With Democrats in disarray, a Californian explores a path to the White House | Opinion
Whether he runs for president in 2028 remains an unanswered question, but Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, is road-testing his belief in a new kind of patriotism and straight-talking liberalism to determine if he seeks the presidency or helps shape a winning agenda for whomever does.
A 48-year-old son of Indian immigrants who was born in Philadelphia — in the bicentennial year of 1976, no less — Rohit Khanna represents a generational and stylistic change for a Democratic party that is just too old.
Eight of Khanna’s Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives, all elderly, have died in office in just under three years. The party is stagnant, bereft of ideas and afraid to fight for voters who chose Donald Trump over what Democrats were selling last November.
Khanna was in Sacramento recently to meet with a labor group when he stopped by The Bee newsroom at our invitation to talk about the country, his party, his background and his ideas. That Khanna would walk into a space full of journalists without an entourage, without knowing what questions awaited him and without insisting that everything be off the record, already sets him apart from top leaders in California’s Democratic party.
Many Democrats have simply lost their guts in the age of Trump. They are a brand in dire need of new voices, approaches and ideas.
They need to get younger, more ruthless and more willing to present a compelling counterargument to Trumpism.
Khanna has more than 350,000 followers on X, a platform he has used to challenge Vice President JD Vance on cultural issues, and to engage with right-leaning voters.
Wherever Khanna’s career takes him, he’s trying to be part of a future that moves past the mistakes of establishment Democrats who lost the White House by losing ground with young voters, non-white voters, and swing state voters.
“We didn’t talk about the anger that people have,” Khanna said of the lost 2024 general election. “We didn’t address that emphatically enough with a vision of how to solve it.... We’ve got to spend more time in actual America, away from the fundraisers, the fancy events and the big rallies.”
As the minority in both houses of Congress, Democrats can’t do anything right now but connect with the people where they live. Any Democrat unwilling to fight this fight is just taking up space.
“We need to be in these red districts,” he said. “I went to three of them in Bakersfield, Norco (Riverside County) and Anaheim. We had more than 1,000 people at these town halls,”
“We need to speak clearly about what Republicans are doing. They want tax breaks for billionaire friends, and they’re gutting Medicaid, the largest cut in Medicaid in the program’s history. They are gutting public education, decimating the National Institutes of Health, which does a lot of the medical research, and decimating university funding and student loans.”
In March, Khanna spoke at congressional districts held by some of the nine California Republican House members who voted to pass a spending bill pushed by Trump that will slash the social safety net to pay for huge tax cuts that will benefit very rich people more than anyone else.
“We have to be the working-class, middle-class party,” Khanna said. “That means taxing billionaires more. I don’t understand how it’s a hard vote for (Republicans). There are billionaires in my district. I’m saying tax them more! I’ve been in Congress for nine years. They keep sending me back. We can tax billionaires more to be able to fund the education, health care and child care that we’re going to need — an investment in human capital in a digital economy.”
Khanna grew up in Bucks County, Penn., the son of a teacher’s assistant for special needs kids and a chemical engineer. He went to public schools before moving onto the University of Chicago and Yale Law School.
“I came out to Silicon Valley, had no family here, no connections, certainly no wealth. I was in debt, but I had an interest in wanting to serve and be involved in the community, and I lost a lot of times. I was seen as a sort of outsider, but eventually had the opportunity to work for President Obama. “
He has served the California 17th Congressional District in Silicon Valley since 2017. Nvidia, LinkedIn, Intel, Yahoo and the San Francisco 49ers are all headquartered in his district.
So is the Democratic Party in need of a generational change?
“Yes,” Khanna said. “The baby boomers love to serve. And I get it, but you know that there should have been a transition a few years ago.”
Khanna speaks of promoting “economic patriotism,” but what does that mean? “By investments in new industry, by using AI and robotics to increase productivity, by having the government say, ‘If you build it here, we’ll buy it,’” he said. “By making sure workers have collective bargaining, and they’re paid well, and have some stock so that they can actually benefit from the economic security.”
Is he running for president?
“It’s premature to say that now. We should have ten to 12 candidates running,” he said. “I want to play a leadership role in some way in the party with a message for the nation. I’m road testing to see: ... Does this economic patriotism resonate? What are people saying in these communities?
“I believe after Donald Trump, we’re going to have a progressive era in this country, an era that is more aspirational, idealistic, principled, after seeing the sort of cruelty and lack of principle in Donald Trump,”
With that said, Khanna left The Bee newsroom, on his way to the next stop with a message he’s clearly road testing: White House or bust.
This story was originally published May 29, 2025 at 11:00 AM.
