Ro Khanna Wants Democrats to be the Party of Reform
“Thinking out loud” with the Silicon Valley congressman.
One of the great forgotten documents of the past eight years is Donald Trump’s “Contract with the American Voter,” which he released to great fanfare in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in October 2016.
The contract began with six ideas for political reform that Trump promised to “immediately pursue” upon taking office:
Some of these ideas Trump instituted; most of them he did not. No progress was made on a constitutional amendment imposing term limits; no law was passed banning lawmakers from becoming lobbyists or banning campaign donations from lobbyists for foreign governments.
Yet, the proposals — made in the closing days of his first campaign — were a clear attempt to cloak himself in the language of change and run against the political system, never bad ideas in an era where the political system is exceedingly unpopular.
Eight years later, Trump ran back the same approach, bashing the elites (political, media, scientific, you name it), while Democrats raced to defend them. According to an ABC News exit poll, of the 2024 voters who said the most important attribute in a presidential candidate was their ability to “bring needed change,” 74% backed Trump and 24% backed Kamala Harris — a 50-point Republican advantage.
Now, some Democrats say the party needs to reclaim the reformist mantle.
“We need to be the party of reform,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) told me in a recent interview. “We need to be the party of anti-corruption.”
Khanna, 48, is often mentioned as a potential 2028 presidential candidate in the Bernie Sanders lane; the congressman from Silicon Valley, he co-chaired Sanders’ White House bid in 2020.
He told me that for Democrats to remain competitive going forward, they need to drop their establishmentarian credentials and reinvent themselves as reformers. “Part of the thing that gave rise to Trump is people feel the system is so corrupt and so broken that they don’t have a voice, that they might as well go for a strongman, even if that’s not real reform,” Khanna said. “And it’s a big challenge for the Democrats, because we want government to do things. And yet, people feel the system is broken.”
Phrases like “change” and “reform” are popular — in a 2022 poll, 58% of voters said the political system needs major reforms or complete overhaul — but ultimately vague. Khanna’s main prescription is campaign finance reform. “We should be the party that says absolutely no to super PACs in Democratic primaries,” the Californian said. “We should be the party that says no to corporate PAC money from the DNC. We should be the party that says no to PACs and lobbyists.”
In the next Congress, Khanna told me, he plans to introduce a bill that would nationalize a version of a ballot measure that passed in Maine last month, which would place a $5,000 limit on PAC donations.
According to a 2023 poll by the Pew Research Center, 73% of Americans believe lobbyists have “too much” influence over members of Congress; 80% said the same of donors. 70%, meanwhile, said voters wielded “too little” influence over lawmakers’ decisionmaking.
“We’re treating the American people as pawns in our democracy,” Khanna said. “It’s offensive, and I think [it’s being done by] the Republicans and Democrats, and I don't think one side has a monopoly on it. I mean, we had more billionaires spending money on our side than they did on their side, and they had some very prominent ones.”
In the aforementioned Pew poll, it’s striking to see the broad-based majorities who support several political reform ideas — except the one that many Democratic lawmakers have chosen to champion: expanding the Supreme Court, the only proposal that was underwater among American voters. (Democrats are also squarely out of step with the public on voter ID.)
Political reform proposals often wither because parties are hesitant to embrace ideas that could threaten their own power; it’s no small wonder that the two most popular ideas above — term and age limits — have been non-starters among most incumbent lawmakers. (Note also that Trump dropped his support for congressional term limits once he was elected and needed Congress’ support on other issues. His calls to “drain the swamp” were also replaced with quite a bit of swamp-filling.)
Similarly, many Democrats who pushed for filibuster reform in the Biden era have already begun reversing themselves as a Republican trifecta looms. I was curious if Khanna, who has called for the filibuster to be abolished, was willing to stand by his reform ideas even when they weren’t in the short-term interest of his party.
“I do,” Khanna responded. “I think that the Democrats have an agenda that is popular and that ultimately [if the filibuster is abolished] we will be able to get a minimum wage increase. We will be able to get expansion of paid family leave. We’ll be able to get expansion for Medicare. And the Republican agenda is not popular, in my view, and so if they get things done, I think we can reverse it once we win back the majority. So, you know, I think on balance, I’m still for eliminating the filibuster.”
We were speaking on the day after President Biden pardoned his son Hunter; I had also been planing to ask if Khanna was willing to endorse reforms to presidential clemency powers, even as the issue had inflamed a president of his own party in controversy.
But, to my surprise, Khanna beat me to it — bringing up the issue before I had a chance to raise it. “We should be the party calling for pardon reform, saying that we don’t agree that a president, whether for our party or the other party, should have broad pardon powers,” the congressman told me.
