A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Democratic voters upset over President Trump's spending cuts are also angry at their own party for what they say is too weak of a response. KQED's Guy Marzorati takes us to a town hall in California.
GUY MARZORATI, BYLINE: Ayla Ozturk showed up to a community center in Bakersfield earlier this week to make her voice heard about the Trump administration's efforts to slash spending.
AYLA OZTURK: They're just looking totally in the wrong places.
MARZORATI: She's upset about potential cuts in the future to health care programs like Medicaid.
OZTURK: All of these areas that are just being, like, cut and have been, like, neglected. And it just - it makes me very angry.
MARZORATI: Ozturk is mad at her own party for not doing more in the face of these cuts proposed by congressional Republicans.
OZTURK: People just want to see the Democratic Party just, like, do something.
MARZORATI: California Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna organized these town halls hundreds of miles south from his Bay Area home - this one in a key swing district held by Republican Rep. David Valadao. Khanna came here to rally voters in Valadao's Central Valley district, where two-thirds of residents are on Medicaid, the most of any seat in California.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RO KHANNA: We need that organizing today to save Medicaid and to save our democracy.
MARZORATI: But many of the locals who came up to the open mic were Democrats wanting to get their own house in order.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We need more direction, I feel, from the Democratic Party.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Our leaders have done some serious damage to the party.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: So what are the Democrats doing?
DARREN BLY: When is the Democratic Party going to set aside its peacetime leaders...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Laughter).
BLY: ...And bring up some wartime leaders? Because that's what we need.
(CHEERING)
MARZORATI: Speakers were especially unhappy about Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer's recent decision to avert a government shutdown by supporting a Republican spending bill. Khanna criticized Schumer and called for new leadership in the party, which won the approval of Bakersfield resident Mitch Carillo.
MITCH CARILLO: They were mentioning the old guard in the Democratic Party, and they've done some really great things, but it's time to step aside. And let's let this younger generation come in and see what they can do.
MARZORATI: In Carillo's mind, this moment calls for a different energy.
CARILLO: 'Cause the Republicans aren't playing fair. They're not playing by the rulebook.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: No, they cannot say that (ph).
CARILLO: I mean, whatever it takes to win, they'll do. And so the Democrats don't have an answer for that.
MARZORATI: California Democratic strategist Orrin Evans says for now, the anger at town halls is focused more on the party's posture, not its platform.
ORRIN EVANS: No one is showing up at these things, screaming that we need to be more to the left on any one particular policy. It's, where's the backbone? Let's fight.
MARZORATI: Saikat Chakrabarti is the former chief of staff to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In an interview with KQED, he says this desire to fight should morph into challenges to Democratic incumbents.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
SAIKAT CHAKRABARTI: I really think we need dozens, if not hundreds, of people to take over the party, do to the Democratic Party what Trump did to Republicans, but not around a cult of personality, you know? We need a whole movement to do it.
MARZORATI: And he agrees that movement is not necessarily about moving policy to the left.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
CHAKRABARTI: I think it's a movement of people who actually want to act, who want to fight and who want to go bigger and bolder, and who want to actually solve health care and actually get all this stuff built.
MARZORATI: Chakrabarti is hoping to be part of that movement. He's mounting a run for Congress next year in the San Francisco seat held by Nancy Pelosi.
For NPR News, I'm Guy Marzorati.
(SOUNDBITE OF EL-P, KILLER MIKE AND RUN THE JEWELS SONG, "RUN THE JEWELS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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