Jon Wiener: From The Nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense. I’m Jon Wiener. Later in the show: we need to make the Democratic party a working–class party — and to do that, we need to promise something big, and keep it simple. That’s what Tom Gheoghegan says. We’ll speak with him later in the show. But first: Ro Khanna, member of Congress from the Silicon Valley, says “economic empowerment” should be the Democrat’s “defining cause.” He’ll explain – in a minute.
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Now it’s time to talk with Ro Khanna. He represents Silicon Valley in the House, where he’s a member of the Progressive Caucus. He’s a key strategist for the Democrats, writing recently for The New York Times op-ed page about the party’s future. Last time he was on this show was in 2022 when we talked about “making tech work for all of us.” Ro Khanna, welcome back.
Ro Khanna: Thank you, Jon. 2022 seems like a pleasant memory – compared to what’s going on today.
JW: We’re speaking on Tuesday night. You’ve stepped aside from the House floor, what is happening with the Republican budget in the House right now. And please remind us what’s at stake in this bill.
RK: Well, look, the Republican budget is a cruel, atrocious budget. $2 trillion of Medicaid cuts. They’re basically going to put a per capita cap on every state. What does that mean? If you live in California, my state, or you live in Ohio, your state’s going to get less money for Medicaid. That means millions of people will not be covered who were covered, particularly under the Affordable Care Act that expanded coverage.
It means rural hospitals will shut down. It means outpatient services for mental health, behavioral therapy will shut down. And why are they doing all of this? To fund tax breaks for the billionaires, because they believe that the billionaire class is what’s moving civilization forward. That they’re somehow the ubermenchen of society and the rest of us don’t really matter.
I voted ‘no.’ I just got off the floor voting. ‘No.’ They tried to trick us. They called a late night vote. First, they didn’t have the votes. They held us for an hour, then they said go back home. And then when we all scattered, 10 minutes later, they called a vote again trying to see that the Democrats not show up. But all of us, I think, have shown up, and so we’ll see what the vote tally is. It’s still going on.
JW: We’ve got two big tasks right now: The immediate task of protecting democracy from the assault that’s currently underway, and then the longer-term project of winning back working-class voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party and helped make Trump president.
Let’s start with the immediate task. You’re a leader of the Progressive Caucus in the House. The House now has a Republican majority of three. A lot of our friends are saying, “It’s great that the Democrats have been united in voting ‘No.’ And we thank you guys for that, but it’s not just enough to vote ‘No’ right now. We need you guys to do everything possible to stop this.”
I know you feel the same way. What is the “everything” more than voting ‘No’?
RK: It’s uplifting and telling stories. I’ll tell you what I did today other than voting ‘No.’ I convened a press conference on Zoom with 15 federal workers who had been fired. A number of them were Trump voters, and they said they voted for Trump just a few months ago.
Now, they’re conflicted. Now, they’re no longer supporting him because their job was eliminated.
These were veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, people who were helping other veterans with mental health, people who were helping veterans get banking services and people who were helping in the national parks.
I think our biggest job is to uplift the stories of ordinary Americans who are being hurt by the cruel and irrational policies of this administration that is creating the federal government like a private equity firm, cut, cut, cut, ask questions later. That’s what hollowed out the working and middle classes. You can’t be pro-America and “America first” and hate the workers when 99% of Americans work for a living.
That in my view, is the most effective form of pushing back and it’s working. Donald Trump’s numbers have fallen, for the first time ever, under 50% on the economy. He never was below 50% even when Biden beat him in his first term. So we need to do more of that.
JW: And turning now to the longer-term project of winning back the working-class. I know that you favor making the renewal of American manufacturing a top priority. And you recently wrote in that New York Times op-ed, “That economic empowerment for working people should be not just one of many issues that Democrats are interested in, but our defining cause.” Explain what that means. What steps, what policies, what new laws do we need to achieve that?
