always been awed by that accomplishment, and the core driver of my politics and work over the last decade has been the belief that we can do it again.
About his bringing up in USA, Saikat said 'I was pretty apolitical, though, growing up and through college. After college, I came out to San Francisco the first chance I got to work in tech because I naively believed tech would be a way to fix the biggest problems in the world. After working in tech for a few years though, I knew the answers didn't lie there. So I quit.
It feels cheesy to say this today, but I actually made a list of the problems I wanted to help do something about. It said: inequality, poverty, and climate change. Then Bernie Sanders announced his run for president in 2016 talking about exactly those things, and he started filling stadiums with people excited for something new. So I joined!'
Saikat got name as he was the prime mover of the Green New Deal was proposed by the leftwing congress members According to Saikat, the Green New Deal was our vision of what Democrats should stand for: a plan to invest in upgrading and developing our economy by tackling climate change, creating millions of high-wage jobs in the process. 'While Alexandra, Corbin, I, and others were working at Justice Democrats and then on AOC's race, Zack Exley was busy running New Consensus, the think tank he and I had started a few months after Justice Democrats. We had looked around for a think tank that was working on the details of how to radically reverse the decline of the working class while building a clean economy. We didn't find any (though many economists were talking about the need to do this), so we started one. The Green New Deal came out of the work Zack and others did at New Consensus.'
Once AOC won, Saikat and his team had a three-pronged approach to launching the Green New Deal. He worked on the inside to build political support, while the Sunrise Movement, whose political team he had met through campaign work, worked on the outside to mount a pressure campaign on representatives and presidential candidates. At the same time, New Consensus worked to flesh out the ideas in the Green New Deal and socialize them with academics and journalists (which was a big reason people like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman came out in favour of it when it launched).
Saikat said that experience made him realize how powerful it can be to have people on the inside working with a movement on the outside who are all aligned on a vision for the country. And he learned that it is easier than we think to get new ideas to go somewhere in DC, especially right now when people are hungry for some vision of a future. If we could do the Green New Deal with just one member of Congress, what could be possible with dozens or hundreds of Congress members acting with real purpose and urgency?, he said.
Saikat left AOC's office at the end of 2019 after ruffling a few too many feathers in DC and moved back to San Francisco. Since then, he has been working on the Mission for America at New Consensus, which is a successor to the Green New Deal .
Saikat said that his plan when he left Washington DC and moved back to San Francisco was to continue working at New Consensus and continue supporting political candidates who rejected the corporate status quo in favour of championing working-class people. I wasn't looking to be a congressional candidate myself. But this last election changed his mind.
He thought the fact that Trump made more inroads into the traditional working-class, multiracial Democratic base than any GOP presidential candidate would be a wake-up call for Democrats — especially since they couldn't dismiss his victory as a fluke like they did the first time around. He thought Democrats might take the threat of Trump and the authoritarian right seriously, since they repeatedly told us during the election that a Trump win would slide the US into authoritarianism and fascism. But then he saw how Democratic leaders actually acted in the face of a Trump win and Trump's brazen attempts to consolidate power. He heard Nancy Pelosi interviewed after this election saying Democrats did nothing wrong and didn't need to change.
According to this young Democrat, Democrats need a new economic vision, and they need new leadership. Here in San Francisco, even those who have supported Pelosi for decades and deeply respect her past work believe it's time for change. But because of the deeply hierarchical nature and deference to seniority in the Democratic Party, no one else is willing to risk their political career by running against her. 'So it was one of those, 'If not me, then who?' moments, and I felt a duty to run.'
Saikat said '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. 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. That huge leap in incomes and living standards that started with the New Deal and went into the 1970s — we can do that again and do it while building a clean and fair economy. And if we don't — if we can't prove that democracy can deliver what people need — then people will vote for the authoritarian who promises to do it himself.''
More than 15 months are left for the midterm elections in America scheduled in November 2026. But already preparations and campaigns have started. Nancy Pelosi, now 85, has the longest term as a US congress member. She is known belonging to the centrist group of Democrats including Joe Biden and Barack Obama. The centrists are feeling uneasy, but openly they are not taking any position against Saikat Chakrabarti.
Saikat has the advantage that he represents the aspirations of the white American youth also , apart from the dream of immigrant youth. He went to Harvard, did big jobs in IT sector, set up his own company and then joined politics to make a difference. The younger population in the West Coast are rallying around Saikat. His group of campaigners are marketing their New Deal for the youth. There is an air of optimism in San Francisco 's political environment. Many veteran Democrats want Pelosi to retire. Saikat is involved full time in propagating his Mission for America to the Democratic Party support base irrespective of the outcome of the midterm polls in November 2026. (IPA Service)