In a symbolic moment nodding to the party’s past, and looking towards the future, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last night featured an array of political figures illustrating America’s journey.

Hillary Clinton took the stage in Chicago Monday night, supporting the party’s nomination of Kamala Harris for president, a full circle moment as Clinton was the first and only woman to ever serve that role. As Clinton stood front and center, in an all white pantsuit, face-framed by a bob – a callback to her 1996 signature haircut – applause drowned out her first attempts of addressing the crowd, with feelings of both awe and nostalgia filling the air.

“And now we are writing a new chapter in America’s story,” Clinton declared, her words bridging past and future.

Clinton’s speech wove a tapestry of women’s leadership in the Democratic Party, from Shirley Chisholm’s groundbreaking presidential run as the first Black woman in Congress to Geraldine Ferraro’s vice-presidential nomination. She referenced mothers and daughters, and painted Harris as the future as she paid homage to women’s role in the party.

“I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, ‘Keep going,’ surely. And Gerry would say, ‘Keep going.’ Women fighting for reproductive healthcare are saying, ‘Keep going.’ Families building better lives, parents stretching to afford childcare, young people struggling to pay their rent—they’re all asking us to keep going,” she said.

Both Clinton and Harris stood resplendent in their pantsuits – once a symbol of Clinton breaking the status quo, now a uniform of women in politics – the evolution of the party was on full display.

“It’s moments like these that reinforce the importance of women’s voices in shaping our future, and I’m grateful for her being so brave to pave the way for women. She’s such a role model for women who refuse to be silenced or sidelined,” Demerike Palecek, an Illinois native, and president of Chicago’s 46th Ward Democrats, told Reckon.

Though the party has evolved since Clinton’s reign, and though politics are still male-dominated, new captains are taking the wheel. Democratic party favorite Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received some of the warmest regards of the night as she spoke out against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“We know Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing palms of his Wall Street friends,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed trampling on our way of life.”

The response to Ocasio-Cortez’s speech was electric, with some likening her oratory skills to those of former President Barack Obama.

“I also want to highlight how the auditorium shook when AOC came on stage. I was like, is she gonna be the next president in 10 years? Maybe,” said Mary-Pat Hector, CEO of Rise Free, a Gen Z-led organization working on higher education affordability. “You can hear the young people specifically in the audience yell and scream ‘AOC’ because she represents who we are.”

The enthusiastic response to Ocasio-Cortez’s speech underscored the growing influence of younger voices within the Democratic Party, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z voters who see her as a champion for their concerns.

“I adored her speech last night at the DNC. I watched it online,” said Bushra Amiwala, the first Gen-Z elected public official, who was voted into the Skokie, Ill., school board in 2019. “And that being said, her participation at that scale was, I’m sure, also a very conscious decision. I’m sure she had things that she had to grapple with in order to decide whether this was an opportunity she wanted to take.”

In this moment of flux, one thing is clear: the future of the Democratic Party is increasingly female, unapologetically diverse, and spanning three generations, each leaving its unique imprint on the American political landscape.

A tale of three generations

The face of the Democratic Party is undergoing a dramatic transformation, with younger women ascending to prominence and reshaping the political landscape. Representatives like Jasmine Crocket and Ocasio-Cortez, along with their colleagues in “The Squad” — a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen including Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib — are rising up the ranks as household names, pushing a much more progressive platform than their predecessors. As Gen-Z begins to enter the political arena, it’s evident that yesterday’s women leaders are not today’s, as stark generational differences reflect the concerns, challenges and values of each generation.

Clinton’s generation of Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, have dominated the American political system. Though Harris was born on the cusp bridging Boomers and Gen-X, political commentators liken her policy style and connection to younger voters as leaning into the latter, appealing to a generation of voters who have more progressive views. Both millennials, Ocasio-Cortez, born 1989, and Crockett, born 1981, carry similar policies, with Crockett sitting as a generational buffer both in age and in policy.

Clinton rose to become one of the most prominent political figures during the 1990′s, surpassing her role of First Lady and paving her own path in politics, eventually becoming Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, before launching her own bid for the presidency. According to scholars, she had to play the game to do it. A 2016 report by Cambridge University, observed that as Clinton became deeper involved in politics, her linguistics became more and more masculine, characterized by more “anger” words, swear words, and assertive language, which the author claims is in stark contrast to how she spoke while First Lady.

“Clinton maintained this masculine self-presentation throughout her time in the Senate as well as in her 2006 re-election campaign. The findings from her two Senate campaigns, then, are consistent with the expectation that female candidates adopt a masculine self-presentation to look “tough enough” for the job,” wrote University of California, Irvine political science Ph.D. candidate Jennifer J. Jones in a 2017 report.

Today’s Dems are leading in a different way. Rather than playing the game, they made their way to Congress by taking alternative routes. Ocasio-Cortez, representing the millennial wave, rewrote the rulebook. The Bronx native’s grassroots campaign for New York’s 14th Congressional District in 2018 wasn’t just a victory; it was a revolution, powered by activists and working-class voices long unheard in the halls of power.

Now, Gen Z is stepping onto the stage, exemplified by trailblazers like Bushra Amiwala, the first Gen-Z woman and youngest Muslim elected to office. Their political style? Deeply connected, fiercely diverse, and unapologetically authentic.

