>> The word of the week. Energy. Democrats are flying high
following their party convention in Chicago. Now they look toward
their push to November. We check in now with Democratic Party of
Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler. Thanks so much for being here.
>> Thanks so much for having me on, Fredricka.
>> So how do you maintain the energy of that convention and
translate it into votes for your candidates?
>> Well, for all the Democrats that were here, their first step
is to drink some tea and recover their voice after cheering
hearts out for the last four nights for Democrats across the
country. I think you can think of this convention as almost
like a bolt of lightning that went directly into a weather
vane connected to a giant battery, and that battery now
has to power us to zoom through the next 73 days. We have this
tiny window of time to take everything that we learned over
this last week about who Kamala Harris is, the daughter of the
middle class, the daughter of immigrants who loves this
country so much and has seen what it can do, the opportunity
that it can offer, and wants it to offer that opportunity to
everyone of Tim Walz, who embodies his his small towns
value for being a good neighbor, for looking after everyone, and
for as a coach, making sure people know that they have the
power to make things better. He gave a pep talk to the entire
audience at the convention, and we're ready to run through a
wall. That's essentially what we have to do. It's called the Blue
Wall, and Wisconsin is the centerpiece of it.
money advantage to work to win in November?
>> Well, in a funny way, money is an indicator of enthusiasm.
There are less, as far as I can tell, millions of people who've
chipped in at Kamala Harris comm and made small donations and big
donations over the course of this convention, just in an
extraordinary clip. The key thing that the campaign has to
do that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has to do, is make
sure that that money translates into clear communication that
connects with people's values, and that can come in the form of
hiring organizers to connect with the 42,000 volunteers
who've signed up in Wisconsin since Kamala Harris became our
nominee, to connect with those volunteers and make sure they're
ready to go and knock on doors and talk to undecided voters, it
can be TV ads that I'm sure people are going to see, not on
on, on, on. Well, on just about every screen that they can turn
on, including their phones, probably at gas stations when
you're filling up your tank. We know that the other side in this
campaign is already investing millions of dollars in Wisconsin
and across the country. We cannot be out communicated. We
can't be outworked. We can't be out organized. We have to
deliver in the same way that we just saw vice President Harris
do from the convention stage last night.
in Wisconsin? >> Well, Wisconsin is a 50 over
50 state. We're the only state where four of the last six
presidential races has come down to less than one percentage
point. And that's not just presidential races. Our Senate
race in 20 21, governor's race in 2018, 1.1. I'd love to get to
that extra 1.1. This is a state where there's just a lot of
Democrats, a lot of Republicans, a lot of people who think
through with each election which party they're going to vote for,
and some people who think through whether they're going to
vote for all of those voters. It is critical that they hear on a
regular basis very clearly, that Vice President Harris is going
to fight for them, that she wants them to be free. She
doesn't think the government should be interfering in their
personal lives, and she thinks the government should be
ensuring that big companies like Big Pharma can't price gouge,
can't, can't force up costs for people that want to be able to
afford their medicine and their groceries at the same time,
which shouldn't be that tall of an order in the wealthiest
country in the world. She's here to give a middle class tax cut
and ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share. And she laid
out a vision at this convention of really a country that lifts
everyone up, whether you live in a rural area or a city or a
suburb, she's lived in lots of different places, including in
Wisconsin as a kid, and she brings that life experience to
bear. She thinks about the kind of president that she's ready to
be. polling over her challenger,
Eric Hovde, for the U.S. Senate. Can she count on that polling?
>> Well, again, this is Wisconsin.
>> I remember a poll in 2020 that said that Joe Biden was 17
points ahead. He won by 6/10 of a percentage point. So if you're
running or if you think it's important that someone win, if
you think that you want Tammy Baldwin to get to the United
States Senate and keep fighting special interests and working to
pass the Women's Health Protection Act to make Roe
versus Wade the law of the land. Don't trust any poll that says
this is a landslide work, work as though it's not within the
margin of error, that it's within the margin of effort. And
that means pulling out your phone and thinking through and
finding which friends of yours might not have voted before, who
might have moved and not updated their voter registration, who
sometimes votes Republican, sometimes votes Democrat. Go
call them and talk to them about why they might care about Tammy
Baldwin defeating Eric Hovde. And while they're at it, vote
for state legislative races, House races, and for vice