HMMMM: Ro Khanna’s Apology Tour. And Why Trump Voters Love It. The congressman from Silicon Valley is pressure-testing a message that he thinks could save the Democratic party in the industrial Midwest.
For Ro Khanna, the progressive Democrat and third-term House member who represents the district singularly synonymous in the country with big money and high tech, this was the first stop of a four-day, three-state tour through the more downcast Midwest, meeting with local officials, factory workers and union retirees in perennially depressed one-time auto-industry strongholds.
Khanna, who turns 46 next month, is still young, but he’s been at this a long time. He worked as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s first state senate campaign before eventually working in his presidential administration. He modeled Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run in his own precocious, even pushy initial try for Congress going on 20 years back. He was a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 bid, and his new book got kudos on Twitter from Bill and Hillary Clinton. And in the conference room here at New Castle Stainless Plate, the audience made up of the company’s CEO plus a clutch of his right-hand men, Khanna had road-tested pieces of a message he’s been honing for years. “Make more stuff here,” he said. “Build our productive capacity,” he said. “Buy American,” he said.
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Khanna was sitting in a meeting room in a Hampton Inn most specifically because of Robin Johnson. A part-time political science professor, the host of a radio show called “Heartland Politics” and an informal adviser to outgoing Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Johnson earlier this year had read something Khanna wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It piqued his interest, so Bustos connected him with Khanna, which led to Khanna coming to talk at the college where Johnson teaches and eventually this convening of a handful of mayors from the area and from both parties. The subject line of Johnson’s emailed invites: “Bringing tech jobs to the Heartland.”
Pavey, the mayor from Rushville, admitted during introductions he and the two city and county officials who joined him had made the hour-or-so drive somewhat skeptically. “I said, ‘What’s he up to?’” granted the local economic development director. Another Republican mayor Johnson had approached but who had not come, Pavey said, had been blunt: “Why would a representative out of California come to Indiana to take jobs away from his area and promote them here?”
Khanna was sitting in a meeting room in a Hampton Inn most specifically because of Robin Johnson. A part-time political science professor, the host of a radio show called “Heartland Politics” and an informal adviser to outgoing Democratic congresswoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois, Johnson earlier this year had read something Khanna wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It piqued his interest, so Bustos connected him with Khanna, which led to Khanna coming to talk at the college where Johnson teaches and eventually this convening of a handful of mayors from the area and from both parties. The subject line of Johnson’s emailed invites: “Bringing tech jobs to the Heartland.”
Pavey, the mayor from Rushville, admitted during introductions he and the two city and county officials who joined him had made the hour-or-so drive somewhat skeptically. “I said, ‘What’s he up to?’” granted the local economic development director. Another Republican mayor Johnson had approached but who had not come, Pavey said, had been blunt: “Why would a representative out of California come to Indiana to take jobs away from his area and promote them here?”
Khanna had anticipated that wariness. “Look, you people in this room will disagree on where I stand on abortion, on gay marriage. But why can’t we find the place where we do agree?” he said.
You people? Language warning, needless to say: