What is the Democratic Party

actually? [music]

Mechanically, what is it? What are its

powers?

Who comprises it? When you call the

Democratic Party, who picks up the

phone?

And then,

>> [music]

>> what could the Democratic Party, the

official party, actually be if it was

reinvented for this era?

Ben Wikler was the chair of Wisconsin

Democratic Party from 2019 to 2025.

He turned that party into a fundraising,

door-knocking powerhouse. [music]

In Wisconsin, where the state is very,

very, very close, that might have made

the difference.

The 2024 election was [music] a bit of a

mixed bag there, to say the least.

Kamala Harris lost Wisconsin by a single

percentage point,

but Tammy Baldwin, the Democratic Senate

candidate, won the state.

Wikler then launched a run for DNC

chair, which he lost to Ken Martin. A

lot of Democrats seeing the difficulties

the DNC has had since in fundraising and

organization,

and internal unity, very much wish

Wikler had won that race.

And now Wikler is back. He's the author

of This Is [music] the Plan: How to End

America's Meltdown and Save Democracy.

So, I wanted to ask not just about his

plan, but about the Democratic [music]

Party, about this

flawed, but necessary vehicle

that is needed to carry his plan out.

What's happened to it?

What could be done to renew it?

As always, my email is

ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

[music]

Ben Wikler, welcome to the show.

>> It's great to be with you, Ezra.

>> So, we last spoke, I wonder if you

remember this, at least on the show.

>> Vividly remember.

>> It was July of 2024. Biden had just

dropped out. Kamala Harris had

consolidated the Democratic Party.

We talked right after Harris had done

one of her first rallies in Wisconsin.

We had a very optimistic conversation. I

ended up titling it, I believe,

This is how Democrats Win in Wisconsin.

at the presidential level. They did not

win in Wisconsin.

What went wrong?

So,

Kamala Harris lost Wisconsin by less

than a percentage point. It was the

fifth of the last seven presidential

races that came down to less than 1%

point.

And on election night, I had this

feeling in the pit of my stomach that

nothing we'd done that we'd we'd tried

everything, we'd done everything that we

thought could make a difference. Maybe

none of it had had any impact. What was

I doing with my life?

The last thing I saw before I let myself

fall asleep that night was that Tammy

Baldwin had won. And I thought, "Ugh."

And I collapsed.

The next day, I did

uh a little spreadsheet therapy for

myself, which is my my way of relieving

electoral stress is to dig in the data.

And in Wisconsin, Harris had done better

than she had in any other battleground

state in terms of

how she did versus how Biden did. It

wound up being the closest state in the

country. A lot of Trump voters didn't

vote down ballot. The Harris voters did.

That's been a huge part of our our work

is to make sure people fill out their

whole ballot. And so, we actually gained

14 state legislative seats and won the

US Senate race at the same time as we

lost the presidential.

But the underlying question of why

Harris lost, to me, you not only have to

look at the country, you have to look at

the world. That if you consider every

election in an advanced Western

democracy, this is the only year on

record where the ruling party,

regardless of whether it was left,

right, or center, lost ground. And the

overwhelming issue in races all around

the world and with the voters who

actually shifted their vote vote choice

between 2020 and 2024, the number one

thing was inflation, prices,

affordability, the economy.

The rise in prices after a long period

where we didn't see broad-based

inflation,

especially for people who felt like they

were at the economic brink already, was

devastating. And I should say there are

many reasons when you lose by as little

as Harris did, lots of things could have

made the difference, but the biggest

issue of all was this fundamental

economic malaise that people felt and

they voted for change.

>> So, I agree that the in the election, in

the 2024 election, prices were the

biggest issue. They were the biggest

problem for Joe Biden and for Kamala

Harris.

But, I think I would have, off of that

analysis, expected then after the

election, as people got the Donald Trump

presidency, as the Donald Trump

presidency did not turn out the way they

had hoped,

to see a real resurgence in how people

maybe felt about the Democratic Party.

But, today we're sitting here,

the Democratic Party is wildly unpopular

as a brand. Um, it is less popular than

Donald Trump is as a brand.

So, as somebody who has run a Democratic

Party in a state and I think was quite

successful in doing so,

why is it that? What is it that people

don't like about the Democratic Party?

>> So, I'll say it at two levels. One is

that if you had Democrats in charge, you

voted for change, and now you don't like

the Republicans in charge. That doesn't

mean that you're like, "Oh, let's go

back to the old thing." That means you

want something else yet again. You want

change from the situation you have, and

neither party so far has delivered it

for you.

The second thing is that if you look

under the top lines in in polls,

there are Republicans who think

Democrats are too liberal. There are

Democrats who think Democrats are not

fighting hard enough for change. And

then there's a third category of people

who feel like all the politics is messed

up, that they can't trust either party.

They feel like neither party is

as has connected with them and and

actually solve the problems in their

life that they're struggling with. So, I

would not expect for Democratic Party

approval ratings to bounce back until

people can see tangible results, that

people are fighting on their side, not

only speaking to their issues, but also

making concrete differences in ways that

they appreciate. And to me, that's

the the crisis of this moment is this

profound sense that the whole country is

not working for regular people, that

people who would like not to ever have

to think about politics suddenly are

feeling politics just pounding at the

windows like a horde of zombies because

their lives are are going off the rails.

That it is so hard to just be able to

afford to live and people are being shot

in the streets and there's this sense

that that you know

lettuce might give you explosive

diarrhea.

All of this is wrong. Like most people

do not want to have to

think about who controls which chamber

of Congress let alone their state

legislature. And for people who'd like

to be left alone and able to to lead

their lives and pursue their dreams free

of politics, this is a very hard moment.

And for people who pay attention to

politics all the time, it's even worse.

So it's you'd expect in that situation

for people to be like set this whole

thing on fire and that's what we see in

poll after poll and in door after door

if you go out and talk to voters.

So let me remember this. Uh in very

early 2024

I did this big article I talked to all

these state chairs and Democratic

politicians about what was the

Democratic Party uh at a time when

actually compared to now it seemed more

settled but but it you know there were

some questions that had risen.

And you gave by far the best quotes in

that piece and you told me the story

about how there were these big piles of

coal.

I think it was in Green Bay. Is that

right?

>> that's right.

