Members are nervous because voters are mad.
“I was surprised how many people at the town halls were upset at the Democrats,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — who just hosted three town halls in red districts across California — told Raw Story.
Others are more petrified than surprised watching their party’s restive progressive base unleash on their Democratic allies in Congress.
“People are angry across the board. They're right to be angry,” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) told Raw Story after recently hosting a packed, frustration-fueled town hall in his district just outside Washington. “As you saw with my town hall, if there's a D at the front of the room, you get it. I think it's kind of being voiced across the country.”
Just three months into Trump’s second term, most Democrats are alarmed. But that’s about it for the currently coachless party, and there’s no end in sight for fuming liberals. And primary challengers are emerging early, eager to take on party elders of a bygone era.
With Republican leaders coaching their party’s rank and file members of Congress to avoid town halls, Democrats are bracing for a long, hot summer.
“People are angry across the board”
A couple of weeks ago, Congressman Ivey heard an earful from many federal workers in his suburban Maryland district, but it was more than that. Voters of all stripes — left, right and formerly indifferent — made his town hall tense at times. That’s new.
Just this past November, the soft-spoken Democrat was reelected by a whopping 88.7% of voters in the district. A mere four months later, his constituents, including elected Democrats on Capitol Hill, are fuming mad at Washington.
"Fight for the American people!" a lady shouted to Ivey during the crowded town hall.
At another point in the meeting, a frustrated man asked the two-term congressman, "Does the Democratic Party have a plan?"
The short answer? No.
“We're having to figure this out, in some ways, as we go. With the court cases, I think those are definitely going in the right direction,” Ivey said. “I think some of the challenges for the political pieces, you know, basic math for us, we just don't have the majority anywhere.”
The vitriol coming from their own voters has elected Democrats now attacking each other as voter frustrations transform into elected officials’ fears in real-time.
Congressional Democrats are scrambling — or maybe spinning their proverbial wheels? — even as most recognize there isn’t much the party can do until the 2026 midterm elections. That may not be good enough this time around.
Primary season started early for Democrats
Some Democrats are wondering what all the fuss is about. Sure, they know this is a new moment, but angst-ridden organizers propelled many progressive elected officials into office.
Since being elected in 2018, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — an original member of the so-called Squad — has held monthly town halls. She says her fellow Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of angry voters.
“I don't consider them protests. I consider them an engagement,” Omar told Raw Story. “There are obviously pretty excited folks that show up. It is always lively. It's never really without concern for where the country is headed and how we should be representing them.”
While Democratic leaders are trying to downplay the infighting on Capitol Hill, outside of Washington’s infamous Beltway, voter frustration is fueling a civil war that could reshape the Democratic Party as we’ve known it in recent decades.
In New Jersey, 20-term Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) is facing a primary challenge from investment analyst and first-time congressional candidate Katie Bansil.
In Chicago, progressive 26-year-old TikTok ‘influencer’ Kat Abughazaleh is challenging 14-term Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — making it the first real primary for Illinois’ 9th District since Schakowsky won her own primary battle back in 1998.
Even Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) faces a progressive challenge for the San Francisco seat she’s held since the eighties. While it’s a longshot—unless the 85-year-old retires—former Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti is running promising fresh ideas, new energy and a break with the Democratic Party of yesteryear.
Chakrabarti is 39 years old—even though Pelosi has been a member of Congress for the past 37 years—and says it’s time for new Democratic leaders.
“I don’t understand how D.C.’s Democratic leaders are so paralyzed and unprepared for this moment after living through President Trump’s first term,” Chakrabarti said in his February campaign announcement. “I respect what Nancy Pelosi has accomplished in her career, but we are living in a totally different America than the one she knew when she entered politics.”
If progressive organizers like Justice Democrats get their way, that's just the beginning. At the start of the year, they announced a new candidate recruitment campaign ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Back in 2017, the organizers helped elect ‘The Squad.’ They were early to back Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — who primaried 10-term Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) not just out of Democratic leadership but out of Congress altogether — Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
The tides turned in 2024, as AIPAC primaried newer Squad members Reps. Jaamal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO) out of Congress.
This time, in Pennsylvania, progressive Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) is being challenged by Turtle Creek Democratic Mayor Adam Forgie, who claims to be a “traditional blue-collar Democrat.”
That race seems to be an outlier, but it does fit into the trend of upheaval that has been the theme of Democrats since the party’s poor showing in the 2024 election.
While the 2026 midterms are more than a year out, they’re increasingly on the minds of nervous, disjointed and seemingly powerless congressional Democrats.
House members have to face voters every other year, but Senators are constitutionally gifted six years worth of space from their voters. But six years isn't the electoral cushion it may seem, and Democrats in the Senate are worried while watching the party’s restive base unleash on their House colleagues at town halls.
“Of course there's concern,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Raw Story.
That said, Fetterman isn’t too sympathetic to progressives calling for a new Democratic standard-bearer. He says the party just tried that when former President Joe Biden was ingloriously pushed out in 2024 and replaced by then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Demanding a new messenger — a new whatever — and that's what the party did, and then they're trying to pretend that they didn't get what they wanted,” Fetterman said.
