So there’s this guy. Ro.

Ro Khanna, Democrat from San Jose, California, and a nominal member at least of the House ‘Progressive’ caucus in DC.

He is all over the media of late, and the proximate cause of this whirlwind book tour is not a book, but rather the fact that there will soon be a vacancy for Senator from Cali, because Kamala Harris was that Senator before becoming Vice-President-Elect a few weeks ago … So …

Ro is running hard to be appointed to Kamala’s Senate seat, which would be a big promotion from little old congressman.

He started out small. Five days ago, I heard him on the Jimmy Dore show. Our friend Mr. Dore, and the tone of this interview can be read in the video title:

Ro Khanna CONFRONTED Over Vote to Transfer Wealth Upward During Pandemic!

Basically Jimmy pointed his raking fire at the Congressman for voting for the CARES Act. You might recall this one as the bill that put $1200 dollars in your pocket several bloody months ago, but in the course of throwing the people a meager bone, it also passed out fat juicy steaks in perpetuity to corporate America.

The common progressive wisdom is that this was pure political malpractice on the Dem side of the aisle, because, having given away the big money to the fat cats of the donor class, they also gave away any future leverage they might have had to get more than a pittance for everyone else.

And in fact, that lack of leverage has proven very real, and we have traffic backups stretching for miles with people in 21st century breadlines all over the country, and still no fucking second stimulus. This is the Depression but with iPhones.

And … a couple of points.

Ro Khanna isn’t part of the Dem leadership, so he didn’t cut the bad deal. He did vote for it, and Jimmy properly reamed him for it … but he’s pretty low on the list of people to blame.

Also, like the YouTube comments point out, at least Ro is willing to come on the JD show and take his lumps:

I’ll give Ro one thing:
He took the punches “face to face”. You will not see that from the squad at all.

It’s true. Love ya Alexandria. Love ya Ilhan. Why so gunshy though hermanas?
(A conditional answer to a rhetorical and tangential question.)

Ro, point three, and this is where it gets good.

We can, and should, criticize Ro when he tilts mainstream, or even just goes along to get along on a tactically stupid vote without raising a ruckus.

But on today’s episode of the book tour, he went on Michael Moore’s podcast, a much less fire-breathing venue and quite inviting to even the most mild-mannered of, er, Progressives (I hate the word, partly because I think Progress is the worst raw deal of all.)

Michel invited Ro to “share his wishlist” for where we should be pushing the baby Biden administration, and Ro, again to his credit, said: No. I’ll give you better. I’m going to make some tentative promises and tell you what I think Really Will Happen. To wit:

–Massive stimulus in the 3-4 trillion range, including, maybe, a $2000/month UBI, and it will be retroactive, for maybe four months, five months, and …

–“Direct relief in paying their rents and mortgages”, and …

–Fix Corona yadda yadda.

Even beyond these things he said some very appealing things about working wages that would likely happen only if They controlled both houses of Congress after the Georgia elections in January. But let’s stop there for now, and say:

Okay Ro, Okay Joe.

That would be enough for me, at least for year one.

Enough to make me feel like I did the right thing in voting for yet another corporate Dem like I did the first time around with Obama, and for the Clinton named Bill when I was too young and dumb to know any better.

Slide me retroactivity in the low five figures and we’ll call it a win.

Lie to me again on this and say goodbye to my vote for real this time.

“We’ve already determined what you are, Madame, and now we’re just negotiating on price”.

(insert some kind of emoticon thing here)