>> And you know that Tony Evers the

governor and Tammy Baldwin and others

have been working and they got money

from Joe Biden and to get the piles of

coal gone.

And you said to me it was by far the

best part of the piece. He said, you

know, that's who the Democratic Party

is. They're the people who get rid of

the piles of coal.

They were talking some years later and

you're like postscript

>> [laughter]

>> the piles of coal are still there.

>> Yeah.

>> I looked into it. There were lawsuits,

environmental lawsuits.

And it got me thinking. I mean obviously

this is a little bit related to

abundance work but there are many

different ways this plays out where the

Democratic Party wants to think of

itself

as a party that makes government work

for people.

And I think if people believed the

Democratic Party did that, they would

support it.

But they believe typically one of two

things that gets in the way. One is they

don't believe the Democrats make

government work for people. They believe

it makes government work for their own

set of interests, whether it's funders

or, you know, environmentalists or

unions or whoever it may be that the

people are upset about.

Or the other is they just don't believe

government works. And so the party that

says, "Hey, I'm here to make government

work for you."

is not credible because people don't

want government doing jobs they're not

certain government can do.

>> Yeah.

>> So, I I guess the question is this. Do

you believe that's who Democrats are?

That they're the people in politics to

make government work for people?

And if that's true, what do they need to

do to prove it?

>> So,

I think that Democrats are the party

that wants to make government work for

people.

Sometimes

Democrats can trip over their shoelaces.

Over and over, we have a government that

gets blocked or seized apart because it

actually can't respond to

the public's goals.

Our government in so many ways is set up

to meet a million different goals other

than delivering great public services,

solving public problems, doing great

work for people, despite millions of

wonderful civil servants who do

absolutely critical work all the time.

Right now, you know, we're pulling out

Jenga blocks like the

uh you know, monitoring for a cyclist

aura, and we can see how that leads to

disasters across the public. So, this is

not to say government doesn't work or

can't work, but there's a ton that gets

in the way right now of having a

government that's capable of being

responsive and effective at the level

that this moment calls for, especially a

moment where

a host of new threats and risks and

concentrations of power unleashed by

artificial intelligence are right on the

horizon. In some ways, it's never been

more urgent to have a government that is

both responsive and effective. And so, I

I do think that

Democrats can rebuild trust in

government and in themselves by being

excellent and actually delivering. And I

think you can see that in some state and

local governments across the country.

And you can you can see that in uh in

Mondaire Jones' New York with with

public services that people are

celebrating, delivering on campaign

promises, communicating the delivery of

those promises.

But, there is work to do to change how

the system itself works.

>> I guess the question that that raises

is when people think about the

Democratic Party,

when they hear those words, when a

pollster calls them and says, "What do

you think of the Democratic Party?"

What do you think those words activate

in their mind? What do people think the

Democratic Party is? And then as

somebody who ran one branch, what is the

Democratic Party?

>> So, it means whichever thing is most

salient to people. The first and the

most common is the amorphous blob of

every elected official, every

pundit, every annoying person they see

online,

all the things that are associated with

this kind of vast interconnected web of

all things Democrat related.

That is not one thing. There's no person

who kind of controls that. There's in a

sense, if you have a Democratic

president, that person's the head of the

amorphous blob. Donald Trump very much

is head of the blob on the Republican

side.

There's also the formal Democratic

Party, which is the literal

institutions. I was chair of the

Wisconsin Democratic Party. There's the

DNC, the Democratic National Committee.

There's the Democratic county party

systems. So, we have a Democratic Party

of Iowa County, Wisconsin. There's also

a Democratic Party of Iowa County, Iowa.

Very often people are mad at the blob,

but they're blaming the formal

institution without you know, then why

would they? Without a lot of recognition

of exactly what it is that is in the

control of the formal Democratic Party.

The opportunity that the formal

Democratic Party organizations have,

most of all, is to create a home for

people who want to fight for change, to

do the kind of grassroots community

neighbor-to-neighbor organizing that can

turn the Democrats, this kind of

headline phrase, from some distant thing

that is being defined by Fox News

Channel every day, into my neighbor who

asked me if I wanted to put up a yard

sign for a city council candidate who

actually cares about building more

housing where I live so that my kids can

live near me and and I can see my

grandkids.

That shift to me is what what it means

to build from the ground up and to try

to rebuild civic life in this country

through institutions that once actually

had that kind of role in community after

community where people would associate

the Democratic Party with that big

dinner that I go to once a year or you

know, with somebody who checks in with

me about who all the local candidates

are. To me, the work of building the

party is thinking from the ground up

about how we actually reconnect with

people so that we are human beings

rather than slogans on TV.

>> I I want to hear you talk about that a

little bit more. What parties maybe once

were

in American social life and political

life and and what they are today. I know

you and I have both been interested in

this hollow parties idea that has been

in political science from Sam Rosenfeld

and Nadia Shlozman.

But I mean, as somebody who I think is

interested in party machinery, what

relationship might I might I have once

had with the party and then what what is

it become now?

>> There were times in in American life

when parties were a huge part of your

daily and and monthly and weekly

existence when when you became a

naturalized citizen of the country, the

local Democratic Party and sometimes the

Republican Party, uh more often the

Democratic Party, was there to greet you

and ask you to register for the party at

that moment. When there was a block

captain who was going to check in with

you from time to time.

I quote in my book a letter that Abraham

Lincoln sent to the Whig Party and his

advice then is the same as my advice

now. He said, "Keep a constant eye on

the most doubtful voters and from time

to time have them talked to by those in

whom they have the most confidence."

Which first of all is great advice about

organizing and secondly presupposes that

members of the party have a sense of

which voters are doubtful and actually

that those doubtful voters who might or

might not vote, who might switch

parties, they have confidence in someone

who's associated with the party. And the

idea that you'd have a personal

relationship with somebody who might

check in on you and ask what you're

thinking about,

that is so alien from the world where

most people's experience of the

political parties is incredibly annoying

text messages and emails that you're

constantly trying to find ways to filter

or nightmare headlines that are

screaming at you from

>> Well, what's it like to be the name on

the other side of those [laughter]

emails?

>> I I sometimes meet people who are like,

"You text me all the time." And I'm

like, "You never write back."

