Rep. Ro Khanna is Willing to Name What’s Wrong

Discussion post for January 10, 2025

Sarah and Beth are joined by Rep. Ro Khanna of California to discuss the new Congress, the future of the Democratic Party, and the barriers to positive change.

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Episode Resources:

• Congressman Ro Khanna

• Rep. Ro Khanna (@RepRoKhanna) (X)

• President Jimmy Carter was an antidote to politics as spectacle | Ro Khanna (The Guardian)

• The Big Thirst | Book by Charles Fishman

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.

Sarah [00:00:29] Thank you so much for joining us today. We are honored to share our conversation with Representative Ro Khanna. This is the first of a series of conversations we hope to have this year where we invite leaders to stand with us at our proverbial whiteboard and envision a new path forward for the country, for the Democratic Party, for the media. We were so excited to kick this off with Representative Khanna who represents the 17th District, the great state of California. I always find him so insightful. And when Steve Bannon says you're one of three Democrats who get the working class, that seems relevant and important. And so we were really honored that he shared so much time with us today. He even stayed on for Outside of Politics, which is always fun.

Beth [00:01:13] Before we share that conversation, we have an announcement that we're very excited about. One of our most fun live events ever was in 2023 when Sarah invited all of us to her hometown of Paducah, Kentucky. And I am so excited to invite you to my neck of the woods this year as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Pantsuit Politics on Saturday, July 19th in Cincinnati, Ohio. I live in northern Kentucky, and as they say, the river is wide. But we are going to embrace Greater Cincinnati as a community over the weekend. We're going to have an executive producer retreat that weekend. We are going to have this live show. It's going to be so much fun. You're all invited. Many more details to come, but we just wanted to put the save the date out there right now because we would love to see you Saturday, July 19th.

Sarah [00:02:00] Next up, we are so excited to share our conversation with Representative Ro Khanna. Representative, thank you so much for being here with us today on Pantsuit Politics.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:02:18] Well, thank you and congratulations. You were just talking 10 years in podcasting. You were ahead of the curve. That's impressive.

Sarah [00:02:26] We were, yes. So we thought just our moms would listen. And it's turned out to be much more of a long term gig than we originally anticipated, but we absolutely love it. We think we have some of the best listeners in the biz and we're so excited to have a conversation with you today. There's been a lot of conversations about the election and the post mortem. Lots of theories on big and small, global, down to party level about why Vice President Harris lost. Now that we're several weeks out, I don't think we've hit on the answer, but we've hit on some generally agreed upon answers. But what do you think's missing? We've been talking a lot. We're talking and we're talking and we're talking, but what's not being said about where we are post-election.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:03:12] The person who got it right was James Carville, who said it's the economy. And we have not, as a Democratic Party for years, been able to convince the American public that we are the party of economic growth, that we are the party of economic dynamism, that we are the party that's going to unleash economic prosperity, and that we're going to do this while confronting the gross inequality that exists in our society; but that you need to trust us on making money, on being prosperous. Not to be too philosophical, but Tocqueville once said that the character of America is the character of doing commerce. And so business, making money, the economy is tied to who we are as a people. It's our identity. In France, they probably do philosophy or they do art. We do business. We come here to thrive economically. And the party has to regain that. And we've got to emphasize that. And we've got to show why we have a better vision. And putting aside the macro factors, that to me is the key challenge.

Beth [00:04:28] How do you explain to someone who is unfamiliar with your work and your service the connection between everything you just said and your support for Bernie Sanders and the popular sheen of Democrats being opposed to people being wildly successful in commerce.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:04:49] Well, Bernie Sanders was saying what Mario should have in mind so he can say, for example, what I thought he was saying is look at Rose District; it's got $12 trillion. Silicon Valley, Apple, Google, Tesla. And people there, a lot of them are doing really well. We were talking earlier about how much Fremont has changed. Homes that were once a few hundred thousand are going for a million, $2 million. And while this has happened, you've had factory towns hollowed out, rural America totally decimated. Certain people who only have a high school degree over the last 50 years, income has declined by 22%. We've gone from 53rd in income inequality in the world to 128. China is 77 and most Western European democracies are in the 30s. And we've got these places in the country that are producing extraordinary wealth and we can't get people health care.

[00:05:49] I was talking to my own doctor today who was having to put through five or six different authorizations, keep getting denied just to get a nasal spray. And what Sanders was saying is why in the wealthiest country can't we have more people have economic stability and economic prosperity? So I do think he was talking about this economy and he was saying it's not working for a lot of people and the Democratic Party is going to make it work for everyone, not just for Silicon Valley. Now to that, we have to add, in my view, a view that entrepreneurship and technology can help in creating the opportunities for re industrialization and revitalization and economic growth. And that people in technology shouldn't be recruited to do what Elon Musk is doing, which is railing against the British prime minister and [inaudible] the far right in Germany and trying to dismantle all of government. But then they should be recruited into government to help build industry and build economic opportunity around the country.

