Latest / Politix / Special Politix Interview With Ben Wikler

Transcript

Special Politix Interview With Ben Wikler · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_02: She's pulling so many strings right now to try to get her daughter incepted into her house seat.
0:06
SPEAKER_02: And it's too much.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: Somebody ought to do for her what she did for Biden and just be like,
0:14
SPEAKER_01: you can go out as like the Henry Clay of the 21st century or whatever.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Or you could go out as this like vindictive, somewhat corrupted, nepotistic, I don't, you know...
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: You were maybe expecting a holiday mailbag episode when you downloaded this episode.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Fear not, it's coming.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: But an opportunity arose for us since we announced the mailbag to interview Ben Wickler.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: He's the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman and a candidate to lead the Democratic National Committee.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: So we shimmied the schedule around.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: The mailbag will drop next week.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: This week, we'll ask Ben some questions.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Then Matt and I will rap about the news,
1:06
SPEAKER_01: the leadership plot against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for paid members.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: If you want to hear all of it, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: So if you're here expecting a mailbag episode, you have not gone crazy.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: We did announce that this week's episode would be a holiday mailbag to close out the year.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: That is still in the works.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: We're just going to drop it on Christmas Eve morning instead of this week.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: We moved the schedule around because we snagged an opportunity to interview Ben Wickler.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: He's the current chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party,
1:48
SPEAKER_01: and he's a candidate to chair the Democratic National Committee.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: And he also went to clown college with Matt a million years ago.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: So it's actually triple good news because you get a bonus episode,
2:00
SPEAKER_01: you get a special guest,
2:02
SPEAKER_01: and you have at least a few more days to send us mailbag questions.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to submit one for consideration,
2:09
SPEAKER_01: just email it to contact at politics.fm,
2:13
SPEAKER_01: contact at politics with an X.fm,
2:16
SPEAKER_01: and maybe throw the word mailbag into the subject line somewhere so that my old
2:21
SPEAKER_01: eyes don't miss it.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: After the interview,
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Matt and I will trade some thoughts about a big story roiling democratic politics
2:27
SPEAKER_01: this week.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: So stay tuned for that.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: And without any further ado, a warm politics welcome to Ben Wickler.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Ben Wickler, how's it going?
2:37
SPEAKER_00: I am good.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot going on.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: This is a frightening time in the country,
2:41
SPEAKER_00: but I also,
2:42
SPEAKER_00: I like running into fires and I'm really fired up about the battles to come.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: So I'm running for DNC chair and, you know, gets me out of bed in the morning.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: All right, let's grill you then.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Let's start with like a retrospective.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: What do you think actually happened in the election?
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And then, and to what extent do you think the lessons about
3:03
SPEAKER_01: how Democrats should regroup can be found in a postmortem versus mostly just things
3:11
SPEAKER_01: that would be good practice to do,
3:14
SPEAKER_01: whether they would have affected the outcome in 2024 or not.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting when you look at this election because there's two big buckets.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: One of them is things that happened that we probably didn't have a lot of leverage
3:28
SPEAKER_00: to affect through things that we did in the campaign.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: But then there's what do we learn from this that affects what we do going forward?
3:34
SPEAKER_00: And there's a ton.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And to me,
3:35
SPEAKER_00: the big goal is to not just be able to win by a fraction of a point in whatever
3:42
SPEAKER_00: situation we're in.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: The goal is to build a big majoritarian party that is able to win in places where
3:47
SPEAKER_00: right now we're totally losing.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: and be able to you know win and effectively govern in a way that makes a difference
3:53
SPEAKER_00: in people's lives that to me is the real measure of politics is what you actually
3:57
SPEAKER_00: do to change lives for people so on that front there's so many lessons even though
4:02
SPEAKER_00: uh there weren't necessarily things we can we could have put into practice in the
4:06
SPEAKER_00: 107 days of the harris presidency so first what happened just now
4:11
SPEAKER_00: I think the only way to understand this election is in the context of a year where
4:16
SPEAKER_00: every incumbent government in the world lost vote share globally.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: And in the United States,
4:23
SPEAKER_00: we did relative to other incumbent governments pretty well,
4:26
SPEAKER_00: but we still lost and it's not horseshoes.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: So if you lose, you don't get to make any difference.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: The other side gets to control it.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you come close.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a specific thing that happened in the U.S.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: that is underappreciated.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: which is that people started getting financial support from the government at the
4:44
SPEAKER_00: end of Trump's administration with votes from Democrats,
4:46
SPEAKER_00: insisted on by Democrats,
4:48
SPEAKER_00: starting with the stimulus check that Trump signed,
4:50
SPEAKER_00: and then expanding a lot more with a ton of financial support to help people
4:54
SPEAKER_00: through hard times that made a huge difference for people at the bottom end of the
4:57
SPEAKER_00: economic ladder.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: If you look at analysis of post-tax and transfer income that people had, it shot up.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And then it went away.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: And again,