Policy: From evolution to revolution

The generational differences are evident in these politicians’ policy perspectives. Clinton’s 2016 approach to improving health care was maintaining the Affordable Care Act (ACA), proposing enhancements such as bringing down the cost of copays and deductibles, and incentivizing states to expand Medicaid. In contrast, Ocasio-Cortez has pushed the idea of healthcare as a human right, supporting Medicare for all, which eliminates copays and premiums altogether. Crockett, meanwhile proposes expanding the ACA with a public option, a middle ground that reflects her generation’s desire for significant change tempered by political realism.

On climate change, the generational gap widens further. Clinton speaks of market-based solutions and international cooperation. Ocasio-Cortez, by contrast, champions the Green New Deal, calling for a complete economic transformation including the U.S. ceasing fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, and pumping funding to create high-paying jobs in clean energy, according to the New York Times. Crockett emphasizes the need for aggressive action while also focusing on the economic opportunities of green technology. These differences in policy reflect broader generational differences, which can be linked to generational upbringings. Boomers, like Clinton, came of age during a period of U.S. economic instability amidst looming tensions of the Cold War. As millennials entered adulthood, war and The Great Recession became formative in shaping their more urgent calls for change.

While older generations of politicians focused on improving living conditions and institutions, progressive millennials and Gen-Z are looking at systemic overhaul. Cheyenne Hunt, for example, the first Gen Z woman to run for Congress, worked on building the first impeachment case against Trump, according to Teen Vogue. Racial justice in Clinton’s era, according to a reproduction of the Hillary for America policy page, like investment in pre-K programs and advocating for CHIP. In contrast, Ocasio-Cortez has woven racial equity in many of her policy proposals from the Green New Deal to the Loan Shark Prevention Act.

Building off the progressive platforms of “The Squad” and others with similar views, Gen Z is stepping onto the stage, exemplified by trailblazers like Amiwala, the first Gen-Z woman and youngest Muslim elected to office. Their political style? Deeply connected, fiercely diverse, and unapologetically authentic.

Gen-Z enters the chat

Often characterized as “chronically online,” Gen-Z’s deep digital connections have, according to researchers, fostered a profound concern for the wellbeing of others.

“In summary, a typical Gen Zer is a self-driver who deeply cares about others, strives for a diverse community, is highly collaborative and social, values flexibility, relevance, authenticity and non-hierarchical leadership, and, while dismayed about inherited issues like climate change, has a pragmatic attitude about the work that has to be done to address those issues,” Roberta Katz, a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) who has studied the generation, told the Stanford Report in 2022.

Though Gen-Z have been linked to millenials in terms of their stance on issues like diversity, polls show this younger generation is getting more progressive. A 2023 Harvard Youth Poll revealed that 18 to 29-year-olds are much more progressive on wanting strict gun laws, action on climate policy, same-sex relationships, and the belief that food and shelter are a right.

Researchers say that these views are marked by their lived experiences, including growing up with the increasinging of school gun violence.

“This generation has never felt secure — personally, physically, financially,” John Della Volpe, director of a Harvard Youth Poll on Gen-Z told the Washington Post in 2023.

Political scientists say this leftward shift among the youngest voters presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the Democratic Party. While it potentially energizes the party’s progressive base, it also risks widening the ideological gap between younger and older Democrats, potentially complicating efforts to maintain a unified front on key issues.

In Illinois, where the DNC is being held this year, local Gen-Z women have been making moves in local politics. Rep. Nabeela Syed was sworn in last year, and in 2019, Amiwala was elected to the Skokie, Illinois School Board, becoming the first Gen-Z woman and the youngest Muslim to be elected into office.

“I do think Gen-Z realizes that there are certain things that worked in previous years that we can and will learn from and implement in our campaigns when we’re vying to be local elected leaders [or] national elected leaders,” said Amiwala, who told Reckon that she turned down the opportunity to be a delegate and attend the DNC as a stance against how the Biden-Harris administration has handled the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“That being said, we also know that the playbook that we are being handed is far different than it was before. I’m not saying let’s boycott the election, but we can’t just blindly pass our support without holding our soon to be elected leaders, and current elected leaders accountable in some way.”

While she doesn’t model her approach to politics after any politician in particular, Amiwala says she admires Ocasio-Cortez, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has stood firm in speaking out against the party’s stance on Gaza.

“She’s someone who I see unequivocally stand for what’s right, stands for where her heart is, and she faces the backlash with beyond so much grace,” she said.

The convention has showcased speakers from different generations, highlighting the changing makeup of the party. Established politicians shared the stage with newcomers, including the first Gen-Z women to enter national politics. These younger leaders bring new ideas and face unique challenges as they adapt to political roles. How these different generations work together will likely influence the party’s direction in the coming years. Their ability to find common ground on key issues could affect the party’s unity and its appeal to a diverse group of voters in future elections.

For Gen-Z politicians like Amiwala, navigating this new terrain comes with its own set of challenges.

“You will end up being the person who basically will make the mistakes that other folks in your footsteps who follow can learn from, but that means I don’t necessarily have a playbook of seeing how it’s been navigated for me beforehand, right?” said Amiwala. “It’s a balancing act between following your heart and following your head at same time.”