Yeah, it's

it is a strange aspect of life. You have

your public simulacrum of yourself, you

know this as a journalist, and then you

have your actual human being self. I

used to work at an organization that

used email to organize people. And one

of the best maxims for sending mass

emails is to imagine that you're talking

to the most important person in the

world. You have 5 seconds to give them a

reason to listen to you at all anymore,

so you need to be completely clear. And

it's fine if they don't want to listen

to you at that moment. You have to equip

them with the what it takes to make a

decision about whether they want to

listen to you by explaining what your

message is about and what the stakes

are. That's very different from the

messages that promise a 400% match with

a zero replaced by an O so it can bypass

the spam filter and all this kind of

stuff that just it makes me want to tear

my hair out.

But the reality is that right now

parties don't

they don't have, in general, the

capacity and they also are pursuing this

kind of algorithmic optimization. So,

they just are not in the business of

earning trust with people for the long

term.

>> Well, there's also another interesting

difference from the past, which is that

parties used to have a lot of control

over the product.

The people they ran for all kinds of

seats up to and including president came

out of conventions. They didn't come out

of primaries.

And so, the the role of being a party

is stranger now. You are organizing for

a candidate

who might have taken over the party,

right? Might have been an insurgent

against the party or just might not have

anything to do with the way that the

party regular saw it. But you're not,

you know, as the official Democratic

Party deciding who will be the next

gubernatorial candidate for the

Democratic Party in Wisconsin.

>> Not only

is the Democratic Party of Wisconsin not

choosing the next candidate, in

Wisconsin's case and I and I

say this for for a reason that I'll get

to, it's in the state party's

constitution that it is neutral in

primaries. Now, that's different state

to state, but Wisconsin, my state, is

both a place with a deep progressive

tradition. It's also

part of that tradition to have

the public get to call the shots. So,

Wisconsin was the state that created

open primaries. This was a a reform

against party bosses and against the the

kind of control of the smoke-filled

rooms.

And in 1948, there was this watershed

moment. Joe McCarthy had just become the

Republican Senator in Wisconsin. And the

Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which had

been kind of a a backwater at that

moment, reformed with progressive

Republicans, with the

people who'd been in the Progressive

Party in the state, and with the more

liberal Democrats. And it had a a new

charter, it had new constitution and

bylaws.

And it said, "We're going to be neutral

in primaries unless there's extremely

unusual circumstances. And then we're

going to fight like hell in the general

elections." And I think one of the

strengths of the Democratic Party of

Wisconsin, which I'm very proud to have

worked alongside thousands of people

that build up over the the 6 years I was

chair, and I'm I still am an advisor and

and support the work of the party,

is to create a a civic fabric of people

who are ready to go to bat for the

nominee that comes out the other side,

but actually have a democratic, small d

democratic process to figure out who the

nominee should be. And you might not

like who people decide in a primary

process, but there's something important

about the legitimacy that comes from

being chosen by actual voters in a in a

process as the standard-bearer that I

think is valuable for the country.

>> One of the reasons I I bring this up is

that we're we're in this moment where

primaries in the Democratic Party brawl

they're getting very heated and very

contested. So, you have sort of across

the country. I mean, obviously here in

New York there a bunch of very high

profile primaries where DSA back

candidates knocked off either incumbents

or establishment backed um candidates.

But in Wisconsin, you're having a

gubernatorial primary where Francesca

Hong, a DSA member, um is leading in the

polls in most polls at least against

Mandela Barnes, a former lieutenant

governor.

And you know, Barnes is a pretty

progressive person himself. So, I'm not

sure these are like unfathomably

dramatically different directions for

the party. But you are we are in a

moment where there is a kind of hot

contest over both what the Democratic

Party should be, who should represent

it.

But I think also what the public wants,

right? One job of these primaries is

also try to figure out like who can win

in a half and half state like Wisconsin.

So, how are you understanding that

primary and the choices being offered?

>> So, first I should say as an advisor to

the state party, I'm bound to embrace my

my own neutrality in the process.

>> I'm sure you do. At this moment.

>> [laughter]

>> My most important role will be to to

help ensure that whoever wins the

nomination, that the party can come

together around that person and fight to

win. But the second thing that I'd say

is that

if

>> [snorts]

>> you imagine a counterfactual world where

there is some smoke-filled room that

overrides the wishes of voters,

it's harder to be able to rally those

voters to come together and support

whatever comes out of the process. So,

you know, whatever comes out of the

primary, like I'm going to be there to

fight for it. But I think if if instead

we had a a

you know, a party that said, "This is

the person everyone can can, you know,

suck it up if they don't like it."

That actually would not serve well the

the work of building an engaged

citizenry and fighting to win.

>> I recognize that you're um constrained

on this. So, I'm not I'm not I'm not

going to get more out of you than I'm

going to get. But I think one thing that

I struggled with reading the book. The

book's very much about organizing, and

you're you know, you're an organizer

going way back.

But,

organizing is

both about the apparatus of organizing,

the strategy of organizing,

it's also about the product. I mean,

more important than how you sell it

is what you're selling.

And

one of the things that I think is a

really up for grabs question right now

is

how

the Democratic Party reimagines itself,

if it has to reimagine itself,

for a new moment, right? And I mean, I

remember talking to you, you know, for

stories going way back, while you were

chair in your

space as a neutral chair.

And, you know, point you would make to

me

is, look, there's a lot of ferment

online

about what the Democratic Party should

be, but if you look at the Democrats who

are winning in the swing states, you

look at Tammy Baldwin, who's a senator

from Wisconsin, you look at Tony Evers,

you look at Gretchen Whitmer, you look

at Josh Shapiro,

you see these very

focused on fixing the roads, making

government work well, sort of staying

out of big culture war-y fights, right?

There's a kind of Midwestern solid

nature to to all of them.

And now there's a a heat coming from

some of these same states, right? Abdul

El-Sayed in Michigan,

Francesca Hong in in in Wisconsin.

I do think there is this question of

what happens when

the party is not able to like, in any

real way like, articulate a view on what

it thinks the public wants, or what it

thinks or what it can kind of say has

worked.

>> So, I'm going to challenge your premise

on two fronts.

The first front is, if you look at

candidates from DSA candidates all the

way to

kind of centrist Democrats,

there is a essentially unified message

this election cycle around

affordability. There's differences on on

foreign policy, there's differences on

what kind of, you know, healthcare

system we should have.