RK: Well, I call it ‘a new economic patriotism.’ It’s pretty simple. First, we have to say is that – to the people’s acting like we’re the saviors — we need to say, “We screwed up. We’re the ones who have policies that shafted the working- and middle-class.”
Now, it was of course the Republicans under Reagan with enormous tax breaks for the very wealthy and trickle-down economics.
But it was also Democrats supporting bad trade deals, NAFTA, the World Trade Organizations, ascension of China. It was Democrats supporting the liquidation of industries with giveaways to private equity and watching corporate greed hollow out industries. And we did not have any strategy for people who were hurt with globalization and digitization.
So now, we need to say we are going to make the economic success of every community in America and the economic prosperity of every family our top priority. How are we going to do this? We’re going to create a national economic development council that focuses on places de-industrialized and get new manufacturing in there, whether that’s a new steel plant, whether it’s new aluminum, whether it’s new ship building, to be a manufacturing superpower again.
But not just manufacturing. We’re going to look at: what are the new service jobs that we can have there? What are the new jobs in technology that we can have there? How do we create economic vitality in places that aren’t thriving today, because they’ve been neglected and abandoned? And then, how do we make sure that every American has healthcare, has childcare, has education without going into debt?
Life in America is too expensive and too hard, and we can tax the billionaires in my district. I say this again and again, if I can be for taxing the billionaires and have survived nine years as an election in the richest district in the world, I don’t understand how 434 other members of Congress can’t be for it. And I’ll tell you, if I can win elections by 35 points in Silicon Valley being for taxing the rich, you can win in any district on a platform of taxing the rich to pay for the healthcare, education, childcare of every American.
JW: We think of Silicon Valley as a base of Trump support, but really the Democrats have carried Silicon Valley every time by huge margins.
RK: Well, I carried it by 35 points, and when I was co-chair of Bernie Sanders, I delivered the district for Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary. And I think, look, there are a lot of people who support Bernie Sanders from very progressive districts. But I think the novelty in my case is that I’m supporting Sanders’s policies on Medicare for all and free public college on a living wage, on wage boards to increase wages on unions, supporting unions from the richest district in the country, from a district that has $12 trillion of wealth.
And I say that — because it shows that income inequality is such a huge issue — that you can get a district with billionaires in Silicon Valley supporting progressive policies, and this can become a majority coalition. And that’s what we need post-Trump, economic transformation, not a return to the status quo, not a return to a Democratic administration that failed to deliver on increasing the living wage, that failed to deliver on any policies of childcare, that failed to raise taxes – but a really progressive, transformative, new administration.
JW: This is the agenda for the midterms coming up next year. Between now and then, what are your priorities?
RK: Well, one, I’m going to be going to red districts in California and then maybe beyond. I was really moved by what Sanders did. Again, Sanders showing the intellectual leadership for a party, showing up in Omaha, showing up in Iowa to red districts, making the case about the cruelty of these cuts.
I’m also going to continue to highlight the stories of people who have been hurt by the mass firings. I call it the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre,’ because I found out today all of these people were notified on Valentine’s Day. It shows the cruelty and indifference of this administration.
And then I am going to be introducing strategic legislation to call out Trump’s hypocrisy. For example, today I introduced a ‘no gifts for lobbyists’ bill. Trump said he was going to drain the swamp, but the first thing he did is reverse Biden’s executive order saying White House officials could take gifts from lobbyists. We need to be the anti-corruption party.
JW: Any final thoughts before we let you go here?
RK: Look, this is a dark chapter, but I want people to be optimistic about the renewal of this nation and what comes ahead. When we had the Great Depression and that dark chapter in American history was followed by FDR, when we had the robber barons from 1870 to 1900s and redemption that undermined great reconstruction and ushered in Jim Crow, it was followed by the progressive era. When we had the Civil War, it was followed by reconstruction in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment. In America at times of deep despair and darkness, we have been blessed to reemerge with a transformative, positive vision. And that’s what we have to focus on as progressives, that the end of the Trump administration will mark the beginning of the modern progressive age.
JW: Ro Khanna – great to have you on the show tonight.
RK: Thank you. Really honored.
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Jon Wiener: To defeat Trump and the Republicans, we need to make the Democratic Party a working-class party. That’s what Thomas Geoghegan says. He’s a labor lawyer in Chicago, author of many books, starting with the unforgettable Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back, and most recently, the book Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Harper’s, The American Prospect, and The Nation. Tom Geoghegan, welcome to the program.
Thomas Geoghegan: Hi, Jon. Thank you.
JW: You say that, in order for the Democrats to become a working-class party, they need to do two things: promise something big and keep it simple. We’ll get to what that could be or should be in a minute. But first, you say our starting point needs to be one basic idea, an idea that should be taught in every intro course on political science. What is it?
TG: That idea is when the party of the right, the party of capital, is the party of the working-class, which at least in the case of the Republicans representing two-thirds of the white working-class, you could make that case that they are, then democracy is at risk. That the party of the left has a moral obligation to be the party of the working-class.
Why? Because the party of the right, as the party of capital, doesn’t have any rational goals for its working-class constituents. All it can offer is fantasy, fiction, getting them off the subject of what their actual needs are. What they are offering is rage, lies, and Trumpism in one form or another.
The party of the left though, it does–or should, and if it’s going to be the party of the working-class–it does offer rational actor goals, economic security, helping people who are rattled by capitalism, technology, the whole state of the darn modern world, to live their lives in peace.
JW: The Republican view is that the practical interests of the working-class would be advanced by the things that Trump is promising. And as you say, a lot of the white working-class seems to agree with Trump on this right now, that keeping immigrants from competing for their jobs will keep wages higher. They say deporting a lot of undocumented residents will free up housing and maybe lower the cost of rent for native born workers. And they also say their families would be safer from violent crime if all the violent immigrants here illegally were deported. What do you say to that?
TG: Well, Jon, that’s just my point. It’s fantasy. The unemployment rate is three, four percent. That’s extremely low. In terms of the migrants being criminals, a woman who’s in the back of a restaurant, has been working there for 40 years — she is a criminal? If you’re going to deport the criminals, wouldn’t you begin with Trump, for goodness sakes? If you pulled a working-class bro who said that into a bar, I’d have grabbed the guy by the shoulder and said, “Those people aren’t bothering you. Come on.”
But here’s the important thing. Okay, it’s disinformation. What I think people on the left miss is there’s a demand for it. Disinformation exists because there’s a demand for disinformation and people are looking for something that will calm them down and deal with this kind of rattled state that we live in just every day — by things like AI, by climate change, by the world becoming more threatened and threatening all the time. That creates a demand for disinformation. And the way to deal with disinformation is just to offer people some sense of security in a world that is increasingly insecure for all of us.
JW: Trump and the Republicans are offering rage–an intense feeling and, in some ways, a rewarding feeling. Bernie, also, when you listen to Bernie Sanders talk, he gets you mad. “They’re ripping us off. They’re bleeding us dry. They’re blocking healthcare for everyone, healthcare that every other advanced nation in the world has except us.” When you listen to Bernie talk, you get mad.
TG: Yeah, and I love Bernie and I think he has a gift for this. And that said, the people that we are trying to reach, and that we’re first likely to bring over from the Republican side of the ledger to the Democratic side of the ledger, are the people who are uncomfortable with rage, and are looking for somebody to hold their hand and tell them, ‘Yes, this is what we’re going to do for you:’ Forget rage, forget rhetoric. Forget whether we’re the party of the working-class. ‘Here’s our promise to you. We’re going to offer you X or Y or Z. This is what we’re doing for you. Do you want this? This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to promise you something,’ and just leave it at that. And if the Democrats aren’t making my life more secure, more certain, safer, I’m not then interested in the Democrats.
