It's been one month since the U.S. presidential election. And while Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump have been busy setting up a new White House administration, Democrats have spent the past four weeks trying to diagnose why they lost and how to move forward as a party.
One person who thinks he has an answer to that is Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. He's now running to become the new chairman of the national Democratic National Comittee because he says it's time to reassess what matters most to voters.
RELATED STORY | DNC chair slams Bernie Sanders' criticism of Democratic Party
"There's clearly a lot that we need to learn about what just happened, but one thing that jumps out is that a lot of voters who were taking it on the chin with high prices — frustrated by those prices — weren't hearing from either campaign and were voting for change," Wikler told Scripps News. "Well those voters, I think that we have a chance to reach out to them and say 'look, Democrats actually want to fight for an economy that works for working people and Trump wants to give multi-trillion tax cuts to billionaires at your expense. And that is a message we know can win because it's won downballot, it won in 2018, and it won in 2006 when George W. Bush tried to privatize social security."
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is currently hearing a potentially landmark case on gender affirming care for minors — which has been a big point for Democrats to campaign on. But a Scripps News/YouGov poll released early this year showed that more Americans support than oppose laws aimed at restricting transgender care for minors.
RELATED STORY | Scripps News poll: Americans largely support restricting trans rights
Wikler told Scripps News that if he were to be named chair of the DNC, it's a no-brainer that he'd support American's right to make their own private medical decisions without worrying about government intervention.
"Republicans want to talk about trans issues and go on the attack against trans people because that is their way of trying to divide the public," he said. "People do disagree about this. Republicans want to focus on that disagreement and use attacks on trans people in order to distract folks from the big legislation that they are planning right now — which is a multi-trillion dollar tax cut for billionaires."
"Democrats are always going to fight for people to have their basic personal freedom," Wikler continued. "And at the same time, we're going to fight against those who want to dismantle the federal government and the programs like social security and medicare and medicaid that people rely on for their their basic needs and health care."
You can watch Scripps News' full interview with Ben Wikler in the video player above.
