Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk has become a very vocal supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and he has put his social-media platform X to good use to mobilize support for the ex-president. Against this backdrop, a Democratic senator was left ruing the party's lost opportunity to gain the support of the billionaire.

What Happened: Participating in a CNN panel discussion on the state of the race, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif) said, "I think where the Democrats started to lose Elon [Musk] was actually personal."

"We should have celebrated his contribution to electric vehicles even though he was against unionization and stood up to unions," he said.

The congressman said the party should have appreciated Starlink and acknowledged it as a great product. Starlink is a unit of Musk's SpaceX, which provides low-latency satellite internet service.

The Democratic party should have celebrated the fact that Musk had the first commercial success of private people in space, Khanna said, adding that "A lot of it was that we didn't celebrate it and he felt offended." The congressman clarified he does not endorse Musk's jokes about Vice President Kamala Harris or support his rants on X.

"But I think with the Democrats, remember, he was a supporter of [Barack] Obama, Bill Clinton. And we are a party that is John F. Kennedy. That is about innovation. That is about entrepreneurship," he said.

Why It's Important: As Khanna said, President Joe Biden has never acknowledged Tesla or Musk as the leader of the electric-vehicle revolution in the U.S. General Motors and Ford used to receive mentions in the administration's EV conversations and heads of these companies were feted as leaders in White House's EV conferences.

A Tesla influencer posted a video of Musk showing former President Obama around the SpaceX facility and said Musk has historically been a moderate Democrat. The Tesla CEO even stood in line for six hours to shake Obama's hand when he was running for president, he said.

Musk's U-turn and public backing of Trump have come amid these circumstances. He engaged in conversations with his followers and fellow tech entrepreneurs about undocumented immigration and its peril, often blaming the Biden administration for the predicament.

After latently backing Trump for a while in the current election cycle, Musk openly endorsed Trump following the first assassination attempt against the former in Pennsylvania. Last weekend, the world's richest man joined Trump in a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania and also made an animated speech as he mobilized support for  the former president.