I never wanted him within a parsec of power, but, like many conservatives, I was interested in the rise of Silicon Valley’s congressman, Representative Ro Khanna, who seemed to be occupying his own unique lane among potential Democratic candidates for 2028. He was always a leftist, to be sure, and he embraced policies that history, experience, and common sense have proven to be disastrous whenever they’ve been tried. But he was a personable guy – I interviewed him when guest-hosting for Hugh Hewitt and even wrote about him here – and he was unlike other Democrats in that he didn’t give off the vibe that he hated us. That’s important because it’s so unusual. You could talk to him and feel like this was someone who disagrees with us but doesn’t want to shove us into train cars and ship us off to the gulag for the crime of being normal.
Well, that’s all over. There’s a new Ro, and he’s just like the rest of the Democrats, only more so. I guess the not-crazy lane was backed up, so he decided to make a sudden change left without using his turn signal and hit the gas. He no doubt felt this was the only way to distinguish himself among the other Bolsheviks, so he shed the reasonable persona and went full Ivy League faculty lounge.
Never go full Ivy League faculty lounge.
Understand that this guy is ambitious, deeply so, which is not bad in and of itself. But he wants to be president someday – he radiates a kind of certainty that he’s been divinely selected for it – and it’s pretty clear he’s going to do whatever he has to do to make that happen. Sadly, what he’s had to do is embrace every kooky left-wing idea out there. If you think hefty Ozempiphobe Pritzker and slimy Gavin Hairstyle are communist-curious, stand back. Ro’s going to make them look like William F. Buckley, or, in Pritzker’s case, about six William F. Buckleys.
Gone is the guy we thought we could live with. Enter the guy who turns everything you hate about Democrats up to 11, including traveling to Minnesota (remember, he represents Northern California) to awkwardly cavort with the local communist mutants. As a lawyer, I professionally admire his positional flexibility. As a citizen, it strikes me that he has lost the one thing that made him unique, which was a bit of unpredictability. He used to express at least a curiosity about other positions – and some understanding of where we normals are coming from. But it’s pretty clear that there’s no room in the Democratic Party for a Democrat who imagines that we Republicans might have a moral right to disagree with their political sacraments. The basis of the Democratic Party today is that we’re not just wrong, we’re morally wrong to the nth degree. Trump isn’t just an opposition politician. No, he’s literally Hitler, which leaves aside the objective fact that he’s nothing like Hitler in any way, shape, or form, but that doesn’t matter. The fascist stuff is just a signal that there can be no communication, no compromise, and no acceptance that we even have a right to participate in our own governance.
What made Ro Khanna different? He didn’t seem to buy into that. He seemed to think that we were fellow Americans who could be, if not persuaded, at least engaged. But there’s no room for that in the current Democratic Party. The current Democratic Party’s position is that we patriots are morally unfit to participate at all in politics. That’s where the base he needs is at, and so now that’s where he is at.
What’s he doing? A lot of raising his profile by any means necessary. He joined with the worse-than-useless Thomas Massie to push the ridiculous Epstein files bill, as if there’s some secret confession lurking among the documents that exposes the terrible truth. Of course, we already know the terrible truth – this legislation was a tacky performance art piece that he jumped on because it got him a lot of attention. It’s ended up being a big nothing because, of course, it’s all a big nothing. Epstein was a grubby pervert who mostly cavorted with Democrats, and Trump had no part in his crimes.
Khanna, of course, wants to defund ICE and persecute agents because he doesn’t believe illegal aliens should be deported and because that’s the current thing. He has hit Newsom for taking AIPAC money, which is another way of saying the governor is too close to the Jews. Yes, he’s all in on the Gaza genocide idiocy. He also jumped onto the California billionaire wealth tax train to nowhere, a terrible, terrible policy that would disproportionately affect his own congressional district. He would certainly be willing to sacrifice his congressional career for a presidential bid. The bottom line is that Ro 2.0 is fully on board with every current left-wing thing.
It’s sad because Ro 1.0 was somebody who could have helped turn down the heat in American politics. He took the time to listen to conservatives, and even if he didn’t agree with them, he at least tried to understand them. But as we’ve seen, there’s no upside to understanding the Right among the Left, because the Left fundamentally believes that the Right has no right to exist at all. Sadly, Khanna understands that there’s no future in his party for a candidate who is not absolutely committed to the idea that the opposition is inherently illegitimate. That’s why you have him saying objectively stupid things like that the shooting of the communist weirdo – but I repeat myself – in Minneapolis is our generation’s Kent State. He’s a smart guy, too smart to actually believe this kind of nonsense, and it’s dispiriting to see him pander this kind of MS NOW-friendly nonsense. But he’s ambitious, and he feels he’s got to do what he’s got to do.
But I don’t think it’s going to be enough. In a race to the left, there’s always going to be somebody nipping at your heels, forcing you further and further over. At some point, even if you manage to win the nomination, you’ve got to appeal to normal people, and normal people aren’t going to buy the kid-castrating, open borders, DEI, socialized medicine, race-communist nightmare his primary positions would create. It’s ironic that the thing that might give him an edge in the general election – the sense that he was different because he was not, at one time, dedicated to wiping us out figuratively and perhaps literally – is the very thing that he has now determined would make it impossible for him to win a Democratic primary.
It’s sad because America has two options going forward. We can either have a civil war, and one side can crush the other – I’ve written about that eventuality, and it is not pretty (especially for the side without guns) – or the Democratic Party can accept the existence of the opposition and concede Republicans’ moral right to both assert their views and, when they win an election, to govern. Not so long ago, Ro Khanna seemed like somebody who could help America choose the latter option. Sadly, his ambition has led him to become yet another of those Democrats who are making it more likely we end up choosing the former.
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