The The central theme is connecting with

voters about the lived experience of a

country that feels like they cannot

afford it. And delivering ideas about

how they can change that. They can both

change the economic reality and change

who the government works for because

there is, I think, an accurate sense

that right now our federal government

works for a cabal of far-right

billionaires and not for working people.

And that kind of message unity, you

know, Democrats love to

self-congratulate around this idea that

Democrats can't agree on a message and

and, you know, can't all say the same

thing. They are speaking with one voice

about this biggest central issue and I

think there is a giant contrast, even

with all the huge fights between

Democrats, there's a huge contrast

between that kind of unity of message

and what we see on the GOP side right

now, which is just constant fealty to

Donald Trump. The Republicans in

Wisconsin in the governor's race,

they had a contested primary and then it

evaporated when Donald Trump tapped his

favorite candidate who had tried to help

him overturn the 2020 elections.

So, on on one level, I think that this

question about what the party is

fundamentally about at this moment,

when I ran for DNC chair, I talked to

the whole range of DNC members. All of

them were like, "We need to be the party

that is fighting for the economic lives

of working people."

Usually the factions blame the other

factions for pulling the party's eye off

that ball. But right now I think you

actually do hear that from candidates.

>> So, the answer you just gave there is

pretty optimistic about the level of

unity in the Democratic Party.

I've heard people being a lot less

optimistic than that. Former DNC chair

Jaime Harrison said, "If you hate the

Democratic Party, then please don't run

for our nomination, don't use our

resources, don't rely on our volunteers,

don't use our infrastructure.

Focus on building the party you actually

support." James Carville and Rahm

Emanuel have been arguing that there

people who are running for Democratic

nominations who should not be in the

Democratic Party, that the Democratic

Party should set limits on who is part

of it.

This is a an old debate in parties, how

big of a tent should you be? Where do

you come down on it?

>> I think it should be a very big tent.

There it is possible to get so far

beyond the pale that

party members themselves will, you know,

vote to do something. I've seen

Republicans running as Democrats in

order to become spoilers. We saw

Republican super PACs funding

a valid anti-Semites.

You know, in in in Texas we saw these

these things happen. But there should be

a big tent and there should be big

contest of ideas and there should be

different candidates who represent very

different things in different places. I

I hear the argument and I'm sympathetic

to the argument that Republicans will

wield whoever has the most extreme view

anywhere in the country as a weapon

against candidates in the purplest

places or the reddest places in the

country. And that does happen. But it's

also the case that the voters who are

most on the fence about who to support,

they're not tracking the contested House

primaries in New York. You have to have

a a kind of deep immersion in the Fox

News cinematic universe for a lot of

these names to mean anything to you and

swing voters just don't look at the

world that way. And uh

nor should they.

>> What do you think about the way that

foreign policy is becoming more of a

litmus test in some of these primaries?

So the the way you sort of framed the

party there was that there's a

tremendous amount of agreement on

affordability. All right, you have

everyone from

Zohran Mamdani running on making New

York cheaper to Roy Cooper in North

Carolina. I think his uh slogan is make

stuff cost less.

>> Yeah. I agree that there's actually a

lot of unity directionally on that even

if the different factions in the party

have different ways of approaching how

you make things um cheaper.

Uh Israel and Gaza are not that way and

I think it's one reason those fights

have been proving much more

combative um at times much uglier.

Uh they've become more a question of a

moral litmus test.

That's the kind of thing that is more

dangerous for a party when the issues

reflect not a disagreement on how to

achieve a shared goal,

but a fundamental disagreement on not

just what the goal is, but

who is moral and who is immoral in it.

So,

you know, as you're watching it play

out, as you're counseling people how to

navigate it, how do you see it?

>> I think

the fundamental thing is that there is

a change. There's been change over years

and decades and much more change

recently in

the realities on the ground that people

are seeing play out, the the horrors and

the human suffering. There could be a

big change in Israeli politics that

could torque and, you know, potentially

change this yet again.

But it's healthy to have debates when

those kinds of changes play out. The

Democratic Party has had huge changes in

foreign policy approach. We've had much

bigger, deeper divisions over the

Vietnam War, for example, uh, you know,

a generation or two ago. And having a

party that actually has a conversation

about this, you know, there there are

times when the conversation can be so

vicious and extreme or even violent.

Those things I do not like and and I

think we should all fully oppose any

kind of violence and and

uh, political disagreements. The point

of democracy is to be able to settle

conflicts non-violently.

>> [snorts]

>> But there are both issues of identity

and issues of morality and

basic, deep, fundamental divides that

are being hashed out. And that's part of

why I think it's actually good to have a

a democratic process where those things

can happen, uh, where people can have

those debates and they can decide how

central that's going to be to their vote

and they can figure out how to draw a a

circle that includes,

uh, you know, enough people to be able

to both win and feel comfortable living

inside that circle.

And there will be another side of it, a

new circle that's drawn that has the

vast majority of Democrats and and find

the path forward. And my hope my deep

hope is that that's a future that allows

thriving and and life and

self-determination for Israelis and

Palestinians alike.

This is a moment where people have

watched unimaginable horrors being

inflicted on people who manifestly do

not deserve it. And different people

have seen different horrors on their

screens based on which algorithmic

bubble they're in.

But the the question of how the United

States should conduct its foreign policy

in the wake of that is absolutely a a

legitimate thing for a democracy to

think through.

For better or worse right now, there are

two major viable parties in the country.

And it is healthy for contest of

different ideas to happen within the

party, within primaries, and then to

have a chance to elect very different

types of Democrats in different places.

Um this is a giant, incredibly diverse

country. People are going to disagree

about a whole bunch of different things.

And for me, I think the Democratic Party

is better if the tent is wide.

>> So, to come at this from maybe a

different angle, rather than getting

your way in on primaries, you're not

going to weigh in on Appreciate it. What

is your theory

of the median voter? Do you believe in a

median voter? Do you believe in the

median voter theorem? How do you think

about the people you're trying to win

over in Wisconsin?

>> So, I start with the fact that

maybe 90% of voters already know who

they're going to support even before

they know who the candidates are.

So, then you ask, who are the remaining

10%? In a state like Wisconsin, there's

a huge amount of polling that suggests

that there is a, you know, roughly 10%

in play.