JW: So you say “promise something big, and keep it simple.” I think Trump actually can teach us something in this direction. Build the wall is big and simple. It’s going to protect you. It’s going to solve all our problems. Build the wall. It’s not what Trump is doing now, I notice. Now this whole flooding the zone thing does not achieve the goal of something big and something simple. It’s kind of chaotic and haphazard and suggests that Trump is not in control of what’s going on. And that, in fact, Musk is slashing his way through government and Musk is not popular, and so the whole project lacks that simple, understandable, big idea.
TG: I agree with you. What is different now about this second administration, it’s not simple. It’s really hard to follow and it is chaotic. Trump is, and the Trump administration really is choking on its own chaos.
JW: Let’s talk about what something big and something simple could be, should be for us. Some of our friends say Medicare for all. Everybody gets covered. No more worries about paying for your healthcare expenses. Every other advanced country in the world has this. Is Medicare for all the big idea, the simple idea that the Democrats should get behind 100%?
TG: Well, I’m for Medicare for all and at some point, we’ve got to get there. I truly believe that. I wouldn’t start with it. And I wouldn’t start with it because Medicare for all is simple, but it’s complicated to get to it. And what’s complicated is that people have to give up something to get to it. So you have to step out of your health insurance. Carrying it out is a long transition process where there’ll be lots of confusion. Simple means simple idea, simply implemented, bang.
JW: Well, I think everybody agrees what the working-class really needs is more money. How about a higher minimum wage, a $20 national minimum wage that would raise the floor for everybody? How about that as the big simple thing?
TG: I’m for it. $24 would be fine, which I think is what it is in Denmark. But first of all, there’s some real transition getting there because different parts of the country have different market standards. So something that is very doable in New York or Chicago is heart-stopping in parts of Mississippi. $20 in New York is – we would just have a different reaction in different parts of the country, and I’m talking about something that would be universal.
JW: Okay, I’ve got another idea, not completely original. How about a federal jobs guarantee? The left has been talking about this for a long time. In fact, I looked this up. The pilot program was proposed in the last Congress by Cory Booker, co-sponsored by Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren. Everybody who wants to work, we’ll train you and we’ll get you a job. It’s big, it’s simple.
TG: Well, it’s big, it’s simple. It’s pretty hard to roll out. One of the great advantages of the New Deal over, say, the Biden administration is that if you wanted to get something done, you just hired a lot of workers, whereas the federal government doesn’t hire workers anymore.
JW: In your view, what can the Democrats promise that keeps it simple?
TG: One is increasing Social Security – to 50% of the average median income, which you can do by a number of fixes. One is eliminating the cap on the payroll tax, both on the employer side and the employee side. The cap is now, I think it’s at 165,000. And we’ve got to aim, partly to keep it simple, even though the actual calculation of this will be somewhat complicated and will require more than just lifting the cap, I think it will require some sort of version of a reinstatement of estate tax 1950’s style. It’s doable.
And the main thing here is not to let ourselves be caught up in the cult of complexity. It really is something that the federal government does very simply. The one thing that the federal government does really, really well is calculate and send out Social Security checks. They’re great at that. That’s something that can happen fast. Simple.
JW: And let me say, we already know Social Security is one of the untouchables in American politics, but it’s all about saving Social Security or protecting Social Security or not cutting Social Security. Your idea is Social Security should be much bigger, it should pay people a lot more money.
TG: Absolutely. And I was embarrassed because I do represent, we do represent railroad unions, Brotherhood of the Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, and that is the Railroad Retirement Board. It is outside of Social Security, but it pays a combination of Social Security plus a kind of decent pension. And it is entirely taken up from employer contributions of one kind or another.
What I really have in mind is turning Social Security into something closer to the Railroad Retirement Board, which is just really Social Security plus more of it. And it’s very doable and especially for working-class people who are – they’re just done at age 62 or 63 if they’re in physical backbreaking jobs.
