Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna has offered a remarkably candid explanation for the rise of socialists inside his own party: Democrats lost touch with working-class Americans, creating an opening that the far left was more than happy to fill.
But instead of shutting that door, Khanna appears to be arguing that Democrats should figure out how to walk through it themselves.
Khanna, who represents California’s 17th Congressional District, acknowledged that socialist candidates are increasingly knocking off Democratic incumbents because the party failed to deliver for working-class voters.
That admission gets to the heart of a problem Democrats have spent years trying to explain away.
The party that once built its political identity around blue-collar workers has increasingly struggled to connect with voters who care about wages, housing costs, energy prices, public safety and economic opportunity. Into that vacuum has stepped a younger, more aggressively left-wing movement promising sweeping government intervention and a political system built around class-based grievances.
And it is winning.
Khanna’s argument essentially concedes that Democrats helped create the conditions for the socialist surge by abandoning—or at least losing credibility with—the working class.
But here is the remarkable part: Rather than treating the rise of socialism as a warning sign, Khanna’s response is to embrace the political opening.
That should concern anyone who believes the Democratic Party is already moving too far toward government control of the economy and radical progressive ideology.
The problem is not merely that socialist candidates are challenging Democratic incumbents. It is that the Democratic coalition is increasingly rewarding politicians who promise more government, more spending and more centralized control as the answer to problems Washington has repeatedly failed to solve.
Khanna’s comments reveal the uncomfortable reality Democrats face: Their internal battle is no longer simply between moderates and progressives.
It is increasingly a fight over whether the party will remain a traditional liberal institution or become the political vehicle for a distinctly socialist movement.
For Republicans, that transformation presents a clear choice for voters.
Americans can demand policies built around work, entrepreneurship, individual responsibility, affordable energy, public safety and economic freedom—or they can follow the increasingly popular left-wing prescription that Washington should take a larger role in nearly every part of American life.
Democrats may have opened the door by losing working-class voters.
The question now is whether they intend to close it—or invite socialism all the way inside.