5:07
SPEAKER_00: mostly on the strength of Republican votes,
5:08
SPEAKER_00: we didn't make things like the child tax credit permanent.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: People had a flood of increased income coming in,
5:14
SPEAKER_00: wealth went up,
5:15
SPEAKER_00: the wealth gaps went down,
5:17
SPEAKER_00: poverty rates plummeted,
5:18
SPEAKER_00: and then that washed away.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And we often look at the aggregate economic statistics.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: We look at income growth that was stronger at the bottom end of the economic spectrum than the top.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: And that is great.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: And that is a historic shift away from growing inequality.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: So
5:32
SPEAKER_00: I love that about the Biden economy,
5:33
SPEAKER_00: but the experience for people who were getting $1,000 a month in child care tax
5:38
SPEAKER_00: credits and then that went away and then their paycheck grew by 50 bucks,
5:42
SPEAKER_00: that is a loss.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: And we know that the reaction that we have when people lose something is that it feels terrible.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, prices went up.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: So income actually went down for people in a big chunk of our economy and prices went up.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: And these are folks who do not have a bunch of stock market assets that we're appreciating.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: So what they experienced was,
6:01
SPEAKER_00: the cost of putting food on the table and a roof over their heads,
6:05
SPEAKER_00: those costs spiraled up and their ability to cover those costs went down.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the so-called vibe session was a lot more about that experience
6:13
SPEAKER_00: that was kind of invisible to people for whom the pandemic era supports didn't
6:17
SPEAKER_00: matter that much.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: I think it was much more about that actual lived experience of taking it on the
6:21
SPEAKER_00: chin economically than it was about whether we had a big enough Mechavone to talk
6:25
SPEAKER_00: up our accomplishments.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: And so I, I, my,
6:28
SPEAKER_00: my view and i want a lot of i want this i want people to poke holes full of this i
6:32
SPEAKER_00: want to see but it's that the temporary economic measures that played a remarkable
6:37
SPEAKER_00: role in helping people get through the worst times of the pandemic disappearing
6:42
SPEAKER_00: plus prices rising created the conditions where in this election we lost the votes
6:46
SPEAKER_00: of people earning less than fifty thousand dollars a year we saw that this is
6:49
SPEAKER_00: people overwhelmingly are younger this is across race and ethnicity across
6:53
SPEAKER_00: geography
6:54
SPEAKER_00: And in the places where we campaigned and communicated and organized the most,
6:57
SPEAKER_00: we didn't have as much of a shift.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: I think there were things that we did that did make a difference.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: But that background condition that was shaped in part by policies that Democrats
7:06
SPEAKER_00: had a role in passing and Republicans had a role in killing,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: that was the background to a lot of what happened in this election.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, the second thing is, how do we do better?
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And one thing that is...
7:17
SPEAKER_00: just enormously clear in the data that I'm looking at is that there were a ton of
7:22
SPEAKER_00: people who never heard from us and people who heard constantly from the right about
7:27
SPEAKER_00: the things that the Democrats had said or done that they found to be most
7:33
SPEAKER_00: irrelevant to their lives,
7:34
SPEAKER_00: in some cases,
7:34
SPEAKER_00: most offensive to them.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Democrats, we have our values and we want to act on the basis of our values.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: And we need to communicate about our values in ways that allow people to
7:46
SPEAKER_00: hear that we have those values and we're also focused on them even when we disagree
7:49
SPEAKER_00: about some of those things at the same time.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And people need to see that we are fighting for them,
7:53
SPEAKER_00: that the fight,
7:54
SPEAKER_00: especially for working folks across the country,
7:57
SPEAKER_00: to make sure that they don't have to break pills in half to be able to afford their groceries,
8:01
SPEAKER_00: that that is the center of our fight in a moment when people are hurting economically.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: And so my view is that the places where we communicate need to expand.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: It's like the mirror's been shattered.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: There's all these little bits of reflected light and people are getting the news
8:15
SPEAKER_00: from a million different places,
8:16
SPEAKER_00: including things like the politics podcast,
8:18
SPEAKER_00: which 20 years ago,
8:19
SPEAKER_00: no one had ever heard of.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: But now I want to communicate to the politics podcast listenership.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: So we need to go in all those places and we need to build our capacity to shift the
8:31
SPEAKER_00: public's attention to conflicts that provoke the other side around the things that
8:35
SPEAKER_00: unite the country around the fight to deliver for working folks and against those
8:38
SPEAKER_00: trying to break the system for a tiny number of people at the top.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: And when we do that,
8:42
SPEAKER_00: and I think in the moments when we did do that in this campaign,
8:45
SPEAKER_00: we moved the needle and we can win elections in big ways.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: So that is my big structural analysis,
8:51
SPEAKER_00: plus some specific prescriptions drawn from data about what just took place.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: An elevator pitch for a very tall building.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Ben is very tall for those who can only see him on this small screen.
9:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: This I think leads into another good question.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: I mean, how could you, would you explain to people like what the role of the DNC and the DNC chair is?
9:12
SPEAKER_02: It's clearly like if you held that title,
9:14
SPEAKER_02: you could like appear on television or on podcasts and talk about things.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: There's always a lot of like conspiracy theories,
9:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
9:22
SPEAKER_02: part of your role would be probably rigging the primaries,
9:25
SPEAKER_02: et cetera.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: No, but like, like, like what is, what is this job?
