One man’s bold plan to defeat Trumpism—once and for all

Ben Wikler 0:00 It is a piece of shit legislation.

Kara Swisher 0:02 Yeah, that's a technical term, piece of shit legislation.

Ben Wikler 0:04 Yes.

Kara Swisher 0:04 Yeah

Ben Wikler 0:05 That's the, that's the term of art.

Speaker 0:06 It is on. [upbeat music]

Kara Swisher 0:12 Hi, everyone. Today, my guest is Democratic political organizer Ben Wikler. We're talking about his plan to defeat Trumpism and end America's slide into authoritarianism. I think it's really important to talk to all the various people writing books about how to do this. There's a lot of them out there, but Ben is one of the top thinkers on this issue and had incredible results in Wisconsin fighting for what he is fighting for on a national level, and that's what's really important, including making people accountable and giving voters what they want. Incredible idea, but that's what might work. This is a fascinating conversation, so stick around. Ben, thank you for coming on On.

Ben Wikler 0:51 It's a delight to be with you today.

Kara Swisher 0:52 I want to sort of set the table. You talk about the need to unrig America and build a, quote, "government that works for people instead of plutocrats." Um, it's a recurring theme in US politics forever. When Teddy Roosevelt campaigned for the Progressive Party in 1912, he railed against the unholy alliance between corrupt businesses and corrupt politics. Obviously, I talk about it a lot, um, ever since the inauguration and the sort of rightward shift of the tech moguls, who are the ones we're talking about here. Talk about how it's the same or different today. Um, are, are we always sort of doomed to this rigging of whatever particular business group is in, on top at any one time in the United States?

Ben Wikler 1:34 Go back across the history of the country. There are waves of power that accumulate in a tiny number of hands and people trying to lock in their power and control, and then there are waves of the public rising up and then changing the rules to be able to protect the idea of democracy and expand the circle of freedom. That's a cycle we've always had. In this moment, there's a more rapid and bigger accumulation of wealth and power than we've ever seen.

Kara Swisher 2:01 Right.

Ben Wikler 2:01 And Elon Musk is at the top of it. He's, you know, the world's first trillionaire. There could be more trillionaires.

Kara Swisher 2:05 Well, he's not a-- Ben, he's not a trillionaire anymore.

Ben Wikler 2:07 Not anymore. Not-- He was briefly the world's first trillionaire. That's right. There's a real possibility that with artificial intelligence, that even more wealth and power will accumulate in an even smaller number of hands. In the United States, uh, it-- we've had these waves of very rapid, enormous wealth accumulation and then, uh, uh, attempts to kind of like ossify and control the system, and there are so many levels of government that occupy so many different parts of the power structure that you have the local robber baron who then buys and sells the, the state legislatures. Um, I think that right now, if, if you think about the way that Google sort of sucked all the advertising money out of the world, and it meant that all these institutions supported through advertising fell over and, uh, you know, a couple companies became worth multi-trillions of dollars. Meta did the same thing. Artificial intelligence has the possibility of doing the same thing for all kinds of work, right? It's suddenly there's one place that you can go to do this th- this one thing more efficiently, and that, uh, that threatens a more rapid and total wealth accumulation and, and could turn into a power accumulation than anything else that we've ever seen. And that's, uh, uh... So I do think there's something different about that time in this sense, but we have also seen versions of this movie before, exactly as you say. In the, in the first Progressive Era, we saw the a- American economy totally transformed, mass dislocation of most people's jobs. People moved from, like 90% agrarian to moving into cities to work in these factories, and it took the labor movement, and it took the progressive movement. It took trust busting. It took, uh, you know, creating Workers' Health and, and Safety Administration, all these different things to be able to get to a point where the explosion of growth actually led to an improvement in living standards for regular people, and that took the reassertion of democratic control of, of how the rules of the

Ben Wikler 3:53 American, you know, political and economic game are set.

Kara Swisher 3:55 Well, we're gonna get to how to do that in a second, but let's look at what you did in Wisconsin, um, where you led the state Democrats for six years. You open your book with the 2025 Wisconsin State Supreme Court election, which was the most expensive judicial race in US history. The Republican candidate was backed by Elon Musk, lost to Democratic, uh, Democrat Susan Crawford. The Wisconsin Elections Commission now says Musk likely broke election bribery laws by offering voters a million dollars, those idiotic checks he put up. Um, what-- Talk to a li- Talk a little bit, what surprised you most about the election and what he did there, aside from the cheese hat, which we-- When he did that, I thought it's over. Um, he also didn't have a lot of power without Trump next to him in an interesting way. So money wasn't the only thing that mattered. So talk a little bit about this race and, and why it was important.