And the the counterintuitive thing

is that the people who might vote for

either party have a lot in common with

the people who are on the fence about

whether to vote at all.

What sometimes voters and swing voters

have in common is that they don't think

about politics all the time. Politics

feels very distant. Feels like something

that happens over there that and they

live over here. They live in their real

life and all these explosive squabbles

between the two parties is just noise.

If you knock on the doors of those

voters, what you find is people who have

a bunch of opinions that don't neatly

align with either political party that

are not how they define their

identities. They define their identities

based on their role in their family or

their role in their job or the the team

that they love or the the hobby that

they throw themselves passionately into.

They have deeply held values and deeply

held views, but politics is just not

their jam.

And if you want to persuade that voter

to side with you, you have to show them

that you care about them, that you like

them, that you have common sense, you

get how the world works, you get what

they care about, you're not you don't

have some

blinkered wild opinion that they think

kind of disqualifies you, but also

your priorities are the things that they

care about in their day-to-day life.

And if you can do that, if you can enter

that kind of circle of trust, then you

can make the case for this or that

solution.

If they think this person doesn't get

me, is not on my side, wants something

from me,

then they're just not going to listen to

your message at all. How much do you

understand the way voters like that

or non-voters like that for that matter

assess politics as being

They have their kind of set of issue

positions in their head.

And you know, what they do and don't

like. And maybe that's more, you know,

jumbled together than the parties would

like to have it, right? You can have

somebody who believes in, you know,

full-on marijuana legalization and, you

know, believes in, um, you know,

universal health care, but is also

pro-life. Uh, like

>> Absolutely. And you get that all the

time. You get that all the time. There

are a lot of voters that just don't fit

the way the parties have grouped what

goes with what.

>> When those voters are sort of assembling

the picture of the world that is in

their heads,

and when they are hearing about

candidates, like how do you understand

what they are basing decisions on?

>> So,

last time I was on the show, to pull a

deep cut, I talked about this book, The

Reasoning Voter,

that

marshaled a lot of, I think, persuasive

evidence that has not been shaken by the

last few years,

that for voters who

are paying attention to other things,

the

the things that they learn about a

particular candidate are like stars in

the sky. And if they see a few stars,

they draw const- a a line around those

stars and draw constellation, and that's

their picture of who that candidate is.

And once it's stars in the sky, you

cannot get someone to unsee that star.

The most that a campaign can hope to do

is to add a couple of stars that allow

you to draw a different constellation.

That's a very abstract way of saying,

for all the many, many issues,

most of the issues that a candidate

talks about, has positions on, are not

going to play any role in the election.

It's going to be the one or two

really, probably not three things that

crystallize

what it seems like this person's about.

I remember vividly in 2004,

uh the George W. Bush

decided that John Kerry was a

flip-flopper, and he drove home that

message over and over and over. And once

you're a flip-flopper, it doesn't matter

what you say your positions on the

issues are, because you can't trust that

person to hold that position the next

day.

That was message discipline that allowed

people to not trust the Democratic

nominee.

And the Obama campaign in 2012 was a

master class in defining

Mitt Romney, who, you know, many

Democrats now pine for as a Republican

opponent, but defining him as someone

who is

ripping off working people, was on the

side of the the wealthy against the

middle class.

That was the central issue, and so many,

many other issues were not relevant. And

I think that as we

you know, think about each election

cycle, there's a few issues that become

the central things that determine

whether someone's trusted, whether

someone's a a threat, whether someone's

on your side. And it's not as simple as

left or right. At this moment, it's

often top versus bottom, or trusting,

you you know, institutions people feel

have failed versus

uh recognizing and speaking to the truth

that they they do need to fundamentally

change.

The GOP has announced they're going to

run a campaign of hate, that they're

that they're actually has had this

report that they're going to run a

campaign trying to

make this about uh

>> [snorts]

>> you know, Democrats holding

disqualifyingly left-wing views. And the

question is, will that be more salient

for voters,

that Republican message then

this fundamental question of

whether you're supporting administration

that is both ripping people off and and

terrorizing them them across the

country. And that giant arm wrestling

match between which of those stars are

burning more brightly in the sky will

ultimately determine the outcome of the

midterms.

>> Why does Ron Johnson keep winning

elections in Wisconsin?

>> So,

it's very painful.

>> [laughter]

>> He's a US Senator.

Um

I

I think part of the magic of Ron Johnson

is that he's had the very good luck of

being on the ballot

once in 2010 when there was a historic

GOP wave,

once in 2016 when Donald Trump swept in

and uh Johnson had both MAGA voters

[snorts] and traditional Republican

voters at a time when the Republican

Party was riven in the state of

Wisconsin. And then the last time was

2022 which had a Democratic president.

He won by one percentage point, but he

he did well enough that he was able to

pull it off. So, at one level it's that.

I also think that Ron Johnson holds

tele-town halls all the time. He speaks

to the concerns of people who feel that

they're marginalized in the political

system. He is uh

I don't like this at all. He's a huge

uh vaccine skeptic and COVID vaccine

skeptic. I totally disagree with him

about those issues, but there are a lot

of people who see him speaking to

concerns that they have that they feel

they've been made fun of for or excluded

from from public life for and and he's a

a champion on their side. And I think

noticing when people feel unheard and

sticking up for them is smart politics

even if he's uh propagating views that I

think have led to the loss of life in my

state.

>> [snorts]

>> So, there are aspects of how Ron Johnson

comports himself politically that I

think are smart politics. And I think

that one thing that he's good at that

Tammy Baldwin's very very good at is a

lot of listening. That's

part of how you win in a state like

Wisconsin that has almost perfectly

evenly divided uh voters across the two

parties.

And any pocket of 20, 30,000 votes could

actually tilt a statewide election one

way or the other. The Republican Party

mostly listens to Donald Trump right

now. And as Democrats, I think our job,

and for anyone who believes in

democracy, it's to listen to voters and

connect with the things that matter most

to them.

>> So, I think one question here that

people have is what it would mean for

the Democratic Party to listen to

voters. So,

that's sort of heartbreaking for

Wisconsin Democrats, for national

Democrats, Senate race in 2022,

>> Well, heartbreaking for Wisconsinites.

>> where Mandela Barnes loses to Ron

Johnson.

The campaign against Barnes is I would

say kind of borderline racist.

>> That's

an understatement at best.

>> There we go.