9:28
SPEAKER_02: Like what, what are you applying for?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a very apt question that people have a lot of different conceptions about.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is in part that the DNC chair leads an organization.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: They're elected by 448 DNC members,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: and all of them represent state parties and at-large appointees and different
9:48
SPEAKER_00: committees like the DSCC and the CCC.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: But then you run an organization and decide how that organization should spend its money, and you
9:56
SPEAKER_00: submit policy questions around how the DNC is governed to the votes of the DNC members.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the work is figuring out what can the DNC do to help Democrats win elections,
10:08
SPEAKER_00: which is often things like,
10:09
SPEAKER_00: how do we think about organizing and voter contact?
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And how do we think about
10:13
SPEAKER_00: how to support building state party infrastructure that can help to make sure that
10:17
SPEAKER_00: we're training communicators at the state level.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: But it's a lot of nuts and bolts building stuff.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And then it's a lot of fundraising to support that program.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: And then the communications piece,
10:25
SPEAKER_00: ultimately the biggest communicators are the candidates for office and the elected officials.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: So the DNC can play a role to help to convene and organize and deploy people to
10:36
SPEAKER_00: help to communicate about things.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: But you're
10:39
SPEAKER_00: it's not like you can wave a magic wand and say,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: this is what everyone should say from now on and everyone is going to do it.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: What you can do,
10:46
SPEAKER_00: What I would hope to do is when there's a big fight that unites Democrats,
10:50
SPEAKER_00: divides Republicans,
10:51
SPEAKER_00: shows the country whose side we're on,
10:53
SPEAKER_00: that the DNC can play a kind of accelerating and amplifying and organizing role to
10:58
SPEAKER_00: make that the central thing that is happening in American politics.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: The model for this is the fight against the privatization of Social Security 2005
11:06
SPEAKER_00: and 2006,
11:06
SPEAKER_00: the fight against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017,
11:09
SPEAKER_00: and then Trump's tax scam.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Trump is going to try to give...
11:13
SPEAKER_00: trillions of dollars to multi-billionaires and big corporations and probably do it
11:16
SPEAKER_00: by trying to cut things that working folks across the country rely on.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: And Democrats will all vote against Trump's bad policy.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: And we can help to make sure we have the best messages that we recruit and engage a
11:28
SPEAKER_00: ton of messengers that we had people in every congressional district,
11:31
SPEAKER_00: every zip code talking to local press.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: Like that is a kind of organizing role around a big fight that Democrats can lean
11:37
SPEAKER_00: into to make it an issue that we can try to stop bad policies from happening,
11:41
SPEAKER_00: but also make it
11:43
SPEAKER_00: the thing that sticks in people's minds about what Democrats are about when they go
11:46
SPEAKER_00: to vote in 26 and,
11:47
SPEAKER_00: and then we'll have a proposition for what we're for in hopefully 26 and certainly
11:52
SPEAKER_00: in 2028.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: So there's a kind of an organizing job is the last piece is, I guess what I'm saying.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And I,
11:58
SPEAKER_00: communicating as DNC chair,
12:00
SPEAKER_00: you're sort of communicating as an organizer,
12:02
SPEAKER_00: calling on people to help amplify things across the board and helping lift up and
12:06
SPEAKER_00: build a rapid response social media shop and train spokespeople to go on Fox News
12:10
SPEAKER_00: and all that kind of stuff that you do is around trying to get people in motion to
12:15
SPEAKER_00: do work that can help to win elections.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: It is not the voters ultimately determine who is the standard bearer for the party
12:22
SPEAKER_00: in the next presidential race.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: And that
12:24
SPEAKER_00: The battle to determine who that person will be,
12:26
SPEAKER_00: the DNC's job is to have an even playing field and treat everyone neutrally so that
12:30
SPEAKER_00: voters and the democratic process can play out to determine who that should be.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: It is not the DNC's job to choose who the candidate is going to be.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to figure out how to ask the question I wrote for myself without sounding like an asshole.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: So you've laid out the job in broad strokes or your vision in broad strokes is you
12:50
SPEAKER_01: need a good and popular policy agenda.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: You need...
12:55
SPEAKER_01: ways to get information about that agenda and about how Democrats are fighting for
12:59
SPEAKER_01: it to people who aren't hearing it now.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: And then you need to be a responsible steward of the resources.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: The candidates need to be the messengers for both of those things, right?
13:11
SPEAKER_01: And there are other candidates running for DNC.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: I've been in this line of work for 20 years now,
13:19
SPEAKER_01: and I still have a hard time deciphering from,
13:24
SPEAKER_01: even among operatives that I'm pretty well familiar with,
13:27
SPEAKER_01: who's good at the job they do and who is not.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: I moved to Washington DC in 2005.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: I met Ben.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Super nice guy, highly regarded, moved to Wisconsin.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: The results after he took over the Democratic Party there have been good.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: Tammy Baldwin, a successful senator, is a supporter of yours.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: All that suggests to me that my intuitions are correct.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: But Bob Shrum is a highly respected Democratic veteran too.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And if you look at his record, it's kind of poor.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know whether that is like- Just shots fired at poor Bob Shrub.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: No,
14:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
14:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm just like,
14:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm picking,
14:10
SPEAKER_01: I picked that example to create this juxtaposition because I know people listening
14:15
SPEAKER_01: are going to like wonder like who's actually the best candidate and how do I even
14:19
SPEAKER_01: tell given that like it turns out elections can be lost through bad luck or one
14:24
SPEAKER_01: because the candidate is extremely charismatic and it's hard to know-
14:30
SPEAKER_01: how to tell who the best people underneath them are.
