Ben Wikler, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, shared his vision for the future of the party with Jon Stewart Monday and left the “Daily Show” host flabbergasted and speechless at varying points.
After Wikler explained that the purpose of politics is “to fight in a way that makes a difference in people’s lives so that they remember who was on their side when something went wrong,” Stewart yelled out, “Is someone writing this down?!”
Wikler noted that the 2024 election was the first in which the DNC “lost the majority of the voters who are making less than $50,000 a year.” These voters “have a lot going on in their lives,” he said.
“A lot of them are the people least likely to be watching political news, hearing really either side’s message, and they’re folks who often got a lot of financial support during the pandemic, when we passed expanded unemployment insurance and Child Tax Credit, all this stuff that really made a difference, and then it went away at the same time as prices went up,” Wikler continued.
So it isn’t too surprising that this set of voters voted for a change from President Joe Biden, he argued. And though Democrats say Trump will make things tough for working people, “I think a lot of people did not hear our message,” Wikler said, “and then some people who heard it didn’t believe it.”
Watch the full segment below:
“I think part of it is that Democrats are defending a status quo that people feel is not delivering on the discomfort they have in their real lives,” Stewart responded.
Wikler agreed. “I think that during Trump’s first administration, sometimes we’d say, ‘This is not normal.’ It wasn’t normal. But it’s also the case that what’s normal is not necessarily OK.”
“Boom!” Stewart answered as Wikler added, “It is not OK that people can’t get an inhaler for their kid. And we have to show that this pisses us off —”
“Oh my god, I’m getting excited!” Stewart interjected as Wikler and the studio audience laughed.
“— you actually have to make the change,” Wikler said. “That is the point of this work. The only measure of work in politics, it’s not actually winning elections. It’s whether you deliver change in people’s lives. That is what winning looks like. That is the point of this work.”
You can watch the interview with Ben Wikler in the video above.
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