Progressives Struggle to Take America’s Side in a Fight

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, December 11, 2025

 

The nation was privy this week to another episode in the continuing series of follies demonstrating that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer no longer understands his own party.

 

In an otherwise forgettable appearance on CNN, Schumer issued a litany of attacks on the Trump administration’s tentative and roundabout military campaign in the Caribbean aimed at ousting Venezuelan caudillo Nicolás Maduro. Offhandedly, the senator acknowledged that “everyone would like” it if Maduro would “flee on his own,” but Schumer restated his opposition to a military occupation and nation-building enterprise in a post-Maduro Venezuela (an operation our force posture in the region would not presently support).

 

That modest gesture in the direction of democratic liberality was simply too much for the progressives on his left flank to stomach. “Why is this hard?” asked California Representative Ro Khanna. “Yes, Democrats oppose regime change war in Venezuela.”

 

What a valuable admission — one made even more valuable by the fact that Khanna opposed not an Iraq War–style invasion and occupation of Venezuela but Maduro’s voluntary abdication, albeit under American pressure. We can safely deduce from that remark that Khanna doesn’t merely oppose American military intervention in Venezuela. Rather, he and the people for whom he presumes to speak affirmatively support ensuring that Venezuelans remain a captive people for the foreseeable future.

 

If Khanna opposes regime change, he supports the Maduro regime’s documented, undeniable subversions of the country’s elections. We must assume he’s A-OK with the violence the Maduro regime meted out against its own people when they had the temerity to protest their own disenfranchisement — a level of violence that transcends the targeted killings and torture Caracas regularly dispenses against its domestic critics. He evinces no consternation at the Maduro regime’s financially supporting anti-American despotisms in places like Moscow, Beijing, and Havana by helping them transit and procure their illicit energy exports, or at his playing host to the anti-American axis’s military assets. Maybe Khanna takes no issue with those regimes’ use of the funds Maduro helps them secure to harm and kill Americans, to say nothing of their ongoing efforts to overturn the U.S.-led world order by waging covert and overt military campaigns against our partners and allies.

 

Khanna asked a good question: “Why is this hard?” Indeed, it shouldn’t be. Even if you’re allergic to the application of a rudimentary moral sense to the conduct of statecraft, it’s reasonable to expect that a representative of the United States would take America’s side in a fight. But that is too much for Khanna and, presumably, his fellow progressives.