Ro Khanna and the policy of “weak and awake”

Ro Khanna quickly became one of the most recognizable Democrats in the United States. The California Congress member is a regular in cable information, a favorite on the Podcast circuit, and fluently the languages ​​of Silicon Valley, industrial policy and progressive idealism. Among political commentators, he is often considered to be the future of the party: a figure that can reject divisions, articulate an optimistic economic vision and strive with conservative interlocutors without losing his composure.

However, for all the appeal of the surface of Khanna, her limits as a political disruptor were exhibited last week during a new Fox exchange With Lawrence Jones. When asked if the Democratic Party had become too “awake”, too “non -male” and too distant daily concerns, Khanna denied the accusations, instead of embarking on a reverie concerning the inheritance of the New Deal and the commitment to Medicare and Medicaid. In the process, he carefully bypassed what the voters find most to the alienation of the modern left.

Compare your response to recent comments from Rahm Emanuel. The longtime Bigwig Democrat now strikes President Trump now Cnn as sweet on crime and recently said the Wall Street Journal that the democratic brand has become “toxic” and “weak and awake”. Emanuel, who does not hesitate to position himself for a race in 2028, is at least ready to say it directly: the problems of the Democratic Party are not only economic messages or campaign mechanisms. They are cultural and are deep.

You don’t have to love Emanuel to recognize that he diagnoses something real. For all the speeches of “New economic patriotism,” THE data are clear: the voters of the working class abandon the democrats, the black and Hispanic moderates move to the right, and the young voters are either disillusioned or disengaged. Survey After survey shows a part of a worried party on his future and not convinced by his management.

It should seem familiar. In 2016, Donald Trump carried out a campaign by repugnant the GOP, and without defending it. He did not apologize to the party’s failures on trade,, immigrationOr foreign policy– He denounced them. He told Republican voters that their party had dropped them, and he invited them to help him tear and start again. The result was not exiled. These were three consecutive presidential appointments and two general electoral victories.

What makes Khanna interesting, but ultimately limited, as a national candidate, is her apparent reluctance to follow Trump’s game book and challenge his own party. Of course, he is a gifted communicator, and he is ready to call the madness of diagrams like “Classification for equity.But he still plays the defense, always operating within the limits of a coalition of which he refuses the most unpopular instincts to name or confront.

Rather than challenging the drift to the left of her party, Khanna recently adopted what Matthew Yglesias double “”Moderation for dogs »– A kind of performative discomfort with the excesses of the left which stops unless a real confrontation. In this, he looks more like the former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg than Trump: commonly polished and cautious.

Khanna would have a lot of raw material if he wanted to launch a calculation on the scale of the party. Internal dissatisfaction is widespread. In the morning after the 2024 elections, the representative of New York Ritchie Torres faded The extreme left to chase away Latinos, blacks, Asians and Jews with slogans like “founding the police”, “from the river to the sea” and “Latinx”, rejecting them as a nonsense to Ivory line better suited to Tiktok than to the real world. Michigan senator, Elissa Slotkin, has in the same way warned That many moderates consider democrats as culturally disconnected. Khanna has chosen to get around these concerns.

Democrats are currently putting their own War of Wonk During the so -called abundance program – a technocratic vision to revive the capacity of the state and accelerate the delivery of the public sector. Its objectives are largely sensible and marks a welcome break from the most performative aspects of progressive policy. But it is, below, a coalition management exercise.

As criticism have observed, the failure of the liberal state to be built is not accessory but the product of its design: a veto point system and competing interests where symbolic gestures often have priority on material results. The abundance program aims to reduce some of the excess procedure without disturbing the underlying logic. This is why it is unlikely that it resonates with the voters who have already settled the party.

The truth is that no Democratic candidate can break with the party’s past without clearly saying what many voters already believe: that the party is “weak and awake” and must change. In 2024, Kamala Harris was marketed as a new start without ever specifying what, exactly, was to be left behind. “In the new” does not work unless you say: “Out with the old.”

Khanna says he wants to direct the Democrats. In front of what? Until he is ready to answer this question, he will remain what he is now: a spokesperson gifted for a ruined coalition, a potential reformer who does not want to name what needs reform.

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