14:35
SPEAKER_01: How do you discern between good operatives and placeholders?
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Well,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: I think the concept you want to use is value over replacement,
14:46
SPEAKER_00: which is the things that an operative can affect relative to what would have
14:52
SPEAKER_00: happened if it wasn't that person or someone who doesn't have that particular skill
14:55
SPEAKER_00: set or approach,
14:56
SPEAKER_00: what would have happened?
14:57
SPEAKER_00: And that means that just the raw scorecard of are you winning the elections or not?
15:03
SPEAKER_00: only tells you some of the story.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: And like,
15:06
SPEAKER_00: if you live in a blue state,
15:07
SPEAKER_00: does that mean that if you're the chair,
15:09
SPEAKER_00: you're the best chair ever?
15:10
SPEAKER_00: And if you live in a red state, you're the worst chair ever?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: The answer is no, that is not what it means.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And I have great respect for the other people who are running for this position.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: And we all bring different things to the mix.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: I think the thing that I bring in particular is the experience of
15:25
SPEAKER_00: working in a state that is a massive focus for the entire conservative machine,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: where they throw hundreds of millions of dollars every cycle into doing all they
15:34
SPEAKER_00: can to win races,
15:35
SPEAKER_00: knowing that the laws are already stacked in their favor,
15:38
SPEAKER_00: that they have passed laws that make it harder for young people and Black people
15:42
SPEAKER_00: and Latino people to vote in our state,
15:44
SPEAKER_00: that they have smashed unions.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: We've had a bigger decline in union density than any other state in the country,
15:49
SPEAKER_00: thanks to Scott Walker's laws,
15:50
SPEAKER_00: that they rigged our legislative maps so completely that
15:52
SPEAKER_00: that Republicans got a supermajority while Democrats won the governors.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: They got a supermajority in the state Senate while Democrats won the governor's race in 2022.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: And against that background,
16:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:03
SPEAKER_00: and with a demographic mix and the population distribution that makes it look like
16:07
SPEAKER_00: a red state,
16:09
SPEAKER_00: We've been able to win seven out of 10 statewide elections since I've been chair,
16:14
SPEAKER_00: and we became the closest to defeating an incumbent Republican senator in the
16:18
SPEAKER_00: country in 2022.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: We broke a 60-year curse where Democrats always lost the governor's race when there
16:24
SPEAKER_00: was a Democratic president.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Until 2022,
16:26
SPEAKER_00: we won by 3.4 percentage points,
16:28
SPEAKER_00: which is triple the margin in 2018,
16:31
SPEAKER_00: which is a very good year for Democrats.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: In the governor's race, we won by 1.1.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Governor Evers jokes that that was his landslide because it was more than one percentage point.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: Most critically,
16:42
SPEAKER_00: I want to point to,
16:44
SPEAKER_00: we took this state that has been rigged by the GOP and my predecessor,
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Chair Martha Lanning,
16:49
SPEAKER_00: launched a year-round organizing program.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: I ran for chair because I fell in love with that and wanted to supercharge that and
16:54
SPEAKER_00: build these communications and think through how we partner with our allies and
16:59
SPEAKER_00: with our elected officials and
17:01
SPEAKER_00: how we approach the work digitally.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: And with all those things, we've been able to unpick the lock.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: We flipped our state Supreme Court.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: We stopped Republicans from impeaching our Supreme Court justice.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: And then because we now have fair maps, we flipped 14 state legislative seats this year.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: And my proposition for the Democratic National Committee is that
17:19
SPEAKER_00: The national party should partner with state parties to map out these fights along
17:23
SPEAKER_00: the path to being able to unrig states and open the door to be able to make
17:28
SPEAKER_00: progress and then work with all of the different partners and allies,
17:30
SPEAKER_00: including the national committees on governors and lieutenant governors and
17:34
SPEAKER_00: attorneys general and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and treasurers
17:38
SPEAKER_00: and all these things.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: to have a plan,
17:41
SPEAKER_00: to have a 10-year plan for each state where we identify what is the sequence of fights,
17:45
SPEAKER_00: where if we throw everything we can against them,
17:47
SPEAKER_00: we can actually win,
17:48
SPEAKER_00: make change in people's lives,
17:49
SPEAKER_00: and then build towards being able to do something more.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: And that...
17:54
SPEAKER_00: In Wisconsin,
17:54
SPEAKER_00: we've raised more money than any other Democratic state party in the country every
17:57
SPEAKER_00: cycle I've been chair.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: We've had a bigger year-round team.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: And that team has been able to build a year-round organizing capacity that allows
18:06
SPEAKER_00: us to win school board races and mayoral races in the spring elections and then
18:11
SPEAKER_00: build relationships with people that we don't know yet.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: So we have better and better data during the time far from an election.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: So when we get close to an election,
18:17
SPEAKER_00: we have a bigger universe of voters we can go out to and we can expand the
18:20
SPEAKER_00: electorate even when the conditions are really tough.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: I guess this is a very long way of saying,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: I think you have to look at the texture of what's actually been done in each state
18:29
SPEAKER_00: and what you're up against to have a sense of how to evaluate.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think for somebody who's on the outside of all this,
18:36
SPEAKER_00: you can hear the candidates' pitches,
18:37
SPEAKER_00: you can hear their plans.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: I think the closer in you are, the more you can see
18:42
SPEAKER_00: what are outcomes that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the work that the
18:46
SPEAKER_00: DNC chair candidate has done?