Sarah [00:06:58] It occurs to me that it's not just the working class that has abandoned the Democratic Party. Your philosophy is welcome here. We actually just completed a long read of de Tocqueville's Democracy in America with our audience last year. And it's prescient in so, so many ways, including, I think, exactly what you said, his naming of that innovation and economic opportunity. I use word innovation purposely because I think the other part of America that seems to have abandoned the Democratic Party is Silicon Valley. If you see this growing influence of Elon Musk and all these other tech entrepreneurs and the role of the billionaire’s cabinet stocked with innovative capitalists from Silicon Valley, and they're bringing that Silicon Valley energy to D.C. And you can fill your inbox with long reads and newsletters about this coming momentum. And I think you have a very unique perspective considering your district on what you think that means for D.C., for Silicon Valley, for the rest of us who don't feel are a part of either community. How are you looking at this turn in this increasing influence inside the Trump administration?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:08:09] Well, I often say that I come from the most consequential swing state, which is Silicon Valley, because technology is going to matter in an enormous way in the future. And people realize that we're stuck with our phones. You leave your phone; it's like you left your arm somewhere. We're having so much of our business online. We have so much of our families and communication that is happening over technology. Our conversation today with podcasts is over technology. And the question is going to be what is this technology future going to look like? Is it going to have the concentration of wealth in some places? Or are we going to deploy technology to create high paying jobs in rural America and factory towns in black and brown communities? Are we going to just have massive tax breaks for the wealthiest? Or are we going to actually tax billionaires appropriately in this country, recognizing today they pay about 20% effective tax and they pay 30 to 35% tax in the 1990s when we had higher economic growth.

[00:09:14] Are we going to have just massive deregulation and allow the billionaires and multimillionaires to do what they want with technology? Or are we going to say we're going to protect our kids on social media and pass the Kids Online Safety Act and that we're going to regulate the excesses of the violation of data privacy by these tech companies and have an Internet bill of rights and support basic antitrust actions. These are the big questions. And I think that the Democrats can still win most of the Silicon Valley. I won with 67% of the vote. And in my district, like I said, the heart of Silicon Valley it's Apple, Google, Intel, Tesla. What is that saying? That a lot of the employees, the engineers, the workers in these companies and in Silicon Valley still support the Democrats. And that we as a party need to be the answer that says we get the future. We know where this is going, but we're on the side of people. We're on the side of people in American families to make sure this future is working for you. We are not on the side of just unregulated free market capitalism. Well, and I think whoever convinces the American public about the future and that they have a better vision is the party that's going to be the governing majority.

Beth [00:10:34] I want to ask you about that convincing, because you do a lot of media, you write a lot of op-eds. You have talked from the beginning of your political career about the need to be out in front of people, communicating a positive vision, an affirmative message, not just being against things, but being for things. I wonder, especially as we think about this election, do you feel a sense that something in media even in this conversation, if you want, is just like fundamentally broken? Sarah and I are spending a lot of time asking ourselves, how can we contribute in the new administration in this new year? How can we do something different and meaningful and useful? But it's hard to know because media is so saturated and political media in particular all starts to feel the same after a while. So as someone who's out there all the time trying to build that trust with people, what can we be doing better?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:11:28] It's a big challenge because the things I think that I do that are the most consequential often get the least media attention.

Sarah [00:11:34] God, that's so true. You hear a conversation that works and you're like, do you hear that? And it just doesn't break through in the same way something viral does. It's so true.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:11:45] Yeah. So I posted on Twitter yesterday that we should have and Senate Democrats should have confirmed the NLRB Democrat and that there were some procedural mistakes, and this is why we lost the NLRB board for two years. We could have had more protection for workers. And because it's somewhat critical of what the Democratic Party did, it's got millions of views. And yet I wrote an op-ed in The Guardian about all of the experience I had with Jimmy Carter and how we need more decency and how we need more grace and humanity. And maybe 20 people are going to read that or 30 people on X.

Beth [00:12:22] I read it. It was great.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:12:24] And I think that you're one of the 30. Because of him maybe It'll be a few hundred. But the point is that the most consequential things I do are things like working with Nvidia and Google to go to historically black colleges, create $5,000 scholarships for kids and get 65, $75,000 jobs in the future and doing that in rural America and public colleges. But people some of them write a nice article, but they're not really talking about it. We're going into a community that's been decimated where people have lost jobs and seeing the decline of their standard of living for 40, 50 years and just listening to them and seeing what they fear about the country and thinking about what we need to do in those communities. And those are the voters. Those are the citizens. And a lot of our conversation in the media is not centering them. And I think that for six months what we probably just need to do is go out into these communities and listen. It can't be a politician because politicians are the worst podcasters. You are destined to fail because you don't see enough things that are interesting.

