Ro Khanna tears into Gavin Newsom over billionaires tax

Ro Khanna just told on his own party, and he probably didn't even mean to. Accusing Newsom of ducking a billionaires tax because he's scared of ticking off billionaire donors isn't some Fox News talking point. It's a sitting Democratic congressman saying the quiet part out loud about how his own governor operates.

Here's what makes it land: nobody who's watched Newsom for the last few years is shocked. This is a guy who talks like Bernie Sanders at a union hall and fundraises like he's running JPMorgan's PAC. The tech money, the Hollywood money, the wine-country donor circuit that keeps his operation funded doesn't want a wealth tax fight in California, and apparently that matters more than whatever Newsom says on stage about economic justice.

We don't have a dog in the Prop 40 fight itself. Tax policy debates are for Sacramento to sort out. What's interesting is watching the progressive wing eat its own over it, because it confirms something we've said for a while: the class-warfare rhetoric coming out of the Democratic Party is mostly for show. When actual money is on the table, the same politicians who rail against the ultra-wealthy suddenly discover the virtue of caution.

Khanna's got his own ambitions here, no doubt, and this is as much a shot at a 2028 rival as it is a policy stand. But that doesn't make him wrong. If your party's brand is "we'll finally make the rich pay," and your most powerful governor won't touch a bill because donors might get upset, that's not nuance. That's just the con showing through.