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And I think we have a lot to show in my state.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: And my pitch to folks across the country is let's do this everywhere.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's build a permanent campaign across the country that figures out the most
18:59
SPEAKER_00: effective thing to do at each moment and then gets a ton of people in motion to do
19:02
SPEAKER_00: that thing so we actually win more and then show that we can make a difference in
19:07
SPEAKER_00: people's lives and use that trust to be able to win the next fight.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: And I think if we do that,
19:11
SPEAKER_00: This really dark moment could also be a moment when instead of getting raped as a country,
19:15
SPEAKER_00: we actually kind of launch the next great step in the right direction to deliver
19:20
SPEAKER_00: for folks.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: So this is a kind of more micro question,
19:24
SPEAKER_02: but what's your understanding of like a Tammy Baldwin,
19:29
SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump crossover voter,
19:31
SPEAKER_02: right?
19:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, because there's not that many people, right?
19:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean, most of her voters vote for Harris.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: Most of Trump's voters vote for her opponent.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: But the difference between winning and losing is these kind of small margins of people.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, what do you, like, who are they?
19:48
SPEAKER_02: What are they about?
19:49
SPEAKER_02: What do they like?
19:50
SPEAKER_02: What do they think?
19:51
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting is the real story is this is people who voted for Trump and then left.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: So Harris and Baldwin got almost exactly the same number of votes.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: They were within 4,000 votes of each other,
20:04
SPEAKER_00: but there were 54,000 people who voted for Trump and didn't vote in the US Senate race.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: Both Harris and Tammy Baldwin lost to Trump in terms of the number of votes,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: but beat Eric Hovde in terms of the number of votes.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: And
20:16
SPEAKER_00: That argues to me is both Tammy's strength as a senator who's built a real
20:21
SPEAKER_00: relationship with voters over years and has credibility with a lot of folks that
20:25
SPEAKER_00: they want to go out and vote for her.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: But also, we ran a coordinated campaign on our side that made the case to voters up and down the ballot.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: And we...
20:34
SPEAKER_00: On the Republican side, Trump kind of ran alone.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: He famously, maybe apocrypally, said to the RNC, I'll turn out the voters.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: You just make sure the votes count.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And they hired all these election integrity specialists instead of doing a kind of organizing program.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: He did turn out a ton of voters.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: But those voters weren't voting up and down the ballot for Republicans.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the...
20:58
SPEAKER_00: I think Trump has enormous weaknesses.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: He also has the strength of having a connection to a lot of people who don't pay
21:04
SPEAKER_00: attention to politics otherwise.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: And we can see that each of the times he's been on the ballot with a bunch of folks turning out
21:10
SPEAKER_00: who don't really have a connection to the Republican Party as a party and who like
21:15
SPEAKER_00: that he's going to blow up a system that they don't trust in general.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: And on our side,
21:19
SPEAKER_00: you know,
21:19
SPEAKER_00: we always have a different kind of challenge because we're arguing that we can make
21:23
SPEAKER_00: the system better,
21:24
SPEAKER_00: but also it starts with not trying to burn the whole thing down.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: So our work has been to work with folks to vote up and down the ballot, and that worked on our side.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: It did not work on the Republican side.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's the big thing that jumps out in numbers across the state.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to improvise a little bit because we're short on time.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: And I think like events this week kind of call this question more than what I had written,
21:48
SPEAKER_01: which is,
21:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:49
SPEAKER_01: I,
21:51
SPEAKER_01: I like your pitch as like a quadrennial DNC pitch,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: right?
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
22:00
SPEAKER_01: You're running to run the DNC in an era where Trump is president and has a great deal of impunity.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: He's already using it to essentially extort news companies to pay him defamation settlements.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: I could do the laundry list, but I suspect that the dirty tricks won't be limited to ABC News.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: And have you done any planning,
22:24
SPEAKER_01: thinking about how to be an effective DNC chairman in an environment of that kind
22:31
SPEAKER_01: of intimidation,
22:33
SPEAKER_01: corruption?
22:35
SPEAKER_01: There's no consent decree anymore stopping the RNC from mucking around with polling places.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: What's that side of the plan for victory looking like?
22:46
SPEAKER_00: So it is grim what he's already started to do.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: And we have to expect,
22:51
SPEAKER_00: like,
22:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't think he's going to be doing a lot of hand-breaking about norm-breaking
22:54
SPEAKER_00: slash law-breaking in his presidency.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: And this,
22:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
22:59
SPEAKER_00: anyone who's a Democratic elected official,
23:02
SPEAKER_00: anyone who's thinking about running for DNC chair,
23:04
SPEAKER_00: like,
23:04
SPEAKER_00: you have to expect that you're going to be up against that directly and that Trump
23:07
SPEAKER_00: will be abusing his power and breaking things in order to hold on to power.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And Trump's attention...