>> Darkened his skin tone in their mailers.

>> Yes.

And, you know, goes very hard on

painting Barnes as soft on crime. All

right, that's a major attack Johnson

uses and I think to some real effect.

And

Democrats won Senate races that year and

and Johnson was able to survive uh in in

that category. It was not a year that

was such an incredible year for

Republican Senate candidates.

Um now in the governor's race in

Wisconsin, and then you're seeing

versions of this play out in other parts

of of the country. You have Barnes

running again.

And you have um in in Hong, a candidate

while the Barnes left, um who has, you

know, made I think more expansive

statements that are you could paint as

soft on crime.

So, I think this is something I've been

trying to get at a bit, which is

there was an old Democratic Party

that might kind of look at the situation

and they said at its nominating

convention, "Look, we tried Barnes a

couple years ago, it didn't work." Um

this is what we think the Wisconsin

voter needs. Primaries work very

differently. Primaries in the

algorithmic contention age work very

differently.

But,

I think one of the things the Democratic

Party is going to have to wrestle with

is whether or not primaries are leading

to sort of electorally optimal

uh candidates.

And so, this is what I'm trying to get

at a little bit with this question of

what does the voter want?

But, given what you've seen, um and

given your point about the the reasoning

voter,

I guess it's a question of

even if the Democratic Party, like to

the extent such a thing exists, wants to

listen to the voter, can it?

>> There are five candidates for governor

in Wisconsin right now, and they

represent kind of the

a big part of the range of the

Democratic

uh spectrum.

And they're vying for support from

voters. They're vying uh big donors to

to pin so they can put their ads on the

air.

That process uh will play out for

another couple weeks, and then we'll

have this blitz sprint through November

to define what the election's

fundamentally about.

And

however someone might feel about the

choices of the voters in the primary, uh

I do think

uh you know, I want to

I want to underline for people that even

when you can't imagine that an election

is going to be close in Wisconsin, it's

often incredibly close.

It often comes down to the final, you

know, ballots that that are counted

through the Milwaukee central count

system. It comes down to the margins in

red rural counties that uh have voted

70% for the GOP, but this time they vote

68% and you're able to win.

There are

voters all across our state who are

furious about the way things are right

now, who have not yet been reached by

any message from either candidate, and I

genuinely think there's a path to

victory in whichever configuration we

come out of the Democratic primary.

But I will also say that

the risk in an autocracy

is not just the lack of freedom that

people have when when one person gets to

make the decisions.

It's also that

throughout history, throughout the

history of political parties, throughout

the history of the world, when one or a

tiny group of people gets to call the

shots,

they can get things terribly wrong and

people have no recourse. And for all the

messiness and all the challenge and all

the disagreements that that people have

in a democracy, I think there's

something incredibly sacred about

protecting that fundamental principle.

And the you know, I am I am as you can

see, I'm not participating in the debate

about who should win the Democratic

primary in Wisconsin, but I'm fiercely

protecting the principle that this

should actually be up to the voters.

It is I I hope we win every election. I

hope that people who believe in

democracy win every possible election in

2026, but part of the lessons that will

be drawn from 2026 will inform an open

primary process in 2028 for who the next

Democratic presidential candidate could

be. And that's an important and valuable

process as well. This is This is an

iterated process where each time you

learn lessons from the last, you learn

lessons from where things stand now, and

then paint forward to the next one. And

I think there's a healthy debate both

about how the Democratic Party should

should operate and which kind of

Democrats voters should support in these

primaries,

but I think we should preserve the

advance that we made in in political

technology of actually having a process

where the public gets to weigh in.

Uh I think that

partly because we're in this moment of

collapsed public trust, that having

systems that are manifestly and clearly

and genuinely accountable to the public

is is vital to be able to preserve

enough legitimacy to be able to move

forward. And this is a moment when our

our democracy is under threat uh

writ large, and I think this is a moment

where people pouring themselves into the

project of winning the a contest in a

democracy, and ensuring that people who

want the rules to give everyone a voice

win those elections is absolutely vital.

>> You ran for national DNC chair after the

2024 election.

What was your pitch to the DNC

delegates?

>> It's a funny experience to run for DNC

chair.

>> I bet, actually.

>> [laughter]

>> It's I I compared it to a cross between

a student council election and a papal

conclave.

Uh

you're running a national campaign,

you're crisscrossing the country, and

you're talking to around 400 voters.

When I ran, I found that there was

actually the basis for a a common

message and a common vision around

year-round organizing that that took

place everywhere to fight for every

level of the ballot, and a message that

was centrally focused on this overriding

economic concern that people feel across

race and ethnicity across the country in

red areas and blue areas and and purple

areas alike. That gave me a lot of hope

for where we could go as a party.

I also found that that the DNC's voters

were a lot like

voters in maybe any context, which is

familiarity and trust

was a huge factor in how people made the

decision. And to his his credit in that

election, Ken Martin had been building

trust and building relationships with

DNC members for years. He led the state

party chairs association. I'd been

focused on Wisconsin. I missed a lot of

the state party chair uh you know,

association meetings cuz I was in the

middle of Supreme Court races in my

state. And so I was the guy parachuting

in two months before the election and

saying I've got a great idea, you know,

come with me. And people are like, yeah,

that idea sounds great. And who are you

again?

>> So as you note, the DNC chose Ken

Martin. I think it is fair to say that

the broad view is it has not been a

successful tenure as DNC chair. I think

he's had a very difficult time, sort of

internal insurgencies, you know, kind of

a debacle around the autopsy from the

2024 election.

I think it actually speaks a little bit

of what you're saying. I mean, Martin

did win that election because he was

more institutionally connected as a

candidate.

And to something we were talking about

earlier,

I think we're in a kind of strange

moment for [snorts] institutions, which

is I think many of them are beginning or

have been for some time failing.

And that tends to make them defensive.

Um an institution that is under stress

is often not risk-taking and creative.

It is scared and it retrenches.

>> Yeah.

>> And this is not I got my criticisms of

Martin, but I also think it's a tough

time to be DNC chair.

But rather ask you to criticize him, um

which I don't think you'll do.

Uh what do you think the DNC could be,

right? If it moved into a position where

it's it says, I mean, it is currently at

a terrible fundraising disadvantage. It

is a flailing organization.