Ben Wikler 4:43 So the, the first thing to move yourself mentally back to the spring of 2025 is to remember that not only had Musk been the biggest donor for Donald Trump, and not only was he effectively running the federal government and dismembering it from the inside, including, you know, just defunding aid programs that keep millions of people alive. He was also threatening to fund primary challenges against anyone who got in his or Donald Trump's way. And so people in both parties were falling over themselves to find ways to not get the Eye of Sauron upon them. There was this real sense that if he had figured out how to turn money into power, into votes, and win whatever elections he wanted, uh, there was no stopping him and Trump from carrying out every, [chuckles] every one of their plans. And the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, I think, was supposed to be the ultimate demonstration of that. This wasn't the presidential race. This was a, what had been, until that point, a fairly sleepy local election in one state. And here he came

Ben Wikler 5:42 with an amount of money that nobody had ever seen spent in this kind of context with tactics no one had ever seen. He was flying in people to knock on doors. He was offering these bribes. He was funding massive TV ad campaigns. The ads he was funding were actually all about how Trump was endorsing Brad Schimel and how you needed to support Brad Schimel to support Trump right after Trump had won in the state. So the strategy was very much to say, "We have the power. We're in charge. Do not get between us and what we want." And What we saw with, with Susan Crawford, her-- our amazing candidate, her message, uh, she started going around the state and saying, "I never dreamed as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, I'd be up against the world's richest man in a fight for democracy." And we also saw this grassroots army, basically, this, these thousands of people who'd been organizing continuously, often in, in races exactly like this, in multiple state Supreme Court races, in local races across the state, going neighbor to neighbor and talking to, to people that they had long relationships with about how this was a race you, you had to vote. You had to show that Wisconsin could not be bought. But there was this even deeper principle about whether democracy in our state would be for sale, whether Wisconsin could be, uh, could be auctioned off based on these giant checks.

Kara Swisher 6:52 So in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, he was kind of a perfect villain for you in that regard-

Ben Wikler 6:57 He was a perfect villain

Kara Swisher 6:57 ... in the kind of extensive efforts he took, including putting himself at the center of it, you know-

Ben Wikler 7:02 Yes

Kara Swisher 7:02 ... looking like a lunatic. So that helped you, correct?

Ben Wikler 7:06 Uh, yeah. I think, I mean, I do think that having the perfect villain allowed a, a message to really ring through very clearly that the people who were, uh, ravaging and terrorizing the country wanted to do the same thing to Wisconsin, and you could fight back by getting involved in the state Supreme Court race. Having a, a really clear electrifying message like that really mattered. But also, having the courage to get up and, and go out and keep showing up in a, in a race where it seemed like the odds were overwhelming. A lot of people were shocked that, that Elon Musk lost that race after everything that he poured in. A lot of people thought we were totally cooked. I remember vividly this question of whether it made sense to, to go after Elon Musk 'cause it could provoke him to do even more. And the, I think the fear that you're-- that if you punch the bully, the bully's gonna crush you like a bug, can make a lot of people wanna shrink back. And to Susan Crawford's enormous credit, she did the exact opposite, and it worked.

Kara Swisher 7:58 So when you think about what he was doing there, which I suspect he's gonna be doing in the next race, possibly, um, in the next, the upcoming midterm elections. He's already put $90 million across the country. What did he do right, and what did he do wrong?

Ben Wikler 8:13 So it's funny. I, I feel like he approached politics the way he approached Doge-

Kara Swisher 8:17 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 8:17 ... which is to have a big theory and then apply it without paying any attention to whether it was actually working.

Kara Swisher 8:23 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 8:23 And one part of his theory was very smart, which is that there's a whole bunch of research, and I, I dig into this in the book 'cause a lot of my, my goal in the book is to equip individual readers with what is the most powerful thing they can do to get us out of this mess. And I write about the same research that I'm, I'm pretty sure whoever was advising him or he himself had looked at, which is that the most powerful thing to shape someone's vote is to hear from someone that they trust. It is to hear from someone they have a relationship with. I quote Abraham Lincoln, who says, uh, in 1841, he wrote, "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." So Elon Musk's strategy was to bribe people, pay people, possibly break the law, to sign a petition saying they s- they opposed activist judges, and then to pay people for referring other people to sign the petition. He was going around doing-- trying to manufacture relational organizing, where people talk to other people that they know and, you know, giving this financial incentive to, to do it. And he's not wrong that if you're hearing from someone that you know to get involved in something, it has a really big effect. And a lot, uh, like the huge share of Republican campaign finance, uh, at this point, this is the Turning Point USA strategy, it's the Faith and Family Coalition strategy, it's, it's Elon Musk's strategy. He, he has America PAC that was doing this in a big way. Uh, that is a smart tactic. And on the Democratic side, I think there's a lot more to be done. There's some groups, like Empower is one, that are, that are doing relational organizing. I think there's a ton more that, that is absolutely worth doing there.