23:15
SPEAKER_00: is erratic and not sustained and what i don't think that he's doing is trying to
23:20
SPEAKER_00: build a mega movement to win power in state after state across the country and to
23:23
SPEAKER_00: the extent that he does he's terrible at that he's terrible at helping other people
23:27
SPEAKER_00: win elections
23:28
SPEAKER_00: So,
23:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:30
SPEAKER_00: over these next four years,
23:31
SPEAKER_00: there will be kind of a,
23:32
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:32
SPEAKER_00: kind of toe-to-toe combat in the press with Trump.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And we have this wealth of great messengers on the Democratic side.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: We have governors and senators and members of Congress.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: We have mayors of cities.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: We have a whole bunch of different people.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think helping people be ready for what it's like when the eye of Sauron is
23:49
SPEAKER_00: turned on you and the flood of trolls that you get and the flood of threats and all
23:52
SPEAKER_00: that kind of stuff and helping people think through personal security and all that
23:55
SPEAKER_00: stuff is going to be an important part of this work.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: we're going to be working on a whole bunch of fronts at the same time in a way that
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Trump is,
24:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Trump throws a million things against the wall,
24:05
SPEAKER_00: but what he doesn't do is survey the map and figure out all the places where he
24:08
SPEAKER_00: needs to,
24:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:10
SPEAKER_00: to build up the fortifications or the Republican operation.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways,
24:15
SPEAKER_00: this is exactly the moment when you have a big multi-front fight to be able to win
24:19
SPEAKER_00: elections and create,
24:20
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:21
SPEAKER_00: change in a good direction, it can pay off the most because he's so indisciplined and erratic.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: So this is,
24:27
SPEAKER_00: I think it's really important for Dems to be realistic about the fact that it is
24:31
SPEAKER_00: not 3D chess,
24:32
SPEAKER_00: but the thing that he's good at is moving very quickly.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to have to be able to move quickly and strategically to be able to
24:38
SPEAKER_00: be effective in this kind of environment.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: And also,
24:42
SPEAKER_00: if we do that,
24:43
SPEAKER_00: I think that we're going to win a ton of elections that seem out of reach right now.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Trump is going to be a disaster as president.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: He's going to do things that are deeply unpopular over and over and over.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: We'll have a smorgasbord of options of things to fight against.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: And we can choose things that crystallize huge majorities of the country that want
25:00
SPEAKER_00: good things and they're against the bad things that Trump is doing.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: And if we do that and then translate that into electoral strength,
25:06
SPEAKER_00: we're going to elect a ton of people to a ton of different offices that are going
25:09
SPEAKER_00: to help shape the future of this country for the next half century.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And that to me is...
25:14
SPEAKER_00: as scary as this moment is,
25:15
SPEAKER_00: that's the opportunity that,
25:16
SPEAKER_00: that is,
25:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:18
SPEAKER_00: I love Wisconsin so much and we're so close to being a democratic trifecta and we
25:22
SPEAKER_00: have a Supreme court race this spring that we have to win to stop Republicans from
25:25
SPEAKER_00: rereading our state.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: All that would be my only focus if it weren't for the fact that there's so much
25:29
SPEAKER_00: that we can do right now if we,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: if we lean into this battle.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: But like, what would you need from others in the party?
25:35
SPEAKER_01: If like Kash Patel decides it is illegal to be an effective democratic national
25:40
SPEAKER_01: committee chairperson and now they're
25:44
SPEAKER_01: his outfit is trained at you.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, we are a federal, uh, system.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: There are many different layers of jurisdictions.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: There are lots of different layers of, um, you know, people who exercise executive authority.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And if Trump decides to go around launching constitutional crises,
26:02
SPEAKER_00: like,
26:02
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:03
SPEAKER_00: as a country,
26:03
SPEAKER_00: there's going to be a whole lot of people who can step into the breach and I think
26:07
SPEAKER_00: might be called upon to do so.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: So I,
26:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't relish the,
26:10
SPEAKER_00: the,
26:11
SPEAKER_00: uh,
26:11
SPEAKER_00: opportunity to find out what that would be like,
26:13
SPEAKER_00: but also I do think that the,
26:15
SPEAKER_00: um,
26:18
SPEAKER_00: What we saw in Trump's first administration was that there were moments when he
26:21
SPEAKER_00: crossed lines that kind of galvanized the whole country,
26:24
SPEAKER_00: like with the child separation policy.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: The huge range of marches and op-eds and kind of public revulsion,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: including people close to him at what he was doing ripping families apart,
26:35
SPEAKER_00: led to a total backtracking from the administration.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: And Trump...
26:40
SPEAKER_00: he recoils from certain kinds of public response.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: He does.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: And he does,
26:44
SPEAKER_00: as Matt,
26:45
SPEAKER_00: as you've written about,
26:46
SPEAKER_00: when he realizes that something's politically toxic,
26:49
SPEAKER_00: there are times when he stops doing it,
26:51
SPEAKER_00: as we've seen from the way he's totally changed the way that he talks about abortion.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And I think that
26:57
SPEAKER_00: There are some kinds of red lines that if Trump tries to cross them,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: there will be a massive wall and Democrats should help to ensure that there's a
27:03
SPEAKER_00: massive wall of public response to try to close off those avenues for Democratic
27:09
SPEAKER_00: backsliding and try to make it into a political disaster for Trump and his administration.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think the work that all of us have to do is to choose when those moments are
27:20
SPEAKER_00: when we throw everything we've got into making sure that something blows up in
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Trump's face.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: Because
27:25
SPEAKER_00: There will be a lot of different opportunities and options,
27:27
SPEAKER_00: and he's going to try to transgress in every possible way.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it'll be intentional provocation to get us to try to do things that
27:34
SPEAKER_00: wind up not being helpful.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: But I do think that there's a shared sense for most Americans about some basic
27:41
SPEAKER_00: questions of fairness,
27:43
SPEAKER_00: about some basic questions about what is even remotely appropriate for the
27:51
SPEAKER_00: president of this country to do, and what are the kind of bounds that we should set?
