Run for Something co-founder: 'Democrats' reliance on seniority is our downfall'

[Ponietz]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/26/run-for-something-co-founder-amanda-litman

Amanda Litman spent the past decade building a way for more younger people to run for office.

Now, as the Democratic party debates its ageing leaders after the former president’s decline led to a bruising loss in 2024, a groundswell of younger Democrats are working to remake the party by challenging incumbents and calling out leaders who fail to push back against Trump.

It’s a moment Litman has been waiting for.

Litman co-founded Run for Something, an organization that recruits and trains progressives age 40 and younger to seek elected office, the day Trump was inaugurated in 2017. Since then, the group has sought to dismantle the gerontocracy, helping to elect more than 1,500 people across 49 states. More than 200,000 people have signed up to explore a run for office, more than 40,000 of whom signing up since Trump won last November.

“The Democratic party’s reliance on seniority is really our downfall,” she told the Guardian. “Imagine how hard it is to tell your grandparents that it’s time for them to stop driving. This is the same: how do you tell someone they’re no longer fit to do the thing that they’ve been doing for decades, but maybe feel called to and derive all their self-esteem and their sense of identity from?”

[Skittles]

1. if ANYTHING indicated the need for change, it was the last election

in any other place of work SENIOR LEADERSHIP WOULD BE CHANGED IMMEDIATELY

[Ponietz]

2. We adapt or we die

[Skittles]

4. I'm a geezer

and I am TIRED of seeing the same old faces

PASS THE BATON ALREADY

[JustAnotherGen]

3. I don't to read or hear anymore about it

Until these people give a SPECIFIC age.

Or - they found just say "only 20-something white men need apply".

There is no *grappling* going on in the Democratic Party.

This takes focus off the rampant unAmerican evil in the maga Repub party. The media better start grappling with that. And the fact that there is NO WAY the maga Repub President won all seven swing states.

Personally, I want to know HOW they did it so we can use the same cheat code next year.

[Arazi]

5. Her group is focused on 40 yrs and younger

But her larger point is that Dems need to consider abandoning our commitment to “seniority”.

Traitor utterly shook up the entire GOP and threw out almost every old guard person and idea, and legit won in 2024. There’s no more seniority in the GOP - every last Cheney, Bush, David Brooks, Mitch McConnell etc has been sidelined or thrown out.

It’s a cult of personality which Dems can’t/won’t replicate but what they have done is put in new people (for worse imo, obviously) top to bottom and won. Seniority means shit in the GOP.

Is that the key to success? I do know we can’t keep shutting down young people because it’s “not their turn” or a Dem with more years in the party must be prioritized over a younger more dynamic fighter

[Iris]

6. The 40 and younger target makes sense if the idea is, say, city council level offices

[Ponietz]

8. The Democratic Party HAS to find a way to motivate under 40 non voters

https://www.prri.org/spotlight/breaking-down-the-differences-between-voters-and-non-voters-in-the-2024-election

[Arazi]

10. Gotta start somewhere. That's what this group is doing

Get younger voters involved in their local communities/politics and then grow from there

[JustAnotherGen]

7. I would caution anyone

That the primary and general voter are two different people.

If young people want their candidates in place - they must register (in a closed primary state) as a Democratic Party Member, and if in an open primary state - simply vote in the Primary.

The General Election - anyone can vote for the candidates. I suspect that when their far Left Candidate loses - they sit out the GE and whine that he Primary was rigged. This 'rigged' language started in 2016 during the Democratic Primary and it has been assigned to our party ever since . . .

If the 25 year old goes up against a 35 year old and they lose - the young white male voter needs to swallow their pride and vote lockstep with the party.

Let me put it this way - It still sticks in my craw 25 years later that Bill Bradely lost the nomination to the incumbent VP.

I will go to my grave believing that in the case of the hanging chads - he would have fought til the end/never admitted defeat as Vice President Gore did.

But you know what? I knocked on doors for Gore in the GE.

I was in my early /mid 20's then.

Why are the younguns so special now that they don't understand that you win some and you lose some, but you never give up.

2004 I was Clarke or Edwards
2008 I was Biden then Edwards
2012 - Obama Obama Obama
2016 - O'Malley
2020 - Harris, Buttigieg - then Biden, Biden Biden stepped into th erace.
2024 - Harris Harris Harris.


In four of those elections my person didn't win.

But I went ovaries to the walls for the GE candidate. Quitters never win, and winners never quit.

[JI7]

9. There were at least 2 young democrats gunning against Fetterman

did this group endorse any of them ?

[Rob H.]

11. One lesson from the corporate world that's stuck with me

is that there's often a marked difference between doing something for a long time and doing it well.

I once worked for a VP who proudly said he'd been in marketing for 30 years and he was the single most incompetent boss I've ever had, just a falling face-forward into cream pies with his pants around his ankles bumbling idiot. If I'd been him I wouldn't have bragged about my qualifications because seeing him in action told me that his current level of competence--complete ineptitude--was as good as he ever got. I've no doubt that literally anyone else could've done far better with exactly the same opportunities he had.

[Ponietz]

12. And Barcelona plays a 17-year old winger because he's just better.