Kara Swisher 9:52 Um, like a lot of states, Republican wave in 2010, going back further, shaped Wis- the politics of Wisconsin so much so that one journalist called it a democracy desert in 2020. But you, you've shifted that. Now, l- look, we'll get into some of the details, but as we go high level, what, uh, what did you do, and how does it apply to national politics?

Ben Wikler 10:10 So Wisconsin experienced a mini version of what's happening to the whole country now. I, I argue that Project 2025-

Kara Swisher 10:16 Yes

Ben Wikler 10:16 ... is reheated Project 2011 from the states.

Kara Swisher 10:18 Right. Right.

Ben Wikler 10:19 And as we learned in Wisconsin, just as we learned nationally, while it's great and important to, to beat the, the guy in charge, we beat Trump in 2020, we beat Scott Walker in 2018-

Kara Swisher 10:31 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 10:31 ... it is not enough. You actually have to fight for all the other levels of government, too, 'cause they all make the rules for all the other parts.

Kara Swisher 10:37 Right.

Ben Wikler 10:37 So i- in Wisconsin, we've seen the same drama we've seen everywhere in the nation, that the far right has reached down into local races, has tried to elect mayors who will, you know, block the absentee ballot drop boxes. They try to elect judges who will restrict the right to vote. They elect state legislators who are committed to gerrymandering House and state legislative districts. And you have to look at how the, the different, uh, parts of the power system interlock and figure out how to trace the path to being able to unrig the whole thing from the inside. In, in Wisconsin, we thought-- You know, we tried a whole bunch of strategies to try to unrig our state legislative maps. There were federal court cases. There were, there was the having a governor who could veto Republicans' maps. None of that wound up working until we flipped the majority in the state Supreme Court. That wound up being the skeleton key to unlock the whole system in the, in the state of Wisconsin. Um, and that meant building a permanent campaign where a ton of people in small towns and cities and suburbs everywhere got involved over and over, not about one candidate, often about people that they, uh, you know, only, only were learning about a few months before the election, not about one race or one office, but about this, this much bigger, deeper idea about being a democracy that works for everyone. That kind of permanent campaign, to me, is what we need at a national level now because the-

Kara Swisher 11:50 You're talking a permanent campaign

Ben Wikler 11:51 ... a permanent campaign. And by that, I, I don't mean ads on TV in every ad break in every state-

Kara Swisher 11:55 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 11:56 ... every second of the day. What I mean is- ... actually building, organizing at the, at the local level, town by town, neighborhood by neighborhood, all over the country, so that in all these races at all levels of government, we're able to drive up participation to, to encourage and persuade people to get involved in these races that otherwise go unnoticed.

Kara Swisher 12:16 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 12:17 I talk in the book about race after race that comes down to a few hundred votes-

Kara Swisher 12:20 Right

Ben Wikler 12:20 ... that winds up s- like, starting a row of dominoes that winds up giving Republicans control of the US House years later.

Kara Swisher 12:27 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 12:27 And those races are happening all the time right now. There, there was a Georgia State Supreme Court race just in, in this May-

Kara Swisher 12:34 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 12:34 ... where the Democratic candidate lost by 2.2 percentage points.

Kara Swisher 12:37 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 12:37 And the reason she lost is that a whole bunch of Democrats voted in the, in the governor's race, but didn't know about the state Supreme Court race.

Kara Swisher 12:43 Right.

Ben Wikler 12:43 So they, they didn't know which candidate to vote for. If we can zero in on those kinds of races, on top of the critical work in the House and Senate, but if we build that kind of muscle to be able to, to go after the whole ballot, that gives us the power to, to pick apart this knot that's been tied that stops us up entirely.

Kara Swisher 12:58 What are, what are some of the most consequential local races we need to pay attention to right now?