27:54
SPEAKER_00: And when he crosses red lines,
27:57
SPEAKER_00: I think as a country,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: we have a chance to respond in a way that can help to build our conviction about
28:01
SPEAKER_00: what kind of country we want to be.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And then to be proactive in proposing and showing the kind of country we want,
28:07
SPEAKER_00: the kind of government that we want,
28:08
SPEAKER_00: the kind of nation that we want to
28:11
SPEAKER_00: that we want to demonstrate we are.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: And that is for all of us in this moment,
28:15
SPEAKER_00: choosing those battles and those fights that define our character as well as make
28:19
SPEAKER_00: clear what Trump and his movements character is like is going to be one of the
28:23
SPEAKER_00: central tests that we have to pass and series of trials that we have to pass over
28:27
SPEAKER_00: the next four years.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay,
28:31
SPEAKER_02: I think we're nearing the end of your time,
28:33
SPEAKER_02: but I want to ask you one kind of like boring organizational question,
28:36
SPEAKER_02: because that sort of is the essence of the job.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: If people heard the Harris campaign sort of retrospective on Pod Save America—
28:45
SPEAKER_02: One thing that those people said was that they thought Democrats needed to get less
28:49
SPEAKER_02: fussy about sort of coordination with super PACs and campaign finance laws.
28:55
SPEAKER_02: And then another thing they said that I think was in a little bit of tension with
28:58
SPEAKER_02: that was that they felt that too much of the money had been concentrated in a
29:02
SPEAKER_02: single super PAC.
29:05
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if that's something you,
29:07
SPEAKER_02: those kinds of things are something you have a view on because,
29:10
SPEAKER_02: you know,
29:10
SPEAKER_02: the DNC,
29:12
SPEAKER_02: In the pre-Super PAC era,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: right,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: was like the soft money funnel and now kind of like stands between the campaigns
29:20
SPEAKER_02: and this like nebulous Super PAC universe.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I wonder if you have thoughts on how that should work.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: First thing is, I do think that money has a two bigger role in American politics.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that we win power enough to be able to pass laws to have things like
29:40
SPEAKER_00: public financing and to have changes that put people at the center of our politics
29:45
SPEAKER_00: and not these giant sloshing flows of money.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: But until then, you were the top fundraising state party.
29:53
SPEAKER_02: Winning those elections will require a lot of money.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: And that is just a fact of American life at this moment.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And when we see money doesn't turn a landslide into a nail-biter win,
30:05
SPEAKER_00: but if you're in a 50-50 environment and you're massively outspent,
30:08
SPEAKER_00: you're probably going to lose.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: That is something that I've seen happen.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: Um,
30:12
SPEAKER_00: so I think,
30:13
SPEAKER_00: you know,
30:14
SPEAKER_00: we should follow the law and we should also get really clear about what you're
30:18
SPEAKER_00: allowed to do under the law and be willing to,
30:21
SPEAKER_00: to,
30:21
SPEAKER_00: to use the powers that we have and not unilaterally disarm.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: And Republicans have,
30:26
SPEAKER_00: have carved out all kinds of new spaces that now have been kind of,
30:29
SPEAKER_00: uh,
30:29
SPEAKER_00: ratified by the federal elections commission and different pieces.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I don't believe in unilateral disarmament.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: I believe in, in,
30:38
SPEAKER_00: fighting to win elections while also recognizing that these are actual laws and
30:43
SPEAKER_00: that we now have an administration that will probably try to abuse its power to
30:46
SPEAKER_00: enforce those laws.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: So I do think that
30:50
SPEAKER_00: really thinking through where the line is and making sure you don't cross it,
30:53
SPEAKER_00: but also not running away from it and not doing things that would help you to win
31:00
SPEAKER_00: is an important part of the approach that we need to be able to win these fights.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: I also think that when you have a strong party that is able to provide support for
31:11
SPEAKER_00: candidates to be able to,
31:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:13
SPEAKER_00: For example,
31:14
SPEAKER_00: fundraise to cover the things that affect everybody so that you don't have negative
31:19
SPEAKER_00: externalities of candidates not wanting to invest in things that would help
31:23
SPEAKER_00: everyone up and down the ticket because it doesn't help them individually quite enough.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: But when you look at the full stack of elections in any given state,
31:29
SPEAKER_00: It can really matter to have,
31:30
SPEAKER_00: for example,
31:31
SPEAKER_00: a good voter protection program that can cure ballots,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: because often that makes the difference in a bunch of things and sometimes makes
31:38
SPEAKER_00: the difference statewide.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: But it's going to get underinvested in if it's just the candidate.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: The party themselves can provide those kinds of, in effect, public goods.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: That can benefit everybody.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: And when you do that,
31:50
SPEAKER_00: you can create an environment where the different types of entities have a clear
31:54
SPEAKER_00: sense of how they add the most value.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: And you have a kind of overall plan to win in a fully legal way that allows
32:01
SPEAKER_00: everyone to do their best work and be able to go out there and fight.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: And there are we live in a political system in the United States with a ton of actors,
32:09
SPEAKER_00: with a ton of different amazing grassroots organizations and communications outfits
32:13
SPEAKER_00: and groups that focus on particular types of voters or particular communities.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: And you want to have a lot of different you want to have a system where you're not
32:24
SPEAKER_00: hyper reliant on one decision maker to be able to get it all right.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: and where you also have folks that understand the communities in which they're
32:30
SPEAKER_00: working who are able to drive really good work,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: and you want to have a sense of accountability and a sense of actually seeing
32:37
SPEAKER_00: whether the things everyone is doing is working so you can adjust course if it's not.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: And that, to me, is kind of a political culture you build that I think the party can help to set.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: And my goal is...