Sarah [00:13:36] Don't tell Ted Cruz that now. He's working really hard.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:13:39] I mean, maybe he will defy the trend. But I think if someone were just to do something like drive across America, meeting people and telling the story of America-- that was the most powerful ad with Bernie Sanders in 2016 that America had. And in part because it was an evocative sense of people in America. And I think that that's what we need; to listen more and give voice to a lot of these folks who are not the ones who are going to get invited certainly not on MSNBC Morning Joe or Maria Bartiromo. Probably aren't getting invited enough on the podcasts, but are the folks that we need to reach.

Sarah [00:14:20] Well, you're getting at something there, though. It's not just the media itself and what bubbles up in the media. I think one of the most impactful statistics you see is the difference in voters between who just engages at all with the news. There's that crazy statistic about if you engage with the mainstream media or the mainstream news media at all, you're like 20 points more likely to vote Democratic. And so there is a listening to the voters, but there's also that the voters aren't listening to the news. That they're not engaging with politics, that it's the vibe election you're just picking up here and there because people avoid it. We have a highly engaged audience and still people will message us and say, "I'm out. I can't do this for a little while. I'll be back, but I need a break." I know that you represent a very unique district, but I also know you grew up in Pennsylvania and you've talked a lot about traveling across the country. Where do you see a path forward on that aspect? Is it we have to listen before they're willing to listen to us? Although I don't include us in the mainstream media. I do think there is an engagement. Listen, de Tocqueville talks about that a lot in Democracy in America, that people being engaged and informed about what's happening in their country, in their communities is an essential component of democracy. So I wonder how you think about this big divide between voters, between people who are engaged in the news and understand what's going on and the people who are pretty disconnected and going based on just what bubbles up virally or what breaks through on TikTok or whatever.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:16:01] It's a big challenge for the country. On the one hand, we all were part of a governing class have to do better and be more intentional in reaching people. I remember the stories about Lincoln where he's leading the Civil War and every day he'd have 100 people who could knock on the door and get an appointment and meet with him and the firsthand accounts that we spend way too much of his time figuring out what job someone would get in the federal government as opposed to worrying about the war. But the connection between the elected officials and the public has gotten less and less and less, partly because of security reasons, partly because of the fundraising demands, partly because of the modernization of politics. And so we all have to be intentional in how do we cut through that. I think podcasts are wonderful from this perspective. And some of social media used well can be effective in that you don't have to be a congressperson to give a speech about something that captures the national attention. But I do think in addition to being intentional about it, you struck on this sense of civic education. When I grew up in Pennsylvania and was in elementary school, we went to the Liberty Bell, we went to the Constitutional Center, we had student elections. I lost in the ones I did.

Sarah [00:17:25] Same.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:17:25] We had some candy sales. I remember going to neighbors selling candy to raise money for certain causes. And it's this irony because we're the most educated we have ever been as Americans in terms of both the number of people getting four year degree, a two year degree, are finishing high school and getting post-secondary credentials. And yet there seems to be some decline in basic civics and understanding of the American process and participating in the American process. I remember how I spoke to the first school board meeting as a seventh grader, how nervous I was when I met in a small group my local member of Congress, Peter Kozma. And I just think that we have to get back to that. And that doesn't have to be Partisan, but we've got to understand that that civic culture, and particularly in a digital age, got to have that civic culture is critical in the strength of a democracy.

Beth [00:18:19] So the DNC is about to choose a chairperson, and I wonder if there is a connection between the conversation we've been having in that race to you. What do you need from the DNC chairperson? Are these the kinds of questions you want that person thinking about? And if not, what is important to you in that role?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:18:36] I absolutely think that they need to be thinking about how do they create more buying and engagement at a local level in communities. We need more people, in my view, like my father, who spent 15 years after he retired as the chair of the Northampton Township party worried about how we're going to get to local supervisors. And he got no support from any of the national or state parties. But how do we build that kind of party in every part of this country? And I read some op-ed about how the Labor Party in Britain would mail everyone a card like you're part of the Labor Party. But how do we create that kind of belonging in the Democratic Party? You're part of something. You're part of this community. You're part of a party. You're part of this party locally, and we're going to support you. And there are a number of candidates, Ken Martin, Wikler, of course, Jonathan Jackson, when we get in we're focused in different ways on expanding the party into the 50 states and locally.

[00:19:39] The second thing is we've got to realize we've been totally out registered. And that didn't start with when Kamala Harris became the nominee. We've been out registered in Pennsylvania and Arizona and North Carolina for four years. I didn't realize it until the media started talking about it when Harris was running. It was what made me always most nervous about the election, that the energy seemed to be on the Republican side. So we need to really focus on registering new Democrats in these swing states and critical states for the Senate and in the presidency. And third, we need the big money out of politics on the Democratic side. We can't unilaterally disarm if they're going to have mass carrying hundreds of millions of dollars. We've got to fight to overturn Citizens United or regulate super PACs like Maine has. But in the meantime, we don't need to have that super PAC money spent on Democratic primaries. And that should be a commitment that the DNC chair is making.