Ben Wikler 13:03 I would say the, the most critical ones in 2026 are the governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general, and state legislative races, especially in the battleground states.

Kara Swisher 13:14 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 13:14 And the reason why I say that is this gift we have in the Constitution that elections are run at the state level, not the federal level. So Donald Trump keeps trying to take over the election system in the country, and he keeps getting slapped down in court, and the reason is, it's r- literally right there in the Constitution. That means that in 2028, when he attempts his next coup, if there are governors, secretaries of state, election administrators, and if there are laws passed at the state level to protect the, the sanctity of the electoral system, he will not be able to steal the next election. We came so close to Trump stealing the 2020 race. In Wisconsin, it came down to a single vote on the state Supreme Court, a 4-3 decision. I, I [chuckles] write about the moment in the book when I, I was an elector in the electoral college that moment, when we found out the decision came through. He knows exactly where the vulnerabilities are, and he's going after them. The, the reason why he's flipping out and, you know, calling for these voter suppression laws and trying to nationalize the election system now before the midterms, it's not 'cause he cares about what happens in the midterms. It's because he knows that his ability to, to run a successful coup in 2028 depends on winning control in the state and, and, uh, and state legislative races in 2026. So I map i- in the book, and I'll-- I'm happy to say here state by state, but basically which states are likely to tip the '28 presidential race, those are the states where you have to win power at the state level

Ben Wikler 14:29 now to make sure that the system is not vulnerable to sabotage. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, all those states could become Democratic trifectas. Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms could win the governor's race and prevent Republicans from, from gerrymandering and passing anti-democracy legislation before 2028 if we're able to pull that off. North Carolina was, uh, one of the, the closest battleground states in '24. There, not only can we stop Republicans from getting super majorities in the state legislature, there's a state Supreme Court race that if Anita Earl wins re-election, there's a path to a d- a pro-democracy Democratic majority in the state Supreme Court by 2028. Uh, those are, those are the closest battleground states. Uh, the closest state that Harris won, New Hampshire, currently a red trifecta, has incredibly restrictive voting laws. That could flip to a blue governor and both chambers of the state legislature this cycle, and winning there would, would give another margin of, of protection for democracy.

Kara Swisher 15:22 Now, the Democrats are dealing with internal divisions right now. We just did an episode on the rise of insurgent progressive candidates winning primaries in New York and Colorado. Talk about the tensions with... And I was at a dinner last night here in Michigan where that was-- You could feel it, like, with the centrists versus the left, et cetera. Um, what do you make of the tensions, including the popularity of the Democratic brand, and how does it impact the ability to organize and build a cohesive, uh, opposition?

Ben Wikler 15:49 The first thing is when a, when a party loses power, that is the time to look in the mirror and, most critically, look at the voters and try to figure out what, what is not working here. So it is healthy to have big debates right now. It's healthy for people to make different arguments-

Kara Swisher 16:02 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 16:02 ... about strategy, tactics, message, you know, where we need to go. Uh, that-- If you look at when parties lose power and then regain it, in a durable way, it tends to be when they actually have this kind of hard conversation with themselves and try out different approaches. So I, I think we should welcome some actual, uh, some, some conflict, some debate, some life within the party. The second thing I'd say is that so many people, they, A, they want real change. They want-- They feel like the country's not working for them in their lives. They can't afford anything that they, the, the basic needs that everybody has. And secondly, they know that in order to get that change, they need to win. And so a lot of the frustration that Democrats have with the Democratic Party is the sense that it is not good enough at winning right now, that, that, the, we lost to the worst guy in the world, Donald Trump. How the hell is he in the White House? Uh, so all those things I think create an energy that you can see playing out in primaries right now, and the critical question is, after each primary is over, does everyone come together and say, "We're gonna spend even more energy to win the general election in November"? Uh, you know, I'm, I'm from the state of Wisconsin. Big, uh, you know, very fluid, highly energized Democratic primary happening right there. That's on August 11th. My hope and my expectation is that everyone who was involved in the primary and a ton more people will say, "All right, it is time to go."

Kara Swisher 17:20 Yeah.

Ben Wikler 17:20 The Republican candidate in Wisconsin, uh, Tim Tiffany, tried to overturn the 2020 election, and the governor's in charge of certification of presidential elections in the state of Wisconsin.

Kara Swisher 17:28 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 17:28 Um, so I, I d- I think that it is, you know, lots of people have lots of disagreements with lots of different candidates in lots of different directions, and that's fine. The, the, the critical question is, do you then say, "You know what? We, you know, we beat each other up before, but now we're on the same big team that believes this country should actually work for everyone and not a tiny group of people at the very top"?

