Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. Centrist, neoliberal Democrats are seeing increasing

primary challenges from the progressive left. That has led to a number of high-profile

upsets, including most recently Jamal Bowman, unseating longtime Congressmember Elliot Engel in New York.

It is rare, however, to see such a contest

right on the November ballot. Well, this year is an exception when Nancy Pelosi, the House

Majority Leader and the country's most powerful Democrat, faces a challenge from Democratic

Socialist Shahid Bhuthar, who is running on a staunch progressive platform. Shahed Bhuttar joins me now.

Shahid, welcome to pushback. Let me start by asking you to address people, probably not many

people who watch pushback, but certainly many people in Nancy Pelosi's constituency who see her

as an effective leader. She has a reputation for being tough for getting

things done. So why challenge her? Why take her on now and why are you a better candidate?

She is tough and she's very effective at getting things done for Wall Street. And the substance

of our critique, the reason I'm running is that we, the people of the United

States, have been unrepresented in the Democratic Party for entirely too long.

We see voices in the squad that have been willing to defend the future in the face of the

predatory corporate past that we aim to shrug off. And we see Nancy Pelosi, unfortunately, standing with

the past and constraining the future. And that's why I'm here. That's why the squad has emerged

in Congress. And I'm eager to join it and expand them after replacing Pelosi this November.

Pelosi's handling of the response to the pandemic, what would you have done differently?

The very first thing is to finally embrace universal health care.

It was an imperative even before the pandemic, but the pandemic makes it even more inescapably

clear that we can't treat public health like a commodity. Public health

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