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?”