Sarah [00:20:36] That's interesting. I want to take a little bit of a turn. Since the UnitedHealthcare CEO was murdered in Manhattan and including the two terror attacks, I feel like we've been having a conversation around political violence. I know that your family immigrated from India and your maternal grandfather was a freedom fighter and spent time, I believe, in jail. And I'm just wondering, with that family, ancestry, how you think about the-- you talked about the security needed for House members and how that keeps them secluded from their constituents. I'm just wondering how you're thinking about this conversation that America seems to be having about political violence, much less with the anniversary of January 6th and the discussion of future pardons. I would think that you have an interesting perspective on this conversation and what it can mean as it plays out across the country.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:21:31] Well, I appreciate that. And you're invoking my grandfather who is one of my heroes and spent years in jail fighting for India's independence alongside Gandhi. I was thinking of him particularly today and yesterday as President Trump is talking about annexing Greenland and trying to acquire Panama. And one of the things I was so proud of America is that unlike Britain, unlike Rome, we affirmed the principle from Woodrow Wilson to FDR of the self-determination of people. It was FDR who pushed Churchill to decolonize India. It was our country that has been responsible for encouraging decolonization around the world. And Carter that's why he gave Panama Canal back to Panama. And I mention that because it's connected to your broader question. Any society has desires for acquisition and conquest. And in the basest instincts of violence, societies have the higher instincts of being for peace and being for justice and respecting the dignity of every individual. And at our best, we say that we're aspiring for that better society. And that's what makes America the beacon of the world. That's what even when Reagan would talk about America he'd say, look, anyone here can be American and we're for human rights and we're for freedom and we're for treating everyone with dignity.

[00:23:04] And I think that when people say oppose Trump, I've always found it's really odd. They'll oppose him on substance, but they want to mimic him on style. Just because he goes off on tirades of cursing, is that when Jimmy Carter or Lincoln or King would have done? Why aren't we saying we can be authentic to the best versions of ourselves? That, I think, is what Barack Obama was trying to say in his convention speech. And I still believe there's a hunger for that in this country. So, yes, there's frustration. Yes, there's anger. Yes, there's anger at the insurance industry. Yes, there's anger at politicians. But the way to overcome that is the example of John Lewis, is the example of Dr. King, is the example of appealing to people's higher aspirations and our deepest ideals. And ultimately, I think that beats the appeal to demagoguery and base desires if done well.

Beth [00:24:03] I'm wondering how we do that well around immigration? We're clearly going to be talking about it for the next few months. I personally find the H-1B discussion really interesting because in one respect I could make a very compelling argument for the expansion of H-1B visas. In my heart, though, like on a soul level, I really struggle with any attempt to sort people by worthiness to just try to come make a life here. I think I would ethically be most comfortable with an immigration system that's just a lottery. Maybe each state says here's how many people we would love to welcome this year or not, and that's our national number, and there's a lottery and a matching process like you would do with medical residents or something. I have a really hard time with the demagoguery around immigration because I always come back to the fact that these are people and I try to take the hard political lesson that Americans want order around this process. And I try to also understand that order is most respectful of the people coming to the country, too. I think what's happening at our southern border is not respectful to anyone, including the people seeking a safer, better life here in the United States. So I'm kind of putting a lot out on the table because I'm interested in a better, richer discussion around immigration, and I wonder if you see any possibility for that to happen, any space?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:25:37] Well, that was really well said. One Democrat shouldn't run away from being a nation of immigrants. I know that seems cliché, but some in our party want to run away from that. And that gets to my earlier point that we have to inspire that country. One of the things is all three of us are students of history. You may enjoy Mario Cuomo's imagined telling of how his parents came to America, and he says that he imagines them going to Ellis Island and the officer saying to his mother, "What are you doing?" She says, "I don't have a job." "What's your education level?" "Eighth grade." "What does your husband do?" "He's a ditch digger." "Why are you coming to America?" "For some economic chance." "Well, what do you hope for your son?" "Nothing much. Just that he'd become governor of New York." Of course, when Cuomo tells it, it's chilling. And that's the story of America. We cheer for that. I think Kamala Harris when some consultants told her don't talk about being African-American or Indian-American or a woman, I disagreed with that.