32:46
SPEAKER_00: That after an election,
32:48
SPEAKER_00: we look back and we learn lessons about things that didn't go well,
32:51
SPEAKER_00: but also that we have a sense that,
32:53
SPEAKER_00: oh my God,
32:54
SPEAKER_00: all this work,
32:55
SPEAKER_00: we were all doing in a way that wasn't at cross purposes.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: We weren't ignoring obvious lessons that the data was telling us.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Everyone was pulling their weight because they knew they could rely on everyone else.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: That sense of shared victory helps propel work into the next fight.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: And God, we're going to have a lot of next fights coming up.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: So that's where I want us to go.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think that the DNC,
33:13
SPEAKER_00: just in a very operative sense,
33:15
SPEAKER_00: can help to create an environment where people are called on and relied on and
33:19
SPEAKER_00: actually do the best work of their lives to make change in people's lives.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Should we close on that?
33:25
SPEAKER_01: Do you have any other thoughts you'd rather close on?
33:28
SPEAKER_02: Final stirring thought, you know?
33:30
SPEAKER_00: I'll close with this.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, there's often, there are big debates that happen after every election that
33:37
SPEAKER_00: And there are also big fights that are coming up right away.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: And I mentioned Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: April 1st,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: the first big contest,
33:45
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:45
SPEAKER_00: kind of a Democratic-supported versus Republican-supported candidate.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: That will determine the majority on the state Supreme Court.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Republicans could re-rig Wisconsin the way that they did in North Carolina and take it off the map.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Or if Susan Crawford wins that race, then we have a path to not having our state get rigged again.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: And Democrats have a fair shot to win a trifecta in 2026.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: And there are fights like that all over the country that are coming up in 2025,
34:11
SPEAKER_00: in special elections,
34:12
SPEAKER_00: in races in Virginia and New Jersey.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: The fights that we choose,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: that's where energy comes from,
34:18
SPEAKER_00: is when people can see how they can play a role in creating a real difference.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: And I think if I'm DNC chair,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: my goal is to work with every state to map out those fights and channel energy and
34:27
SPEAKER_00: resources and focus into things that allow people to feel the effect of their
34:32
SPEAKER_00: collective action of being part of something that actually makes a difference in
34:35
SPEAKER_00: people's lives and changes electoral outcomes.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And if we build that way,
34:39
SPEAKER_00: it's going to be like a snowball,
34:40
SPEAKER_00: like it's bigger and bigger for these next four years and beyond.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: That prevents the re-rigging of our country after 2030.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: So we're not repeating 2010 when we had won a federal trifecta,
34:48
SPEAKER_00: but we didn't have this kind of strength in the party that could allow us to do the
34:53
SPEAKER_00: best possible job of withstanding the backlash that came after.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: The goal really is to...
35:00
SPEAKER_00: to build a focus on fighting and winning elections that is rigorous,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: but also gives people that sense of joy and purpose that comes from being part of
35:09
SPEAKER_00: something bigger than themselves.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Because politics is not a game.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: It is about power that affects the kinds of lives that people can lead in this country,
35:16
SPEAKER_00: the kinds of freedoms people can enjoy,
35:18
SPEAKER_00: whether the economy actually works for them or whether it is working for somebody
35:22
SPEAKER_00: else only.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: And
35:24
SPEAKER_00: I think we have a kind of moral responsibility to get serious about doing this work.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: But if we do that,
35:29
SPEAKER_00: it's also going to be great joy that we experience in moments when we can look at
35:33
SPEAKER_00: each other and say,
35:33
SPEAKER_00: we did that together.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm running for DNC chair because I want to create a party that gives people a
35:39
SPEAKER_00: reason to believe that it is worth being involved in a moment when people are so
35:43
SPEAKER_00: cynical and when they feel like in some ways everything needs to be ripped up.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: I think that we can show each other through the way that we work together in these
35:51
SPEAKER_00: next four years that we can build something better than that and we can actually
35:54
SPEAKER_00: create change.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: So that is my closing pitch.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm really grateful for the chance to join you guys today.
35:59
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for coming.
35:59
SPEAKER_02: All right.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for your time.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: Good luck.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: Bye, Ben.