Ro Khanna is everywhere — and he would like your attention

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LOS ANGELES – As the Democratic Party searches for its identity after watching working-class voters slip away in 2024, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) has been everywhere.

Leaving little doubt that he is laying the groundwork for a White House run in 2028, the Silicon Valley congressman has been organizing his own rallies to rev up Democrats in some of the most competitive House districts. He was in Los Angeles on Saturday at a gigantic rally organized by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), railing against the power of Elon Musk, President Donald Trump’s top donor, and telling the crowd it was “time to tax the billionaires.”

On Monday in Ohio, he continued his exploration of places “that have been hollowed out” by the loss of manufacturing. And Tuesday at Yale Law School, he turned his sights on Vice President JD Vance – a likely GOP presidential contender in 2028 – warning that Vance is a direct threat to the Constitution and free speech because of his attacks on universities and his suggestion that the Trump administration could defy court orders it does not like.

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“When a student is snatched from campus and denied due process, speak up. When a student protester is harassed for their viewpoint, stand in their defense. When you are told to keep silent about the need for diversity by a potential employer, walk away,” Khanna said at Yale, a school he and Vance attended. “What is needed now are the small acts of conscience that together shape the soul of a nation.”

Khanna noted that Trump’s critics were not able to stop federal authorities from mistakenly deporting a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego García, but he said, “The louder we speak, the more of us who speak, the longer we speak, the more we become a human shield against an arbitrary state and resist the cold routinization of injustice.”

Khanna’s thirst for publicity sometimes draws eye rolls from fellow Democrats – and as a little-known House member, he is hardly at the top of pundits’ presidential lists for 2028. Some strategists bluntly dismissed his chances and suggested his Silicon Valley ties and embrace of liberal ideas such as Medicare-for-all could be political liabilities.

But with liberal voters hungry for leadership, strategists said, there are also many opportunities for Democratic politicians of all stripes to jump in and shape the party – even if they might seem to be a long shot for 2028.

“We as a party are in between leaders … still struggling to figure out where we’re going and how we’re going to get there,” said Jim Manley, a longtime aide to the late Democratic Senate leader Harry M. Reid. “And that’s going to allow anyone who’s interested to try and figure out whether they have what it takes to run for president – or at least raise their profile.”

Khanna has been seeking to show in recent months that he’s comfortable in the hot seat. The congressman has aggressively sought appearances in venues shunned by other Democrats. He has sparred with pro-Trump YouTubers and podcasters about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, trans rights, his support for a wealth tax, and his goal of transforming the federal government into an investment engine creating better working-class jobs in skilled trades, new technologies and AI.

When Democrats were erupting in fury over Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s decision to back the Republican spending bill – opposed by Khanna and all other House Democrats except one – Khanna was out in California at three town halls absorbing the rage and telling audiences it was time for “the old guard to go.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryiad Cooper, an exasperated 45-year-old combat veteran in Norco, told Khanna after lecturing him about his party’s incompetence in fighting Trump, “but you’re the only one standing here.”

Khanna reports having raised nearly $3.6 million in the first quarter of this year – amassing a war chest of nearly $13.4 million at the end of the period.

But he waves off questions about whether he’s running for president; Khanna says he’s focused on helping Democrats unmask the “false populism” of the Trump administration. That means getting out into the country to argue that the administration’s dramatic cuts to government and its pursuit of tax cuts benefiting the wealthy will hurt working people.

Trump’s policies will “backfire with working- and middle-class Americans and backfire on our economy,” Khanna said in an interview recently while driving between two California House districts. “And that’s going to give us a chance, as Democrats, to have a fundamental realignment back towards the Democratic Party in ’26 and ’28.”

At his address this week at the City Club of Cleveland, he decried Trump’s “reckless” and “chaotic” implementation of tariffs and said Democrats should pitch themselves as belonging to the party with a “modern understanding of the economy” and how to revive it. He says his travels to places of “economic stagnation” such as Johnstown, Pennsylvania; suburban Detroit; and Appalachia have left him “with a feeling of great sadness” and a deeper understanding “that Americans are justifiably frustrated with the political system that has let them down.”

Democrats, he said, have not adequately addressed the tide of anger that resulted from the feeling that “the working class had been shafted,” he said. And that helped Trump get elected twice.

“What they’re doing is dismantling government. So this gives us a chance to say, ‘We actually have the vision of how we’re going to build this country,’” he said. “My view is, after eight years of Trump’s sloganeering, people are actually going to want true solutions.”

But to get voters to listen to a deeply unpopular party, Khanna argues that Democrats must become better communicators. After Trump’s election to a second term, Democrats concluded that they needed to take their pitch to a broader range of media – and strike out beyond liberal spaces. Another potential 2028 presidential contender, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), turned heads – and created a backlash – with his interviews of MAGA influencers Charlie Kirk and Stephen K. Bannon. Another possible candidate, Pete Buttigieg, says that “Democrats need to be showing up everywhere,” including Fox News.

But few Democratic politicians have taken the “go everywhere” mantra as far as the lesser-known Khanna.

The day Trump was inaugurated, Khanna spent two hours live-streaming as a guest of the right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool, who has repeatedly called the Jan. 6 attack an “inside job.” Khanna was cordial as he tried to find some common ground with Pool on Jan. 6.

“If someone was out there caught up in the protest and just showed up and was swept in and went inside, I have a very different view of it than people who smashed down buildings, threatened people with violence, hit law enforcement officers,” Khanna told him.

A week later, the congressman spent 2½ hours with pro-Trump podcaster Patrick Bet-David – whose previous guests include self-described “misogynist” Andrew Tate and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“The Democratic Party stands for reform,” Khanna told Bet-David. “Part of the problem was, in the election, we became the party of the status quo.”

Khanna has talked for years about reviving American manufacturing and what he calls “economic patriotism,” focusing on those themes in his tours of Midwest factory towns and, more recently, a New York Times op-ed offering up his plan for the Democratic Party.

Khanna said he ramped up appearances with right-wing hosts after the election to push back on accusations that his party is timid or closed-minded.

“Our debate has become too stale in the Democratic Party,” he said. “A lot of the attack on Democrats has been … are we so policing language and expression that we’re unwilling to mix it up.”

Lately Khanna is increasingly trying to mix it up with Vance, Trump’s heir apparent. Khanna often notes that he has connections to Vance, who briefly worked in venture capital and forged close ties to Silicon Valley figures such as Peter Thiel. And the congressman speaks warmly about Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, who is also Indian American.

When Vance earlier this year pushed to rehire a Trump administration staffer who had recently called to “normalize Indian hate,” Khanna responded directly to him on X.

“Are you going to tell him to apologize for saying ‘Normalize Indian hate’ before this rehire?” Khanna wrote, setting off an extended back-and-forth with Vance. “Just asking for the sake of both of our kids.”

His desire to set up a contrast with Vance was especially clear this week when Khanna went to Vance’s home state and rebuked him during his address to the City Club of Cleveland. The subtext was clear and, during a question-and-answer session, a student hinted at Khanna’s White House ambitions. He said he’s been focused on economic development at Cleveland State University and had a plan Khanna could use.

“For the White House Economic Development Council Chair,” the student said, “I’d like to submit my application.”

Khanna laughed.

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