If We're Lucky, Ro Khanna Will Be Part Of Our Collective Future

The other day I asked a few dozen progressive congressional candidates which members of Congress would they like to work with on future legislation. No one mentioned old party leaders like Hoyer or Pelosi or Clyburn nor any of their designated successors like Hakeem Jeffries, let alone the wretched Blue Dog Cheri Bustos. Instead there were 3 Democrats who got almost all the votes:

• AOC (NY)- 10
• Ro Khanna (CA)- 8
• Pramila Jayapal (WA)- 7

The three of them are on the Blue America Worthy Incumbents ActBlue page, which you can access by clicking on the 2020 thermometer on the right. These are some of the best alternatives to an extension of the neolib leadership that has hobbled the progressive agenda for decades. Recently we've written a lot about Pramila and AOC, but I want to focus on Ro for a moment today-- and not because of the yeoman's work he's doing to get Congress to pass some restraints on out of control presidents (and illegitimate presidents) who think they can take the country to war whenever it serves their own personal interests. Over at Jacobin, Meagan Day interviewed Ro on an issue Californians are thinking about more than anyone else in the country: the reliability of electric power. Ro, like a growing number of Democrats see the need for the government to take over electric utilities which have already proven themselves incapable of providing the state with power on a dependable basis.

Meagan: Why can’t we trust PG&E to safely, reliably, and affordably provide utilities to the people of California?

Ro: This isn’t theoretical. Let’s look at the record. PG&E has underinvested in safety, they have underinvested in necessary work to move power lines underground, and they have underinvested in provisions to make sure people retain power. They’ve taken all of their money and put it instead toward executive profits and paying out dividends to shareholders.

The model of a private, for-profit utilities company operating with oversight has not worked. That’s why the state or the customers should own it.

Meagan: What is the ideal form of a public takeover of PG&E?

Ro: What Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San Jose, has proposed is interesting. He has said that the customers should cooperatively own the utility, with different municipalities in charge of providing power to their residents. We’ve seen this be successful with Silicon Valley Power in Santa Clara, in my district. It leads to more renewable energy, lower prices, and higher safety.

I will add that you need to make sure that the state still has a role, even in a model where many municipalities run their own utility. There are parts of the state that don’t have large municipalities that can administer power. Ideally it would be a hybrid model, with the state providing power directly to some places and municipalities providing it through a customer-owned utility in others.

Meagan: People have been talking about a public takeover of PG&E for a long time. Finally it seems to have reached a boiling point. Why now?

Ro: These fires and power outages in California have been traumatic. California is the sixth-largest economy in the world. Why are we having this happen in the state that is also home to Silicon Valley? Why can’t we provide power to our own citizens without outages and safety hazards?

I think in the case of utilities there’s a clear understanding in California that the private profit motive has not worked. I think the same understanding is there today in healthcare, when it comes to the private insurance companies and how they have profited off the system while people have been left out. And the same understanding is there on private, for-profit schools.

There are certain basics in society like healthcare, education, and electricity that are classic public goods. These are things that every person should have, and they shouldn’t be commoditized for profit. We can have competition in other parts of the economy. People know that I’m for certain types of entrepreneurship and free enterprise. But when it comes to basic public goods, these should fall under a strong public sector.

Meagan: But if we are leaving capitalist enterprise otherwise undisturbed, won’t profit-hungry corporations continue to accumulate wealth and power and inevitably encroach on the areas that we’ve declared off-limits?

Ro: There is no question that we need thoughtful policy. I agree with the basic argument of Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice, where he argues that there ought to be certain parts of our society that are not motivated by profit or monetary considerations, and there are other parts that do need the profit motive.





The question is how do we make sure that these spheres don’t encroach on each other. My view is that the way you make sure of that is you have strong legislation.

Meagan: You’re a national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. In Bernie’s plan for a Green New Deal, he talks explicitly about expanding municipal and cooperative electric utilities across the country.

Plenty of people support this idea, but others are quick claim it could never work. What do you say to the skeptics?

Ro: Look at the rural electrification programs created as part of the New Deal. The principle then was that we needed massive federal investment to help us electrify the country. The private market wasn’t sufficient to do that because profit-motivated companies had no interest in going into certain areas. The federal investment worked, and a large portion of the country received electricity.

In the twenty-first century, we need federal investment to transition us to renewable energy. Under a public utility structure, we can set and meet bold renewable energy goals. In California, we’ve already seen that public utilities tend to have a larger renewable energy portfolios than for-profit utilities. And at the same time, it’s going to be a priority to make sure that the workers who are part of these initiatives will have good-paying union jobs.

Meagan: The Green New Deal is about a lot more than just public utilities, of course. Who doesn’t want us to achieve it, and why?

Ro: Well, the fossil fuel industry. They’re fighting it because they know their profits are on the line. And then there are the utilities companies too. In California, politicians have taken huge amounts of money from and many are beholden to PG&E. Anybody who’s invested in a legacy industry is going to push back.

But the people who should be for a Green New Deal are anyone who cares about climate change, anyone who cares about creating millions of new good-paying jobs, anyone who wants working families to have more opportunities. Those are the people who should be for a big public investment in clean technology.

Meagan: The Sunrise Movement’s recently published presidential scorecard ranked Bernie Sanders’s climate plan number one in the Democratic primary field. This comes as no surprise.

The problem is that there are many people who will say, Well, of course Bernie Sanders has the best climate plan, but can he win against Donald Trump? The typical fear is that he’s too ambitious or too far left to actually win. Do you think Bernie beats Trump?

Ro: Bernie Sanders will beat Donald Trump. And the reason is because his message resonates in places that Trump carried last time-- rural communities, places with hollowed-out downtowns, places where plant after plant has left. He’s speaking about making sure jobs stay in the United States, ending unfair trade agreements, raising wages, investing in unions, and creating new good jobs. In places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Iowa, his message is resonating.

Meagan: How does the Green New Deal relate to the economic concerns of working-class people?

Ro: The Green New Deal aims to solve the biggest challenge humanity faces: climate change. And in doing that, we are also going to be providing more opportunity and more economic security for working families.

In this country, we have 140 million people who are low-income or low-wealth. We’ve had stagnation of wages for the working and middle class for basically the last forty years. Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal meets those challenges by calling for the creation of millions of new good-paying jobs in solar, wind, publicly owned utilities, and building new infrastructure. That will help build a middle class in this country again.