JW: I want to step back here to the big picture; the Democrats have to become a working-class party. Of course, right now, lots of Democrats are affluent middle-class people and lots of money comes to the Democrats from affluent middle class people. And some affluent middle-class people knock on doors to turn out working-class voters and help—
TG: That’s true.
JW: —get out the vote for progressive candidates. Can the party of the working-class that you envisage also be their party?
TG: Well, it has to be. And as I say in this article, and I’m quoting a friend of mine who’s a fundraiser, when she calls the people to ask for money, she says, “Democracy isn’t free, write a check.” And to the high earners in our base, and it’s increasingly a postgraduate, high earning, larger and larger constituency, in the end, you’ve got to say, ‘Look, we have a moral obligation to be the party of the working-class.’ We have an obligation to be a party that is pushing more towards Denmark, which really is a stable society where the far right doesn’t have any access. Is this the world you want? If it is, you’ve got to write a check. Even with your higher incomes, you guys are at risk. You are faced with the uncertainty and the uncontrollability of the world. You want things to be more secure. This is in your economic interest.
JW: Okay, so that’s the affluent middle-class. The Democrats should be the party of the working-class. But don’t we need the Democratic billionaires, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Reid Hoffman? Don’t we need them to counter the millions contributed by the Republican billionaires? Don’t we need our billionaires? And then can we still be the party of the working-class if it’s funded by our billionaires?
TG: No, I don’t think so. And it’s important to break free of them. Look at all the money that was funded in the last election. It just seems to me it’s colossally wasted. It doesn’t seem to move the needle much one way or the other.
Now, I understand there are some exceptions to that. I think Sherrod Brown’s loss, with all this cyber money coming in at the last minute, may have made the difference. But one of the things that I raised in the article is the idea of actually the Democrats giving some money to the unions to organize, those unions that are committed to organizing, because you create an activist network by doing that, which is much more important than spending another bunch of money on TV.
And I also think that it’s much more important for the Democrats to be offering people something, to have a clear message. All the TV in the world isn’t going to do you any good if you’re the status quo party at a time when people are freaked out by the status quo.
If we became the working-class party, it would certainly deter some investors but wouldn’t deter everybody. I don’t think it would deter George Soros or necessarily even Michael Bloomberg, who’s got a different sense of it. They have so much money; it’s unspeakable. Let’s deal with the here and now. When we get to the point where we’re really threatening George Soros and Michael Bloomberg, we can talk about agonizing choices, but I don’t think we have one.
But that said, there are plenty of center-left people who are much more conservative, aren’t interested in unions, aren’t interested in any of this, have a different sense of what the Democrats ought to be doing. And I think you have to hold the party together and you just can’t throw a tantrum about people who supported Hillary Clinton and are kind of more center than center left and have old ideas or get upset about Chuck Schumer because he’s mealy-mouthed or Hakeem because he’s mealy-mouthed. They’re mealy-mouthed because the party’s all over the place, to a certain extent.
The way I believe is the way around this is, rather than saying we are the working-class party, I know I said that in The Nation article, just start out by saying, ‘A: we’re going to raise Social Security. Do you want that, or not?’ Or ‘B: we’re going to pass a law that says everybody has a right to employment, can’t be fired except for just cause or for economic reasons’ – where you have to lay off people for one reason or another. Just that you have the kind of right to a job that everybody in every other developed country has, except the US where there’s employment at will, you could be fired at any time for any reason.
Simple: ‘This is what we’re offering you. What are they offering you? They aren’t offering you anything. Here’s what we’re offering you, and this will make a difference in your lives.’
JW: “Promise something big; keep it simple.” You can read Tom Geoghegan’s piece, “Reinventing the Democrats as a Working-class Party” at thenation.com. And by the way, Geoghegan has that spelling, G-E-O-G-H-E-G-A-N. Tom, thanks for talking with us today.
TG: Sure, Jon. My pleasure.