Kara Swisher 17:48 And do you see that happening in a state like Wisconsin, for example?

Ben Wikler 17:52 Absolutely. I do. I, and I, I see that happening in Wisconsin. I see that happening in Maine. I see that happening in, in Michigan.

Kara Swisher 17:57 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 17:58 And so my sense is that People are, are going to be ready to roll up their sleeves and go to bat in the, in the, the day after the primary, the same way that they're, they're scrapping it out in the primary right now.

Kara Swisher 18:06 Even m- even Michigan.

Ben Wikler 18:08 Even Michigan. I-

Kara Swisher 18:09 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 18:09 ... my, you know, any individual legislator doesn't have the power to change every policy. People have different positions on things, but the Democratic Party is a big tent, it is a coalition party, and the-

Kara Swisher 18:21 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 18:21 ... the laws that pass are the, you know, the sum of what can attract all the votes basically ac- across the whole thing. It becomes very clear when you, when you step back from any particular-

Kara Swisher 18:30 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 18:30 ... battle, that the, the fundamental difference between the GOP, which right now is a cult of one person who's-

Kara Swisher 18:36 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 18:36 ... so corrupt and so bent on enriching and glorifying himself and his friends at the expense of everybody else, and a Democratic Party that the, the through lines are the idea that the economy should work for everybody, that everyone's rights and freedoms should be protected, and that-

Kara Swisher 18:49 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 18:49 ... we should be a democracy. And those, those three principles, very, very popular. [instrumental music]

Kara Swisher 18:54 Support for this show comes from Boll & Branch. If there's even one thing off about your bed, it'll show up in your sleep. Maybe your sheets slip around too much or your pillow's not quite right. These issues only get worse over time as materials wear down, which can wear you down alongside of them. With Boll & Branch, you can upgrade your bed and find everything you need to get better sleep. They make everything from cotton sheets to pillows to blankets and comforters. All are designed to be breathable, incredibly soft, and get better over time. Most people start with signature sheets, and it's not uncommon to buy two sets of sheets so you can rotate them. With Boll & Branch, the moment you get into bed, you notice the difference. I have tried out the bedding. It is fantastic. I have a

Kara Swisher 19:35 waffle blanket that I love so much, especially in the summer, where it's cool and warm at the same time. So get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping during the Memorial Day sale at bollandbranch.com/kara with code Kara. That's Boll & Branch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, Branch, B-R-A-N-C-H, .com/kara, K-A-R-A. Code Kara to get 20% off, bollandbranch.com/kara. Code Kara. Exclusions apply. [instrumental music] Every episode, we get a question from an outside expert. Here's yours.

Speaker 20:10 Hey, Ben. It's Astead, host of Vox's America Actually podcast and, as you know, a fellow lover of Wisconsin. Um, my question is about the fixes for state parties that are distinct from national parties. So much of the anger about Democrats' 2024 choices was about process and about how the public was or wasn't included in the conversation. I guess that's my question to you. What are the answers for the Democratic Party that are not ideology? How can they help make voters feel like they're included in decision-making, particularly on the state and local level, in a way that's distinct than the conversation we're having nationally?

Ben Wikler 20:47 Such a great question from Astead.

Kara Swisher 20:48 It is.

Ben Wikler 20:50 So the thing that I love that happens in Wisconsin and a few other states, a growing number of states, I-- and I map out step by step how to build this in my book, is that the Wisconsin State Party has neighborhood-by-neighborhood teams. These are groups of volunteers who sometimes meet in their living rooms. They, they map out who's gonna go where, and they go to community events, and they go door to door to the s- you know, same voters often year over year. And when we're not right before an election, we ask people questions. We call it bridge-building. You go and you say, "What's most important to you right now?" And we actually try to listen at scale. And this, the sense of, like, "Nobody consulted me," changes when someone consults you. I, I think there's a huge power to actually going out and, and talking to people and finding out what's on their mind. I, politically, I think of it like bumper bowling. If you-- I don't know if you've ever been bowling, but if you put the bumpers in the, [chuckles] in the sides, then the ball just doesn't go in the gutter. And if you're actually talking to the voters that you're trying to connect with and, and taking their opinions seriously, first of all, it pulls you out of your own head. I think Democrats often will, you know, wanna go scream about the latest thing they saw on MS now to a voter who's not paying attention to politics, and that doesn't resonate at all. This is why often talking about democracy is actually the worst message if you wanna save democracy. You should, you should focus on what it is that people wanna change in their own lives and how, how the government can be on their side. Um, and I think the same thing is true as a party. As a party, having actual connections to communities on, on the ground and not just being, uh, something that lives online or something that lives in fundraisers, but, but actually talking to people who don't put politics at the center of their lives and asking what is bothering them and how can we change that, so often the answers are actually from local government. They're things about the, the pothole on my street. And if you can, you can hear those things, and you can do something about those things, then you can build the trust that you need to ask someone to take a risk on a candidate. Uh, I think there's a lot of talk about attention, and attention, you know, is, is this very important currency. It's absolutely a powerful force. But I think trust is actually the thing that is, is most precious and rare at this moment. People are so fed up, they don't believe anyone. Uh, a lot of the people who either don't vote or swing between the two parties, they think both parties are messed up-