Asked to elaborate, Khanna replied: “The president should have been for reforming the pardon power from Day One of his presidency, so this situation wouldn’t have even arisen. It’s too broad a power, and we should be the party that’s leading the charge to reform it. Obviously, as a father, I understand, given that that power exists, the president’s emotions and concerns for his son, who’s being targeted and who has faced substance abuse, but we should be the party that calling for getting rid of this broad power.”
Getting rid of it?
“Maybe that’s too strong,” Khanna backpedaled, before raising the prospect of a constitutional amendment that would require presidents to consult with a panel of judges before issuing pardons. “That’s just thinking out loud,” he said.
In Khanna’s view, Democrats should be practicing this outside-the-box thinking on a range of issues — even if it means working with Republicans. He has already, in an MSNBC op-ed and on social media, expressed openness to working with Elon Musk’s government efficiency efforts.
“I will work with him where we have a commonality of agreement” — he pointed to defense spending — “and push back where we disagree” — such as on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Khanna told me. He sees the efficiency push as rooted in a proud tradition that the Democratic Party has abandoned.
“I mean, go read Roosevelt speeches. He says, yeah, we need the New Deal, but we need a government that works. And then Obama and Clinton articulated a similar vision of that,” Khanna said. “You can be, as I am, for Medicare for All and also be for the use of thoughtful AI to help cut bureaucratic costs.”
Khanna pointed to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and John McCain in 2000 as the prior candidates who best “ran as reformers, as not being part of a system in Washington that was broken.” Asked for the Democrats who were following in their reformist footsteps today, Khanna’s answers ran the gamut, from the progressive Pramila Japayal (WA) to the moderate Dean Phillips (MN).
He also named Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Chip Roy (R-TX) — both voices in the GOP’s right flank — as two of the members he plans to approach about his PAC-donations bill, evidence of a pro-reform populism that crosses party lines. (If you need further evidence, no less than Steve Bannon recently told Puck News that Khanna “gets it,” meaning economic populism, “at a very deep level.”)
Asked whether he plans to promote his reform agenda as a presidential candidate next cycle, Khanna said that his focus was on the midterms. But he didn’t hide his ambitions to be “part of that conversation of the future of the Democratic Party.”
“I think we have to be the party of bold political reform, anti-corruption, and sweeping economic change,” Khanna said. “And I will certainly keep pushing that agenda for 2026 and 2028 and, you know, I’m happy if every candidate adopts it… I’m not keeping it just to myself.”
🗣️ Do you have political reform ideas you support? Or leaders you think are advancing interesting proposals? I’m planning to do more coverage on political reform in the months ahead. Leave a comment below to tell me what (and whose) ideas you find intriguing.
More news to know
FBI director Christopher Wray told staffers he will step down in January instead of making President-elect Trump fire him.
President Biden is commuting the sentences of 1,500 people convicted of non-violent crimes, the largest single-day act of clemency in presidential history.
The House passed an $895 billion defense policy bill in a bipartisan 281-140 vote, with Democrats splitting on the measure over language that would prohibit the military’s health system from covering certain treatments for transgender children.
AOC is favored to become the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, continuing the party’s generational makeover.
Trump announced plans to nominate Kari Lake to lead Voice of America, the federally-funded broadcast network that airs abroad.
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode a veto by the state’s Democratic governor of a bill that would limit his powers.
Trump has invited Chinese president Xi Jinping to his inauguration. Republican lawmakers are trying to invite a January 6th rioter.
Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin prevented Democrats from sealing a majority on the National Labor Relations Board for the next two years.
The day ahead
President Biden and Vice President Harris have nothing on their public schedules.
President-elect Trump will ring the opening bell of the New York Stock
Exchange.The Senate will vote on confirmation of Matthew James Marzano to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
The House will vote on the JUDGES Act, which would create 66 new district court judgeships over the next 11 years. The Senate unanimously approved the bill in August, but — as I noted yesterday — President Biden has said he will veto it.
The Supreme Court has no oral arguments scheduled.
Reform: reverse the Citizens United court case and get corporate money out of political campaigns. Similarly, rein in paid lobbying.
My comment relates to the U.S. Supreme Court. In New Jersey, Supreme Court seats, except for the Chief Justice, are allocated 50/50 to each party. When a Republican seat is vacated, the Governor, with the advice and consent of the N.J. Senate and without respect to the Governor's party affiliation, MUST appoint a Republican to that seat, and vice versa. When the Chief Justice's seat is vacated, the Governor, again with the advice and consent of the Senate, MAY appoint a new Chief Justice from either party. It is my understanding that this is a constitutional requirement in New Jersey. The upshot of this policy is that the N.J. Supreme Court is by and large apolitical and decides cases based on the law and not on politics. New Jersey also has a mandatory retirement age for all judges and justices. Finally, a Code of Judicial Conduct applies to all judges and justices. Incorporating these three New Jersey requirements into the federal system is all the reform the U.S. Supreme Court needs to regain the eminence and respect it once enjoyed and the balance it sorely needs now.