[00:26:41] I think when people in this country cheer for us becoming this cohesive, multiracial democracy where you can come from different stories and we're building something beautiful where people who go all the way back to the Mayflower and people like Vice President Harris or myself were daughters or sons of immigrants. And we need to speak to that vision. And then when we speak to that vision, we say, of course there has to be an orderly process. Of course, we now have to recognize that we need immigrants for coding, but we also need them for construction. Some of them are doing working in picking crops and they're contributing to our country's fabric. And yes, we need to make sure that are not exploited by employers and that they shouldn't be in an H-1B case something that's going on indefinitely where people are being paid below market wages, which is happening. That exploitation needs to be reformed. But we aren't going to blame the economic precarity of people just on immigrants because it's much deeper. It was the offshoring of jobs. It was the automation. It was the maximization of profits at the expense of workers. And we're going to really talk about how we solve those issues instead of just looking for a scapegoat that is easy.

Sarah [00:28:09] Well, I wonder how you feel about so much of the reporting. I cannot get that Atlanta Constitutional Journal piece about the immigrants in detention centers saying they supported Trump and they weren't going to be the ones deported. That's happening in my community. I just had a conversation with a friend about someone that lives on her land. They are worried about get deported even though they supported Trump. And I think there's that what we've sort of been dancing around, which is that marriage of you have a chance but then you shoot your shot. Like this is the economic opportunity (we're not going to give it to you, you can come here and try) that is married so often in the immigrant experience. Do you think that the Democratic Party too often speaks to only one piece of that? Only speaks to the we'll get you here and we'll treat you fairly and not to then it's up to you, we want you to have your opportunity to see what you can prove and how hard you can work and make your dreams come true. Do we leave out that second half to the detriment of that trust in that narrative that's coming from the party?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:29:16] I think we do. And I think we do it at a disservice to most immigrant families. I often tell people my parents were immigrants from India, almost never spoke of my rights. They said, well, you won the lottery. You were born in America. Go learn about the country's history. Go make good grades. Go work hard. Never forget how blessed you are to be born in this country. Go make something of yourself. And that includes learning English in a country to communicate with each other. It's not wrong that we have to learn English. Doesn't mean that you can't learn Hindi or Spanish or French, but learn about the country, participate in the country. So we need to talk about rights, but we need to talk about responsibilities. That was Kennedy, right? Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Well, if we can ask that of American citizens, we should be asking that of immigrants because that's treating them with the respect of being part of society. And I think too often that our language is often all right, and it's actually not reflective of the deep patriotism and deep responsibility that most immigrant families that I know have.

Beth [00:30:38] So I wonder, as you think about the new Congress, how optimistic are you feeling that this kind of discussion can happen? I've read where you've said we should try to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on the things we agree on. I see you out there trying to take Trump's arguments that resonated with the public seriously and figure out how to communicate around them. Do you see that in your colleagues? Where do you think the Democratic caucus goes as sort of the opposition party for the next year?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:31:11] I think there's three directions and I'll try to make the case for what the direction I think we should go. One is collaboration. I don't think we should be collaborators in an agenda that, in my view, is ultimately going to hurt the American public and working in middle class Americans. So it's not just saying, okay, Vivek and Elon, let's figure out how we cut government because I don't think their values are the same as the values of most Democrats. The other is just opposition, which is, well, DOGE is illegitimate. We're not going to do anything. This is a billionaire who's in this position, billionaire being in the position [inaudible] spend millions of dollars. Terrible. But just opposition, I don't think is going to serve us well because there are a lot of people that actually think that there's fraud and waste and abuse in government. And the third, which is what I'm trying to push and I think Hakeem will push, is to determine the direction of the conversation, to take the bull by the horns and say, yes, we're opposed to waste, we're opposed to government inefficiency.

[00:32:18] And here's how we're going to do it. We're going to cut the extraordinary waste that you read about in the Pentagon, that 60 Minutes does a report on every six months because they're paying thousands of dollars for soap dispensers and they're paying cost overruns for the F-35. And here's how we're going to cut that. Here's what we're going to do to make sure that agencies are actually working. By the way, there was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who did the most in terms of making government effective. And here's our vision. And I think that what my view is of what the Democrats have to do, is to take the things that people care about, to say, here's our vision and to force them to meet us there. And if they don't, then to run on that. But we can't just say, okay, we're opposed to everything without trying to understand that these concerns about waste and fraud and government not working are really legitimate that we have to address.

