CA Congressman Wants to Play Nice in the Trump Sandbox

The great Mueller report fizzle presents a golden opportunity for Democrats to step away from their Pavlovian reflexive opposition to all things Trump and mull ways of effectively working with a sitting president who does not fall into the traditional blue-red mode. President Trump differs from establishment Republicans on key issues like foreign policy and trade. It is in Democrats' partisan self-interest to seek out areas of common ground with this change president and try to enact portions of their agenda through negotiation and compromise.

Apparently one progressive Democrat is intelligent enough to realize this. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) wants to end America's foreign adventurism and entanglement in endless wars. In an interview with the conservative Breitbart News, Khanna said he is willing to work with the Trump administration and its GOP allies in pursuit of this worthy goal. "There is a wariness of interventionism and militarism overseas in the Congress,” Khanna told Breitbart. “You have very thoughtful critics of this on both the Republican and Democratic side. There are people like [Rep.] Mark Meadows [R-NC] who have spoken out about the need for congressional authorization before we get into another intervention. He's been very helpful in our efforts on Yemen, and of course there's people like [Sen.] Rand Paul [R-KY]."

'Emerging Understanding'

Cutting across the "Orange Man Bad" narrative that has driven Democratic political posturing of the past three-plus years, Khanna said, "I supported the president when he engaged in dialogue with Kim Jong-un" on North Korea relations. He also says he has reached out to Republicans who share his concerns about potential U.S. military involvement in Venezuela. "I don't want to mention their names because I don’t want to get them in trouble, but there are Republicans who have talked to me on the floor and said they are concerned about a military intervention there," Khanna told Breitbart. "So, there is an emerging understanding that often times military intervention makes things worse and not better."

This should be welcome news to Make America Great Again populist conservatives. Let there be no mistake, Khanna is an ardent progressive who supports many hardline leftist positions. He has been ridiculed for stating that the reported $93 trillion estimated cost of the infamous Green New Deal championed by radical Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was "crazy" and that it would cost only "300 billion more dollars" to enact the solar and wind energy facets of the controversial legislation, which the U.S. Senate rejected by a resounding 57-0 vote count.

Common Ground

One does not need to look at Khanna as some kind of ally in order to welcome his help in ending the hawkish neoconservative-backed U.S. foreign policy of the past 30 years. After all, that stance was a key selling point for Trump's campaign in 2016. Khanna has spoken out consistently in favor of a more sober and responsible foreign diplomacy that puts U.S. interests first. He co-wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times along with Rand Paul in 2017 that is grist for  Trump's MAGA mill. "After 15 years of war, Americans are weary of constant conflict, and our interventions have made us less safe," Khanna and Paul wrote.

"When we were attacked on 9/11, most Americans, including the two of us, supported striking the terrorists in Afghanistan. But our limited and appropriate mission to defend our homeland has morphed into a broader pursuit of regime change abroad."

Khanna also wrote an op-ed for USA Today in February on ending the painfully long war in Afghanistan. "China has avoided this 'graveyard of empires,' hasn’t fought in 40 years, and instead invests domestically," he astutely noted. "The biggest threat to democracy isn’t the Taliban; it's staying economically competitive with authoritarian superpowers like China."

Khanna has already thrown in his lot with democratic socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in 2020. There is good reason for patriotic Trump supporters not to trust him. But there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained if the unconventional president elected to steer America's course away from 30 years of swamp establishment war-making and globalism can garner the support of young Dem progressives on individual issues of mutual concern. That is simply good politics. It would be wonderful to see a Democrat – any Democrat – actually able to practice that lost art once again.