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Democrats Have a Future. Here It Is. Congressmen Spells Out New Industrial Policy for Manufacturing
By Ro Khanna
New York Times Op-Ed
Mr. Khanna, a Democrat, represents the 17th District of California in the House.
Feb 13, 2025 - Millions of Americans approve of the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate supposedly wasteful federal spending by any means necessary. That puts my party in a bind. But Democrats must do more than just confront the cuts. We must also break free from a stale, conventional platform.
We have to acknowledge what we spectacularly failed to recognize in the last election — that the status quo is broken and Americans are feeling a righteous anger about the real damage that the governing class has done to their lives over the past few decades.
With the establishment of both parties defeated, we are, as you may have heard, at a fork in the road. Either the country will continue to succumb to a burn-it-all-down political nihilism and disillusionment, or Democrats can use this moment of crisis to reframe the terms of the debate. We must persuade people that transformative government is capable of improving their lives by reversing what many have experienced as decades of stagnation and decline.
What is saddest to me about the rise of President Trump — and his elevation of those fixated on dismantling our institutions, such as Russell Vought and Stephen Miller — is that it reflects the deep disdain that many Americans have for politicians and politics. They think we roll out poll-tested policies for votes. They think we spend too much time raising money and catering to wealthy donors. They think we prioritize procedure over action.
As a result, many would rather have Elon Musk and nearly a dozen other brash billionaires disrupt bureaucracy and just get the government out of the way. They have responded to a simple but bygone vision of American expansionism led by business tycoons who see the federal project as a relic oppressing private enterprise and believe deregulation is the answer to America’s problems.
It was not always this way. Perhaps, more than any nation in the world, we take pride in self-government. I remember the exhilaration I felt when I spoke up as a high school student at a school board meeting in the early 1990s, published an opinion essay in my suburban Philadelphia paper, The Bucks County Courier Times, and mustered the courage to ask my congressman, Peter Kostmayer, a Democrat, a question.
As a young Indian American in Pennsylvania, I grew up with the quiet confidence that this government was as much mine as anyone else’s. It is this spirit, which I inherited as a birthright, along with my American citizenship, that allowed us not just to come together to mobilize for war, but also to pass Social Security, a minimum wage and Medicare.
How do we begin, then, to build a transformational instead of a transactional politics? For one, we need to see and hear people. It is rough out there. Over 23 percent of Americans cannot find full-time work or make over a $25,000 poverty wage. Instead of talking about joy, Democratic representatives like Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Delia Ramirez of Illinois and Pat Ryan of New York are out in their communities hearing directly from those who have been shafted. They are going to factories, restaurants and sporting events to build their platforms, not relying on a network of donor-funded NGOs, think tanks or focus groups conducted by inside-the-Beltway consultants.
Actually listening can help heal divisions in a nation that, despite appearances to the contrary, is longing for reconciliation. For this to happen, the first step is for my party not to look down on people who have differing viewpoints on social or cultural issues. “Canceling” needs to stop, as does policing language and lecturing people on exactly how they must express themselves. Without giving up on our values as a party, we should respect different ways of life across our vast nation and show humility about our own prejudices and imperfections. ...Read More
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