Sarah [00:33:13] I'm wondering, as a representative from California, there's been a lot of conversation about how hard it is to build. That you see some right turns in big cities, Los Angeles, New York City, around the cost of living, around how hard it is to build, how hard it is to even innovate around business. And a lot of this gets laid at the governments and blue states feet. And I'm wondering, let's just thought experiment. You're in a room with Vivek and Elon. No, cameras, no C-Span, nothing to report back. And they're like, okay, we're at an impasse. You get to break the tie. What's the first thing we should do to get at this sense that we are-- we had Jerusalem Demsas on, and she said that we were 5 million units short. Now it's 20 million is what I read yesterday. Like the updated numbers were 20 million housing units short in the United States. So where is the cross-section between some of this critique coming from inside the Democratic Party now and of the government inefficiency around DOGE is there. If they're giving you a magic wand, they're saying, okay, what's the first thing we can do with the most impact that's going to get at this nationwide conversation around government efficiency and the inability to build and all these critiques, what would you do? What would you say? Let's start here.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:34:30] The critiques are legitimate. But I would first say when it comes to manufacturing, because I've seen this firsthand with the CHIPS Act and Intel, if you talked to Pat Gelsinger, it was just pushed out of Intel. He'll tell you. And I asked him, I said, "Is the issue that you're not getting [inaudible] fast enough?" He said, no, that's issue number 4 or 5. The biggest issue is financing. We can't get Wall Street to finance capital expenditures. And bias. We can't get people to commit to buying American CHIPS. So when you look at what the actual needs are to build manufacturing, it is not right to say if we can just get expedited permitting. I'm not dismissing that. But you're not going to solve the main issue, which is a Wall Street driven economy that just wants the maximization, quarterly earnings and a lack of government procurement to actually a manufacturing demand. On housing, I think there is more of a challenge with the zoning laws and the restrictions on building. But it again needs financing. So I would champion someone like Elizabeth Warren's plan, which says we're going to give you the funding to build more rental properties, to build more housing. But you need to have as a condition of that, better zoning policies that are going to allow this to be built.

[00:35:51] And then the federal government will help you with the schools and the infrastructure and the sewage to be able to do it. What the Republicans tried to do is they just say that if we could just give tax cuts and deregulation and permitting, somehow the country is going to be great. And the reality is it's like selling you a free lunch. No, you got to have the investment. And that's the hard part. And you got to be willing to tax to get that investment. But then, of course, the Democrats need to focus on the implementation. And it's a fair critique to say, hey, you guys, you passed the CHIPS Act two years in this, these factories are not, the money is barely going out. And it's partly I sometimes say a little glibly. Obama brilliantly does the whole Affordable Care Act. And then we mess up the website and for like six months people are [inaudible] the website not working. And if it was Donald Trump, he'd probably make sure it was like the greatest website and there'd be no subsidies. No one would be getting health care. We just need to pay attention to the presentation and the performance and the implementation.

Sarah [00:36:57] Signing the checks. [Inaudible] sign those Covid checks.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:36:59] Exactly. And so some of it people say it's just branding. But on a deeper level, it's the politics of symbolism. It's showing people you care; you get it, you understand.

Beth [00:37:10] So in that vein of we care, we get it, we understand, everyone feels kind of disregulated to me right now. Honestly, since the election, people who voted for Trump, people who voted against him-- I live in Kentucky. I live in a very, very red county. It still feels pretty disregulated to me here. I think some of that is people worried about technology. I think some of it is people worried about housing. I think some schools, I think some is natural disasters. We were very spooked here by what happened in North Carolina. We are very spooked right now by what's happening in Southern California. I just wonder what you would say about the Democratic Party getting that dysregulation, that fundamental what is going on that we're all feeling and why we should trust Democrats to work with us on those problems.

Sarah [00:38:00] The ever popular is the country on the right track kind of question? That's what that brings to mind.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:38:05] I think that you hit the nail on the head on what people are feeling, and Trump went at it a very dark way. He said Rose family just got here. Look at how that community, metaphor because my parents are still middle class, are doing in Silicon Valley. They're building all this wealth. But you built America. Your coal powered the energy. Your kids scaled the cliffs of Normandy. You fought the wars. What has happened to you? What is happening to this country? And people understand it's changing. It's changing economically. It's changing technologically. It's changing demographically. And first, we need to say we understand that it's a lot. And we have failed in giving people the economic, security and stability with all of these changes. We have watched wealth concentrated in certain places, and we haven't done enough for places like Paintsville, Kentucky, or the Hal Rogers district, where I'm familiar with, I've gone there a number of times. And other parts of rural America. I mean, we need a Rural New Deal. We need investment in infrastructure. We need investment in manufacturing. When we went to this "knowledge economy" did we ever think what we were going to do for communities that were left out?

[00:39:22] And then the second thing we have to say is we also understand that there has to be a balance between respecting people's traditions and culture and what they want and making place for the new and that we want to have that conversation in a way that's respectful. What is it that is the obligation of people who are coming to America to learn and celebrate in our culture? And what is our responsibility to think about what could be new and dynamic? I often say that the entire political conversation in America is it is fine playing cricket in Rose District in Fremont as long as baseball remains a national pastime. But these cultural issues are real. And sometimes I feel the Democrats are too afraid to talk about the real things on people's minds. And we need to say I understand people are afraid or embarrassed that their kids are going to be taught to be embarrassed about being white in America. But that's ridiculous. Abraham Lincoln was white. Our founders were white.

