“Governments often don’t deliver what we say they should deliver,” Khanna said. The CHIPS Act, which he co-authored, stated that “funding was allocated for rural broadband, but there is little evidence that it is actually being distributed and working.” Joe Biden’s anti-inflation law included significant investments in American industry, but many of the promised factories have yet to be built.
He said the administration should have chosen a few cities as demonstration projects. “You can pick a community like Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or Galesburg, Illinois, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and say, ‘This is what it looked like before, and this is what it will look like a year from now.’ Here’s how it turned around.” He suggests that Democrats have lost the ability to tell a coherent story about how they are improving people’s lives.
Of course, Khanna is not alone in arguing that progressives are wasting public trust by failing to govern effectively. My colleague Ezra Klein has echoed similar criticisms. But Mr. Khanna also makes a broader argument: Democrats have failed to envision a reassuring or inspiring vision for the future.
“I think this is the big challenge that presents a challenge to the Trump-Musk-Vance administration: They are trying to take the patina of the future and tie it to deregulation and Texas,” he said. spoke. , citing the location of Musk’s new headquarters as a state that combines social conservatism and laissez-faire economics.
Khanna continued, “What we have to do is take the future into our hands, understand technology, how it can help your family and your community, and how to use technology to help you.” “We have a much better vision of how to regulate.”
