We're fighting for LGBT rights and for women's rights and for Muslims and for refugees. Well, we shouldn't be fighting for those groups, we should be fighting for freedom and the liberties that are enshrined in our founding documents and that covers everybody: the woman's right to choose, the ability to be able to pursue happiness.

You bring up identity politics and I think that this is really causing a divide in the American left where we're rallying too much around identities. We should celebrate our heritage, we should organize by identity, but we shouldn't advocate and push for certain identities. We shouldn't talk about women suffrage, or plight of Muslims, or refugees; we should talk about our common American values.

As liberals are puppets in Donald Trump's show right now, all he needs to do is create any distraction and all of a sudden, the whole country is completely distracted, including the American left. We need to be laser focused on figuring out what are our values, what do we really want to be defending on the left, and how are we going to do that, coming up with the plan and moving forward.

The lack of fairness that we have in the richest country in the world is something that hits my district pretty hard. Eighty-three percent free and reduced lunch. We have the fourth-highest Medicaid population per capita in Virginia. There are folks that are just making it, literally day to day. When I'm knocking on doors, I'm reminded constantly of the struggles that people have. And, sometimes, we realized there are so few people that are advocating on their behalf that we want to be a real solid voice for them, and that drives me on a regular basis.

I think the Democratic Party is firmly in the wilderness right now and doesn't know exactly what to do. We talk about trust. Fundamentally, the American people have lost a lot of trust in both parties, but in particular, my party. Growing trust is a very simple calculation: People want to know what your values are, and they watch your behaviors. If your behaviors align with your values, then they trust you. If you say I'm for the people, but we're just as bought off as the other party, or we say we're for fairness, but we gerrymander just like the other side, people see.

We're here to defend the rights that are enshrined to us by the Constitution, as Americans.

When we talk about defending Muslims, defending women, we're automatically by default excluding someone, but when we talk about defending liberty, when we talk about defending the freedoms that are enshrined within our founding documents, that is inclusive of every American. That's a message the American left needs to learn as we move forward.