[00:40:22] But you know what great countries do? Unlike Putin or XI Jinping, we preach about 100 years of Jim Crow and 250 years of slavery. Not because it makes you embarrassed about being white or Indian or black, because it makes us extraordinary as people who are willing to confront history and be better. And Democrats don't talk like that. We don't talk about what people are actually feeling. I went on Megyn Kelly to talk about trans rights. I didn't back away from my position, but I talked about the fears that were there. And I think we've got to just address people's actual anxieties, honestly. And the last person to do that culturally, in my view, was President Obama in his race speech in Philadelphia where he said here are my grandparents, here are the kind of prejudices they had, but I still love them and here's what I hope. And I just think more honest talk about this. And you're never going to get it from a focus group or a poll, but avoiding it is the worst thing.

Sarah [00:41:16] How much of that is like the professionalization? You're a lawyer; we're lawyers, but we're here doing things lawyers don't do. Talking about their feelings and these cultural issues. How much of that is just the professionalization that we feel like we can't talk about anything unless we have a five point policy plan as a solution to this cultural issue. But sometimes the political brilliance of Barack Obama is just naming it. He didn't have a solution for race in America. He was just naming it. How much do you struggle with? How do we talk about it even if we don't necessarily have a policy solution?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:41:48] Well, I think you just explained, unfortunately, Donald Trump. He doesn't have a solution for coal being automated or natural gas being cheaper or people's jobs really going offshore. He just understood that that was a problem. And he named it and he said it's unacceptable. That's literally the explanation of his career. And that naming it has gotten him such intense loyalty from people who feel he gets it. And I guess I would say that we've had a challenge partly the professionalization of politics. People learned all the wrong lessons. They thought Obama won because he had exceptional data. And yes, he had exceptional data, but he also happened to be Barack Obama. The data was like 2%. The most humble person I've ever met was Michael Whouley, who helped Clinton win in New Hampshire. And Clinton was down after some of these scandals.

[00:42:43] And I said, "Michael, you're brilliant. You got Clinton to win New Hampshire. How did you do it?" He said, "Ro Let me be honest. Bill Clinton needed two things an airplane and a microphone, and the rest of us came along for the ride. And I think that we missed that politics is an art. It's about listening. It's about feeling. It's about being spontaneous. And it's not about being so careful in making sure that you don't have a gaffe. The previous answer I had, a consultant would tell me, don't ever go there. You may say something wrong if you get clipped. And you know what the amazing thing about communication, which unfortunately Trump and J.D. Vance realized, is you can say really dumb things, but as JD did with cat ladies and the next day it's going to be out of the news cycle. So even when you're making horrific gaffes it's better just to be out there and let people get a sense of who you are. They'd be so careful. I don't want to make a mistake.

Sarah [00:43:40] Yeah, so true.

Beth [00:43:41] So I loved the book and the movie Primary Colors. And I especially loved the scene where you have the bill and Hillary stand ins arguing about education and the bill character is making this impassioned plea that what you need is a really inspiring teacher. And the Hillary character is saying, but that's not a policy. I can't measure that. I can't make it better over time. I need a policy that a not inspiring teacher can implement. So what do you think is the magic mix of really hammering through the policies versus having really inspirational leaders who connect with people on that sort of visceral level?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:44:25] Well, that's a great question. I have forgotten that part of Primary Colors. Obviously, it's a mix of both. But I would say the Democratic Party right now can use a lot more of the inspiration. I have tremendous admiration for President Biden, but he approached the presidency as a legislator, as someone who had been remarkable in the Senate and thought, okay, I've got to pass a lot of great policies. And we did. A president is more than that, right? I often say why is it that Lyndon Johnson got the greatest legislation done with Medicare, with the Civil Rights Act, with the Voting Rights Act, with the Immigration Reform Act, but every street is named after John F Kennedy? Because John F Kennedy spoke in poetry to the American ethos. And that's, I think, what especially a president or leaders they have to inspire the country to do big things. And it's almost like being a conductor. Winston Churchill said it's like the British people who won World War Two. I just gave it the roar, but the roar matters. And I think the Democrats, because we've got a lot of the policies, in my view, we've got to work on that inspiration, that connection. And we have a lot of incredible people whether it's a Wes Moore or Andy Beshear or Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer or people like my colleagues in the House; we have people who can do that. We just need to, I think, focus on that.

Sarah [00:45:53] Well, that's my ultimate question, though. Back to our original starting point with the election postmortem. I was in it. I was like everybody else; I couldn't read enough. I couldn't think about it enough. I've been a Democrat since I was 18 years old. I'm invested in this conversation. And I just got to a point where I was like, does it matter? Because ultimately it's going to be whoever the next Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. We call them the Clinton eras and the Obama eras for a reason. Are we setting the field so that the right person can come along? Or is history going to determine? So much of politics is timing and luck and chance. Is it all going to matter? Is it just going to be whoever captures it? Because we're in the Trump era because he is a unique political figure. And whether we like it or not, he possesses unique political gifts. And so how much is it just going to be defined by who occupies the field or doesn't? Or if we lose again? That's what I keep trying to play around with. I think these conversations are important. I just don't know ultimately when it's so defined by the next presidential candidate and leader of the party, is it going to have impact? Are we laying a good field or is this just all us making each other feel better?