Kara Swisher 23:00 They do

Ben Wikler 23:00 ... and corrupt and unresponsive. And the only way to change that is to actually earn trust from people by hearing them out, saying how you're gonna do something, and then actually doing it-

Kara Swisher 23:09 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 23:09 ... and then going back to them to, to talk about how it went.

Kara Swisher 23:12 Yeah.

Ben Wikler 23:12 That's something that is built over years, and it's something that each individual candidate cannot build by themselves. That, to me, is what, what local and state parties and any, any viewer of your show or reader of this book, they can get involved in doing, and the effects of doing that can echo for years to come.

Kara Swisher 23:27 So do, do-- what you're saying is instead, like, doing something on the level where they see you answering whatever-- First of all, listening.

Ben Wikler 23:34 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 23:34 And actually listening, not just fake listening. And the second part-

Ben Wikler 23:38 Yeah

Kara Swisher 23:38 ... is actually doing something. I had an interesting argument with someone last night. Again, they're, they're fixated on Mamdani, and I said, "Well, he put the-- He opened the soccer field. It was kind of interesting." And they're like, "Who cares?" I'm like, "Those people who play soccer." I was like-

Ben Wikler 23:54 Yes. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 23:54 I was like-

Ben Wikler 23:55 That is exactly it

Kara Swisher 23:56 ... he, they were-- They could-- They, they work all day. They can't play soccer. Now they can play so- It was like it was a tangible thing. Uh, anyway, it was a really interesting discussion. I-- They didn't understand why that was so powerful. I thought it was one of the-- I mean, it was one-- It happens all over the country, but I thought that's exactly what people want. They wanna play soccer. They wanna be listened to in some fashion. That's quite easy, actually, um, you- Rather than be told that, you know, democracy is dead, which of course they realize on some level, but they don't want it. That's a too big a, too big a chunk of something to do. But at the same time, when it comes to election outcomes, you write that we're in, quote, "an era of field margins." Now, it-- That, that makes it kind of impossible to govern if we have these small margins at nearly every level of government.

Ben Wikler 24:42 So this is the paradox of this moment. The vast majority of elections you already know the outcome of.

Kara Swisher 24:47 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 24:47 They're-- The vast majority of congressional districts, of states-

Kara Swisher 24:50 Right

Ben Wikler 24:50 ... for statewide elections and the Electoral College, they're totally safe. And that's a problem in and of itself, which I'll-- I, I wanna speak to. But then the elections that wind up tipping the balance, that tip the House majority-- Republicans have a House majority because of seven thousand three hundred and nine votes across three congressional districts. Uh, that's the, the-- a number of votes that the people [chuckles] listening to this right now could flip in the next election if they focus on the right places. Uh, the same thing is true in state legislative chamber after state legislative chamber. In the presidential race, it was zero point one percent of all the votes cast across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that determined the outcome. So there, there are these tiny margins. The country's almost perfectly cleaved in half in this way. Wisconsin is a microcosm of this national picture. And because it's so alm-agonizingly evenly balanced, the country keeps toppling from one side to the other. We've had more changeovers in who holds power in the House, the Senate, and the presidency in the last twenty-six years, this century, than any other time in American history. And I make the case in the book that if we wanna get out of this, this period of instability where people keep voting for change, not getting it or not liking the change that they have, and then voting to throw the bums out and get a different bunch of people who they immediately get disillusioned with, too, we need to, we need to change the systems that block things from actually happening. And the first and biggest one of those is the Senate filibuster. We're in a period right now where no party is likely to get sixty votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster, and where both parties have a political incentive to stop the other side from doing big things. Which means that voters screaming out for change, voting for change, do not get it from our political system on the, on the biggest, you know, most intensive issues of, of each individual moment. And that will continue to be the case as long as the Senate says that you need a supermajority in order to pass legislation. The s- the filibuster is, uh, the exact opposite of what the founders intended. They considered the idea of requiring a supermajority, and they rejected it. It was not part of the Constitution. It was actually created by accident when they changed the, the rules of the Senate, uh, when Aaron Burr suggested revising the, the Senate rule book. No one noticed that they could filibuster for years after that. Then there were eighty years where it was only used to block civil rights legislation. And then much more recently, Mitch McConnell discovered that he could use it to try to torpedo anything Barack Obama wanted. So we got the Affordable Care Act. We got a few, you know, really important bills. But so much of the agenda that, that Obama ran on died in the Senate after passing the House. And then we've seen the same thing with President Biden. Some major, really important legislation, a ton that died in the Senate, including protections for voting rights and democracy itself.

