Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna stated Monday that the “failure of leadership” inside of the Democratic Party has resulted in members having no plan to regain voters’ support besides hoping that Republicans “self-destruct.”
Khanna said on “The Young Turks” that the only strategy currently being utilized by Democratic leadership is to hope that President Donald Trump’s administration will “go too far” and cause the Democratic Party to “win [elections] by default.” The congressman also said the party has not outlined any plan to help struggling, working class Americans who were “justifiably angry” during the 2024 election.
“I think their plan is the plan Democrats have gone through time and again, which is to point out, which is true, that a lot of these cuts are going to deeply hurt people … Fine, so we get back the House, maybe we even win the presidency by default, what is our vision?” Khanna said. “Is our vision to just to continue to try to win by default because [Republicans] go too far and then not have a governing majority in the House or the Senate where we actually are able to address the legitimate anger of working class Americans of all races? Or are we going to try to do something meaningful with the power we will be handed? And that to me is a failure of leadership in the Democratic Party. We are just being tactical, we’re hoping that they self-destruct.”
“Fortunately, they’re self-destructing, but there’s not enough focus, as [Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders] says, on a concrete vision going forward to solve the massive inequality and to understand that many people who voted for Trump were not just angry, they were justifiably angry,” Khanna continued.
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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has given notice regarding layoffs to roughly 30,000 federal employees since Trump took office on Jan. 20, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reported that about 75,000 workers have accepted the president’s paid leave offer. Trump and Musk’s plan to shrink the size of the federal government is part of their effort to make the government more efficient and eliminate the wasteful spending of taxpayers’ dollars.
Trump disputed Democrats’ claims that he plans to cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare by telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Feb. 18 that cuts to any of those programs are off the table.
Democrats are hoping to win back congressional seats 2026 and the White House in the 2028 election by protesting the Trump administration and by painting the president and the Republican Party as a threat to democracy, though the president’s approval ratings remain above that of his first term, and Republican voters appeared satisfied with his policies thus far.
Several Democratic congressional members have shouted violent rhetoric during protests against DOGE, with Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley stating she would bring “fire” to the Republican Party during a Feb. 4 protest outside of the Treasury Department. Democratic attorneys general have further used the court systems in an attempt to block DOGE from fulfilling its obligations.
A CNN/SSRS poll found that 73% of voters who lean Democrat believe that congressional leaders in the party are doing “too little” to oppose Trump, with just 22% saying they are responding appropriately to the president. At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings reached its highest point across both of his terms in early February, with 53% of according to a CBS News/YouGov poll from Feb. 9.
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