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:47:05] One, I don't think it should take Barrack Obama for a Democrat to win. I understand being a Democrat, which has to make the case for government and change, it takes a lot of skill. But it shouldn't require that kind of Herculean talent for Democrats to be able to win. The Republicans win without-- Trump is an exception. But there are people like George Bush twice and others who don't have that. But the deeper point is this, it probably requires quite a lot of a unique moment and a unique person to become president or become the candidate. But what is that president going to stand for and what type of leader are they going to be? And there I think all of us really matter. And here I would say let's not sell ourselves short on two dimensions. When I was growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in the 1980s, if you had said, well, in 2024 there's going to be an African American, Indian American woman who's going to be the Democratic nominee for the party, and that person is going to get 48% of the vote, I would have said you're crazy. Not more than 25%. That's all of us pushing this country in ways that are becoming almost American in spite of itself, a more multiracial, cohesive democracy.

[00:48:34] And then you have President Biden saying we're going to fight for increasing wages. We're going to push for manufacturing. We're going to push to have Medicare negotiate. And that's because of the efforts of those people who worked on his campaign at Bernie's campaign and Warren's campaign, were activists. And so all of us, I mean, it's like the Bobby Kennedy speech. We send ripples towards like a justice. And we don't know who that torch carrier will be in '28 or '32. But we can move our party in that direction. And in that sense, that's the great thing of all the conversation we're having, because I feel like out of that is going to come a renewed new ideas, new vision, new substance. And I'm pretty confident that Hakeem is going to be speaker and that we're going to have a phenomenal team in '28. One person will be quarterback and everyone else will be part of the cabinet and it'll be a new generation of leadership and it'll be exciting.

Beth [00:49:32] Well, I hope that you're right about that.

Sarah [00:49:35] I do, too. I was thinking from your lips to God's ears. I love it.

Beth [00:49:47] We always end by doing something Outside of Politics. And if you have one more minute, we wanted to ask you what's in and out for you in 2025? I'll give you an example so you can think about it. So in for is second chances. I am trying to be open to things that I have previously said. I don't like this food or this cut of shirt or this way of tracking my physical health or whatever. I'm just trying to give things second chances, try again, see how I might feel about it. And out for me is having any kind of online meeting if I am in the same city as the people I'm meeting with. If I can share the air with people, I'm going to meet them in person and share the air instead of being on online. I'm very grateful for Zoom in conversations like this one, but where I can be in person, I want to be in person. So that's my in and out. I wonder what yours might be for 2025.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:50:38] Well, and though I'm skeptical whether I'm going to be able to achieve this, it's actually drinking water. So for the longest time I drink tea, I drink coffee, I drink diet coke. And I looked that up and it says you get enough liquid. But I've been told now by enough people who love me that it's not a substitute for water. So that's my in. And what's out for me is now being in my eighth year at Congress, getting appropriate sleep. I have often done like I stack these meetings and then I'll do a podcast like this or a TV hit, and only some of the closest people to my team will come back and said, you suck. Your eyes look terrible. You think you're going on all this energy, but you're not. You're 100 times better when you get eight hours of sleep. So I now realize that actually getting the sleep makes me more effective. And different people have different bodies.

Sarah [00:51:30] Listen, I really like Tim Walz a lot. When he was like, we can sleep when we're dead, I was like, no, Tim. No. We have made a lot of progress on the sleep issue with Arianna Huffington. We're not going back. That's why we're not going back. We're not going back to the sleeping when we're dead. Sleep is very important. I'm excited for your new journey on sleep. That's a good one.

Beth [00:51:51] I'm excited for your water journey, too.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:51:53] If you'll have me back in a year I'll report whether I was successful.

Sarah [00:51:55] Yeah. We will be your accountability partners. That's a good idea.

Beth [00:51:58] Please do. I like that. And also, I grew up in a house where we never drank water. We always drank something, but not water. And what has really changed my relationship with drinking water is the book The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman. It's so beautiful. It just completely changed my life around water. So I think that would be a good step. As your accountability partner, let me offer that up to you about water.

Sarah [00:52:19] Yes. We're going to check in on you. We're serious. We're going to check in on you.

Rep. Ro Khanna [00:52:23] I appreciate it. And I appreciate what you guys are doing.

Sarah [00:52:29] Thank you so much to Representative Khanna for being with us today and to all of you for listening. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday with a brand new episode. And until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

[00:52:38] Music Interlude.

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers:

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