But just more broadly, going back to

what we were discussing, I don't think

there is a model for what a party can be

in the 21st century

that anybody is all that excited about

yet nationally, right? There The parties

are not what they once were. You did a

lot of work in Wisconsin building

something I think that people actually

were quite excited about.

If you were advising

a hypothetical DNC chair on what could

be done,

what do you think the Democratic Party

could be if it were willing to sort of

reinvent itself as machinery?

>> Nancy Pelosi has a a three-item list for

what it takes to win elections. She says

it's message, money, and mobilization.

Uh when you

ask someone out on the street what they

wish the Democratic Party did

differently, usually the first thing

that they will say is messaging. It's

something about how Democrats can never

say what they mean, they're always going

through a laundry list, they should get

it down to a bumper sticker, they should

have one clear thing that every Democrat

says, and and if we did that, we'd be

able to win elections.

And while I appreciate that, and I think

at this moment, affordability in fact is

the one-word bumper sticker that

Democrats are are running on across the

country,

it's actually not something that the

party is in a position to enforce or

create. Ultimately, candidates, what

they say, what they say in their ads, in

their speeches, in the media coverage

they get, the people who will wield

power if they're elected,

they, through their actions and their

messages, they define the brand

ultimately in the biggest possible way.

Um so, I don't think that message is the

thing that the Democratic Party

organization can solve.

Money is actually a significant one, and

it's worth saying, and I I

speak frankly in the book that part of

how we've been able to be successful in

Wisconsin at the Democratic Party is by

raising a lot of money. In the book, I

talk about the Scott Walker loophole, a

Wisconsin law that allows the the state

parties to fund state candidates to an

unlimited degree. That was part of how

Scott Walker, uh you know, won his

re-election.

So, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin

can receive big donations and then make

big donations to state candidates that

allow them to fight back even when Elon

Musk comes to town, as you might

remember him doing in our Supreme Court

race.

Now, the same thing is is on the table

for the for the national party and

national party commit committees.

The US Supreme Court has changed federal

laws to allow the national parties to

play a bigger role with their money than

they did before. There used to be limits

for what a

a party organization could do for a

candidate for House or Senate. Those

limits have been obliterated. And for

better or worse, until there's big

changes in the in the Supreme Court of

the Constitution, we're in an era where

money does matter and the party using

money effectively,

uh I think is is one of the essential

things for the party to do.

But, the last and and biggest thing that

any person can do, whether or not

they're a trillionaire or a

thousandaire, uh or have negative net

worth, the thing that any person can do

of any generation, uh no matter what

geography they live in across the

country,

is they can help to build the Democratic

Party as a home for people who want to

organize to make a positive difference

and build the trust at the local level

in their community that can make

especially a difference on the races

that nobody's paying attention to. In a

lot of elections, voters find out who

the candidate is when they walk into the

polling place.

For state legislative races, you know,

most people have no idea who their state

representative or state senator is. Most

people have no idea who the city council

candidate is or the the candidate for

district attorney in their county.

Often,

as an experience many people have, they

see those names on the ballot and they

think, "Who am I going to text to ask

who I'm supposed to vote for in this

election?" And I do think that there's a

a meaningful and incredibly powerful

thing for a party to build

a a network of folks who are that

trusted person who people text and ask

who they should vote for. I read about a

North Carolina State Supreme Court race

that the Democratic candidate lost by

401 votes. That led to the

re-gerrymandering of the state and the

United States Republican House majority

now because Republicans picked up enough

seats there. And if you'd been in North

Carolina with a group of friends, you

could have produced the margin of

victory in that election.

So, even though it is the case that for

for candidates, it's a very different

environment now because it's not enough

to win over the editorial board of your

local newspaper,

if you can effectively become the

editorial board for some some people in

your community or support people who are

going to be that editorial board in a

place where elections come down to a

hairline,

you can have a huge impact on on what

happens next.

And that that the secret sauce for the

Democratic Party of Wisconsin on one

hand, it's been using the Scott Walker

loophole and is the the financial laws

to fight back against a GOP that is

funded by much wealthier people

who are spending a huge amount of money

in our state, but it's also been that

we've built hundreds of neighborhood

teams across our state that actually

know everyone in their community. That

in places with apartment buildings, they

have someone who will unlock the door

and let them in so they can check in

with everyone on the hallway. They know

who actually is going to be on their

farms at different times of year. You

know,

they know everyone along the main street

and which businesses would be willing to

put a poster in the window. Um in in

small towns across the state of

Wisconsin, building that kind of

deep, thick, year-round organizing from

the bottom up is something that any

person can get involved in their local

party organization and create that that

every state party potentially could do.

And although it does cost some money to

do, it's so much cheaper than running an

ad hundreds of times on broadcast

television in order to reach a tiny

fraction of the voters who might be

relevant in a particular race.

So, I I do think there's something in

fact

for all of us to do who who think this

is bigger than any one election, one

office, one candidate,

which is to build power at the community

level. And the Democratic Party can be a

vessel for that work that can be

transferred and moved from election to

election in service of people who

believe in the idea of democracy itself.

>> One of the most common frustrations I

hear from listeners of the show and just

politically engaged people who find my

email,

>> Yeah.

>> is look, we're sitting here talking in a

podcast studio in Manhattan.

Uh some of the people listening uh may

live in Wisconsin or Michigan or North

Carolina, and a lot of them live in

California or New York or New Jersey or

um

Vermont.

>> Yeah.

>> And they say, "I don't I don't know how

to

matter here, right? I'm in a blue state.

My state has Democrats statewide up and

down. I'm worried about Donald Trump."

if that's their politics.

And I don't really think writing letters

to people in Wisconsin, I don't think

people are like super excited to get

[laughter] my, you know, letter writing

in the mail.

What does it mean to try to be useful

and engaged in this moment if you don't

live

in a state that swings? If you don't

live in a place where elections are

decided by a percentage point or two?

>> So, there are people in New York and

California and across the country who go

through a training with our state party

and learn how to staff the voter

protection hotline. So, that when a

Wisconsin voter finds out that they can

no longer mail in their absentee ballot

and they want to know where they can

drop it off, they call this number and

uh lo and behold, there's someone on the

other end of the line who walks them

through the process. And that person

just helped ensure that a voter could

successfully cast a ballot in a swing

state that might come down to three

votes per precinct.

