It was one of those direct messages on X that look like they could be spam: “Hey good evening! I’m planning to report you’re considering a run for congress. Would love to talk to you about it. Are you free tonight or tomorrow morning? Could chat here or I’m at XXX-XXX-XXXX.”
The sender wasn’t a bot, but an actual reporter from Politico. The message came in around 10:30 p.m., and the next morning I shot back, “No”—as in, no, I’m not running. When we spoke Friday, I explained that the odds of me running for Congress were slim—like, say, 20%—while trying to make clear how unlikely a scenario it would all be. That afternoon came the story: “Molly Jong-Fast is thinking about challenging Jerry Nadler.” Bathroom Sinks And Cabinets
To make things 100% clear: No, I am not running for Congress. Perhaps I should’ve seen this coming. Since Donald Trump’s victory in November, I’d spoken casually to consultants and political people about what it would mean to run for Congress and if I would even want to do it—and I’d pretty much decided against the whole thing. I didn’t think there was anything newsworthy about it, but, alas, Politico and others felt differently.
Why I’d even consider such a thing is because I believe this is an emergency—and I’m not the only one. “Right now, there is a distinct possibility that we do not have a free and fair election in 2028, and all of our work is to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Senator Chris Murphy told The New York Times in a piece published over the weekend. And while accepting a lifetime achievement honor at the SAG Awards on Sunday night, Jane Fonda, the legendary actor and longtime activist, asked, “Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements—like apartheid or our civil rights movement or Stonewall—and asked yourself, Would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? We don’t have to wonder anymore, because we are in our documentary moment. This is it, and it’s not a rehearsal.”
In a time of national crisis, it’s understandable to wonder how one can best be of service in protecting democratic norms and institutions. In my case, I decided it’s better for me to be working as a journalist—offering my opinions and analysis in the pages of Vanity Fair and on social media, or commentating on MSNBC and conducting interviews on my podcast, Fast Politics. For someone else, the best thing to do is run for public office.
But I was struck by how many people read the Politico story and congratulated me on taking on Nadler—something, again, I am not doing. While wading through those messages, I realized that a lot of people are desperate for new representation in Washington, including those in an overwhelmingly Democratic district represented by a 77-year-old who has been a New York congressman since 1992. Even Nadler’s Democratic colleagues believed it was time for him to step aside when it came to serving as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. In December, shortly after Nadler agreed not to run to retain the coveted committee role, the Times noted that people close to the congressman “said he had been deeply hurt by the push to replace him.”
His successor on Judiciary, Jamie Raskin, has demonstrated his ability to make forceful arguments against Trump, having served as lead impeachment manager in the aftermath of the January 6 attack. More recently, he has addressed the “very dangerous moment” the country is in and called out “savage” cuts pushed by the Elon Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency. At 62, Raskin may not be among the younger House members, but he’s proven to be an effective communicator, making the Democrats’ case on television and social media. That public-facing role is one in which some next-generation Congressional talents, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 35, and Maxwell Frost, 28, particularly excel at.
We've unfortunately seen older Democratic politicians refuse to step aside for generational change; Joe Biden, who spoke in 2020 of being a “bridge” to “future” leaders of the party, still ran for reelection at age 81 despite low approval ratings (and only bowed out for Kamala Harris after a disastrous debate performance). There was also Dianne Feinstein, who died in office in 2023, at age 90, after being absent from the Senate for nearly three months and missing more than 90 floor votes.
Let’s not forget how Feinstein, a few years earlier, clashed with politically engaged kids who were urging her to support the Green New Deal. She appeared dismissive of their pleas for climate action, at one point telling a 16-year-old who was calling on politicians to listen to constituents, “Well, you didn’t vote for me.”
In normal times, it might have been okay to leave ineffective legislators in positions of power. But not when the president is dismantling the government and testing the guardrails of democracy. This is not the time for politeness, for sparing feelings and deferring to elder lawmakers out of some sort of obligation. It’s time to elect people who can, and will, stand up to Trump and his authoritarian agenda.
Which brings me to the impetus for this column: I’m not running for Congress, but you should. Women, especially, need to be pushed, as a lot of times the best people for elected office have only the faintest sense that they should run.
Yes, there are people running in 2026, when Democrats have an opportunity to take control of the House and put some limits on Trump’s power. And the world’s richest man firing significant swaths of the federal government should only create more candidates. As Amanda Litman, the cofounder of Run for Something, an organization that recruits young progressive candidates, told me: “In the 3.5 months since Trump won, we’ve seen over 20,000 people express interest in running for office, nearly half of them just since inauguration—already exceeding our numbers from all of 2017. People are fired up to do something meaningful, and are sick of waiting around for leaders who can’t find their backbones.”
Remember, we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for. Democrats need to stop being polite, stop waiting their turn, and realize, as Fonda put it, that we’re in that documentary moment as we speak. Rehearsal time is over.
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