Kara Swisher 27:26 Right.

Ben Wikler 27:26 But also things on healthcare, on childcare, and all these affordability issues that people are right now panicked about that Democrats lost over. So, uh, it-- There's a, a risk. It's-

Kara Swisher 27:35 Except now it's good that it's there because of Trump and the SAVE Act, for example. It can be abused.

Ben Wikler 27:40 Well, I think... It can-- Look, it is true that if, uh, both parties have the chance to pass laws, then a party you don't like might pass laws that you don't like. That is absolutely the case.

Kara Swisher 27:51 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 27:51 But you have to ask yourself, do you wanna live in a democracy that's in a straitjacket? And you also have to ask, why haven't Republicans gotten rid of the filibuster? Is it because they're so concerned about the, you know, the genteel norms of the Senate? Or is it because their actual top priorities, tax cuts for rich people and confirming judges, those can be passed with fifty votes. They're not subject to the filibuster.

Kara Swisher 28:12 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 28:13 And when you start thinking that way, you realize that all of Project 2025 was about taking action through the executive branch-

Kara Swisher 28:19 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 28:19 ... and then ensuring that the US Supreme Court wouldn't strike down those actions.

Kara Swisher 28:23 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 28:23 So we have a system right now that is tailor-made for people who basically want a, a king as president, who want, uh, Congress to be on its, on its knees doing whatever the executive wants, and want a Supreme Court that will rubber-stamp anything that, that benefits the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country. All the other laws that could change those things, those are blocked by the filibuster, and that creates a ratchet effect where things keep-

Kara Swisher 28:46 Never get passed

Ben Wikler 28:47 ... leaning towards the Elon Musks of the world and away from the general public.

Kara Swisher 28:50 So removing the filibuster would be your top priority, removing it?

Ben Wikler 28:54 Well, it's the, it's like the-- It's the plug that you, you pull that out, and suddenly the water can flow.

Kara Swisher 28:59 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 28:59 And it means we'll have more democracy, and it means Republicans will be accountable for their policies [chuckles] if they actually pass them. I don't-

Kara Swisher 29:05 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 29:05 ... I, I-- This is maybe a scary bet to take. I don't think Republicans have fifty votes in the Senate for the SAVE Act.

Kara Swisher 29:10 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 29:10 And a lot of that is because the SAVE Act is a, it is a piece of shit legislation that would be disastrous for tons of voter, Republican voters-

Kara Swisher 29:18 Yeah, that's a technical term

Ben Wikler 29:19 ... as well as Democratic.

Kara Swisher 29:19 Piece of shit legislation.

Ben Wikler 29:20 Piece of shit legislation, yes.

Kara Swisher 29:21 Yeah.

Ben Wikler 29:21 That's, uh, that's

Ben Wikler 29:22 the term of art. Um, it is a, it's a, it's kind of a stunt bill that most Republican senators are thrilled that they don't actually have to cast a vote on.