Without a presidential election, liberal voters are taking aim at Democratic Party leaders on Capitol Hill.
Chuck Schumer canceled himself
Since funding the government on Republicans’ terms, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been fighting for his political life. To the point he changed his personal media strategy and went on offense.
While Schumer is not shy, he’s also not accessible. His weekly routine is one Tuesday afternoon press conference just off the Senate floor—an occasional questionless ‘press conference,’ though not much else.
That’s why he turned heads after voting with the GOP when he hopped around numerous cable shows defending his vote — and strategy — after the base exploded in rage. The Senate minority leader canceled a planned book tour, citing security reasons.
This isn't 2010, so no ‘Tea Party’ is in sight. Schumer didn’t want to face angry progressives. It may not be that easy, as there seems to be an endless stream of angry liberals nationwide.
Restive progressives were recently granted some temporary relief when an anti-oligarchy tour rallied into town. The rallies featured Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)—who runs for president as a Democrat—and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a political phenom many progressives want to primary Schumer.
While he’s desperate to move on, the Senate Democratic leader now looks vulnerable, at least in political circles.
Schumer’s become the gossip of Capitol Hill. Seemingly, everyone — reporters, aides, attendants, pages, Capitol Police officers, rank and file members, giddy Republicans, interns — are prophesying doom on the horizon.
Weakened though he may be, he’s a five-term senator, and Senate Democrats are behind him, at the very least.
“Do you think Leader Schumer is the right leader for the party right now?” Raw Story asked retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).
“I think he has the support of the caucus, and I think what is important is to stay focused on who the problem is. It's not Leader Schumer and the Democrats, it's the Republicans,” Shaheen told Raw Story. “And that's what the party and frustrated Democrats need to keep in mind.”
Tell that to frustrated Democrats, including those on the other side of the Capitol.
“I don't consider him as the leader of our party,” Congresswoman Omar told Raw Story just off the House floor. “Obviously people are really upset with him. I do think he needs to find a spine.”
“As Pelosi says, ‘You don't give up anything unless you can win something,’” Omar continued. “And the Senate should consider what it means for them to have a strong, courageous leader that could stand up, not just for the American people, but for our Constitution.”
Schumer’s surely weakened but he’s hardly a top concern. The left remains united in opposition — fear, trepidation, etc. — to this government-dismantling Trump administration.
That’s the bright side.
The rage is real
And it’s really bright, at least according to the always-optimistic Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). The energy — negative though much of it is — is tangible.
“The bigger issue here is the incredible, sort of, eruption of public protest that's going on right now, and it's not just Democrats,” Booker told Raw Story while walking to a meeting in the Capitol. “You're seeing it across the board from people who are starting to see what Donald Trump’s actually doing, and that this was not what he was elected to do.”
No one expects angry and scared voters to quiet down soon. If anything, they’re only expected to get louder. Elected Democrats are desperate to channel that vitriol away from themselves.
That may be harder this go around.
The Democratic base showed up in November — hell, they showed up for months on end throughout 2024.
They did what was asked: Door knocking, texting, donating, phone banking, postcarding and so much more. That’s why many blame party leaders for failing to beat the very reality TV star turned political strongman they all warned against.
“New leaders will emerge”
But with Trump and his team aggressively upending entire federal agencies — let alone norms — many sense an opening for the Democratic Party, tattered as it may be.
“This is a very important moment where you're seeing a president who didn't win the majority of the votes — he won a plurality of the votes — that is now having people tell him that he does not have a mandate to cut Social Security, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, National Parks,” Booker said. “The people that are stepping forward have important voices that we should be listening to.”
Other Democrats agree that the loudest, angriest voices may just prove to be the party’s future.
“New leaders will emerge,” Congressman Khanna — who just rallied with frustrated Democrats across California, said. ”That’s what happens when you’re out of power.”
As painful as the molting stage is, Khanna — along with almost every elected Democrat from coast to coast — is watching, learning and hoping to evade the wrath of liberals. To him, the hands-off approach is the only option in this particularly populous moment.
“I think we let those moments develop. Encourage them to run for office and get involved so that the Democratic Party is re-energized, but what we don't do is try to suppress them,” Khanna said. “I think people are very disappointed. We have to channel that disappointment and give voice to it.”
While the party waits for a new leader, an increasing number of Democrats are clamoring to toss the playbook of old and use new e-tools — including some fine-tuned by their alt-right counterparts — to derail Trump’s aggressive, purposefully disruptive agenda.
“I really do think we have to build out the communications aspect of it,” Congressman Ivey of Maryland said. “And, you know, to the extent there's going to be a grassroots movement that grows out of this, I think that's a key piece.”
While party leaders are feeling the heat, rank-and-file Democrats are also becoming increasingly aware that their seat in Congress is far from a given in this boiling political climate.
“Are you worried about primary challenges potentially popping up?” Raw Story asked.
“You mean, for me or anyone?” Ivey asked as Raw Story shrugged. “Yeah, so it could well be.”
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