There are ways to volunteer like that.

There's another thing called giving

circles where you get a group of friends

together, everyone puts in 50 bucks. Not

everyone has 50 bucks, but if you and

your friends do, you can help sponsor a

state legislative candidate in a state

where the state legislature's on the

brink of winning a majority. Uh the

States Project organizes these giving

circles around the country. There's

another group called Movement Voter

Project that does the same thing that

could have a gigantic effect on whether

you fortify election laws and

protections before the 2028 election.

There are essentially you have to plug

into effectively run organizing efforts.

>> I I want to hold you on this for a

minute because actually get there's some

people who email me this question all

the time, which is they get a million

uh very loud emails that we were

[laughter] talking about earlier about

where to donate and they don't know what

is a grift,

what is maybe well-meaning but

ineffective, and what is effective.

>> So, on the Republican side, I am sad to

say that the Republican State Leadership

Committee has been devilishly effective

for a lot longer than a lot of the

groups on the Democratic side.

A group that is relatively low profile

that does amazing work that I'd

recommend is the the it's called the

State and Local Election Alliance, SLEA,

which is pronounced slay, which I love

having an acronym that you can actually

pronounce. Not enough Democratic-aligned

groups do that. They zero in on the

democracy-critical state and local races

and then they do very smart and

strategic things to support the people

who are working on those fights. Um

SLEA has, you know, made a difference in

Wisconsin and a whole bunch of other

states. The The States Project does

amazing work. I think the Democratic

Attorneys General Association also

dynamite. Attorneys General are suing

Trump over and over, often working with

outside groups. Democracy Defenders is a

group that I'm an advisor for that is

does amazing work in in court. Uh

there's uh Protect Democracy and

Democracy Forward. You might find a

common thread in the word democracy in

in each of those. Um these are

organizations that are working alongside

elected officials. I think they've been

one of the most successful lines of

resistance to the Trump administration.

Um but it's

you know, this is a big complicated

picture. I compare it to an electrical

grid where if you short out one

substation, the lights flicker in the

next neighborhood. American political

power is like that. It's a system where

certain offices, you'd never expect the

state representative from Unalaska,

Wisconsin to be one of the most

important elected officials in the

country, but his ability to win when

Republicans had drawn

hyper-gerrymandered maps prevented

Republicans from getting a supermajority

in the Wisconsin State Legislature. If

they had won that supermajority, they

could have uh

destroyed the Wisconsin Elections

Commission and guaranteed future

victories for themselves. But he won in

a district that went for Trump, and

because of him and Lori Palmieri in

Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Governor Evers was

able to veto the Republican attack

attack laws that are trying to threaten

democracy in Wisconsin at a free and

fair election in 2024. All these

different parts that add up to the

system of who gets to write the rules of

our democracy, which then dictates in

whose interest our democracy actually

works. And I I hope that that the idea

of an economy that works for everyone,

that everyone's rights and freedoms are

protected, and that we have a democracy,

those are the three core unifying ideas

behind the Democratic Party, and I hope

people who believe in those things will

throw them into the work of building

something bigger than any one race.

>> I think it's a good place to end. Always

our final question, what are three books

you'd recommend to the audience?

>> So, the first book I want to recommend

is The Master of the Senate by Robert

Caro. I I talk in the book uh about the

the fight in Wisconsin and the

the way that we under-rigged our state,

which wound up requiring the flipping of

the state Supreme Court.

At a national level, if we want to

reform expand the the US Supreme Court,

if we want to

uh pass a new Voting Rights Act, if we

want to ban partisan gerrymandering, the

only way to do it is by abolishing the

filibuster and changing the way the US

Senate works. And Robert Caro's book

talks about the US Senate at a time when

it was totally moribund. Nothing was

passing, and then

uh a senator came along who helped to

make the whole thing actually function

and started passing laws that people

thought could never have been been

passed.

I think there's something to learn from

that about how to reinvigorate this

institution that is currently where

policy goes to die. Uh not all policies,

but many policies that we need.

The second book that I I want to

recommend

is a book called Seeing Like a State.

And this is a a book by someone who used

to be a University of Wisconsin

professor, actually, James C. Scott.

Uh and it's about the ways that utopian

projects often fall apart and totally

backfire.

He talks a lot about how government

sometimes

look at this sort of high-level view,

the synoptic view, the view from above,

and come up with a game plan, and then

when it when it actually happens, it

plays out disastrously. I think Elon

Musk and Doge is a perfect example of

that that's now costing, you know,

>> Just give me the passwords.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> Like I can see the whole thing through

the passwords and the

uh data transmissions.

>> He and millions of people are probably

going to die. Hundreds of thousands have

already died as a result.

And I think for people who want big

positive changes, as I do, there's

something incredibly important about

having a level of of humility and a and

a capacity to listen and

learn about what is actually going on.

But also,

the thing that defines the worst

catastrophes, it's always this

combination of a of a kind of plan

imposed imposed from above and a lack of

democracy that means that the people who

are affected have no ability to demand

recourse. You you have famines in

famously, Amartya Sen, the Nobel

Prize-winning economist, wrote about

this. The only famines have been in

places that are not democracies.

Uh if if if the people who are starving

to death have a voice a voice and a

vote,

then they can they can create enough

noise that they ultimately get the food

that keeps them alive. And uh Seeing

Like a State, I think was very helpful

for me in thinking about um

what it takes to have the subtleness and

the the accountability to be able to

create positive change by looking at the

examples of when things have gone

disastrously wrong.

And then the third book I want to

recommend is

probably my my favorite book these days

to read to my kids, which is a book

called Sal and Gabi Break the Universe.

And what I love about this book, it's

set in the near future. There are uh AIs

that are deeply involved in uh you know,

the the kids' lives.

Um but it's a future that is actually

positive and hopeful as opposed to the

kind of

Elon Musk-controlled uh

totalitarian techno-state that he

his rise seems to pretend. It's a it's a

deeply inclusive vision of the future.

It's something that is full of like art

and culture and it is a delight. And my

kids love listening to it and laughing

to it and I love it, too. So, if you

want something that paints a picture

about how things can actually be better

than they are now, which is in such

disastrously short supply, Sal and Gabi

Break the Universe is is a great place

to start.

>> Ben Bova, thank you very much.

>> Thanks for having me on.

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