Kara Swisher 29:30 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 29:31 Uh, we saw with the Affordable Care Act repeal in twenty seventeen, there was a giant public uprising against that terrible bill, and a lot of Republican senators privately breathed a sigh of relief after John McCain turned his thumb down because they knew-

Kara Swisher 29:42 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 29:42 ... it would-- they knew it was going to destroy them in the next election. As it was, the response to Republicans trying to take away people's healthcare was the biggest issue in twenty eighteen, the same way the huge cuts to healthcare that Republicans pass this time are, are going to absolutely blow back on them now, millions of people losing access to health insurance, and there, there'll be people who die because of that. The GOP's policies, they just don't actually work out well in practice, and that's why the, the, the far-right con and the, the con of plutocrats over and over is to, with one hand, try to shred public services, and with the other hand, try to block democracy so there's not accountability for it. And in my book-

Kara Swisher 30:16 So they don't have to pay for their choices. Um, so-

Ben Wikler 30:18 They don't wanna pay for their choices

Kara Swisher 30:19 ... so you ran for DNC chair last year and lost to Ken Martin, former chair of Minnesota's Democratic Party. He's come under fire for failing to broaden the committee's fundraising operations and its overall financial troubles. The latest filing shows the DNC has nearly $15 million on hand but is $18 million in debt. Republicans have enormous amounts of money. You describe the DNC as the top of the pyramid resting on the strength of county and state Democrats, but it is essential, uh, to fundraising. So what needs to change within the DNC itself in order for your plan to work?

Ben Wikler 30:51 Well, I will say for every person, there's a million things that you can do to start building the party at the local level.

Kara Swisher 30:57 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 30:58 I think for the national party, the thing that, that draws people to wanna chip in is seeing how their money can affect the outcome of the election. And, um, you know, there's often this sense, and you do see it in politics, you see it all the time with the Trump administration, that donors want specific policies to pass, and that's why-

Kara Swisher 31:15 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 31:15 ... they wanna give money, 'cause they wanna have certain policies.

Kara Swisher 31:18 Sure.

Ben Wikler 31:18 Um, those are called transactional donors, and they exist. Parties are actually not the place that transactional donors focus 'cause what they want is to-- they wanna have a relationship with a politician who could actually pass a policy.

Kara Swisher 31:29 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 31:29 What parties do is that they can say, "We can win this election." And so the, the, the thing that I think is gonna energize voters for, uh, donors for the DNC is this, the thing you see at state parties that are having success with fundraising, is mapping out, this is the strategy, this is the tactic that we're gonna be able to use. The US Supreme Court just changed the, the rules for parties to allow federal party committees, like the DNC, to be able to fund candidates' campaigns to an unlimited degree. And that could open the door to, to a strategy to say like, "We're gonna zero in on the races where an extra push could make the biggest difference. We're gonna, you know, be really rigorous about finding the messages that really resonate with these voters. Uh, and then we're gonna, we're gonna fund those programs," and that could be a way to be able to raise a lot more funds. That's a huge part of what we did in Wisconsin. There's-- I write in the book about the Scott Walker loophole, which is essentially the state level version of what the US Supreme Court just did nationally. The-- Just like nationally, the Republicans created it to benefit themselves, betting that Democrats wouldn't find the money to use that law to fight back. And in Wisconsin, part of how we beat Elon Musk was raising money into the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and then using that to support the state Supreme Court candidate.

Kara Swisher 32:38 The local candidates, right.

Ben Wikler 32:38 The local candidates, exactly.

Kara Swisher 32:39 Right.

Ben Wikler 32:39 And that's, you know-

Kara Swisher 32:40 It just-- But you don't think it wi- it, it wipes out the fundraising edge Democratic candidates have ahead of midterms?

Ben Wikler 32:46 I think that that's exactly the threat, is that the Republican committees now can fund candidates who've been struggling to raise money on their own.

Kara Swisher 32:52 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 32:52 And that's a big part of why it's such a priority for the GOP.

Kara Swisher 32:55 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 32:55 They have, I mean, as we've discussed, an extreme, like an, an unbelievable amount of money that they're willing to spend-

Kara Swisher 33:02 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 33:02 ... to protect their money and power. And, uh, I think a whole lot of people who are thinking through right now, uh, you know, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to keep a roof over their head and buy groceries, but if you're somebody who's lucky enough to have some extra money, this is time to donate to, to, to people, organizations, party committees that you think are gonna do really good work to be able to win this fall because the stakes right now are going to affect the rest of our lives for whether democracy works. And I know that, that sounds like a cliché, but I think it's pretty clear right now that 2024 was one of those years too, and, uh, this is-- W-we're still on a knife's edge for whether we're gonna have free and fair elections in 2028 and beyond. That gets determined over these next four months, and, uh, this is time for folks to, to, to throw down and do everything they can.

Kara Swisher 33:46 Support for this show comes from NetSuite. There's a lot of talk about how much you need AI in your business, and that can definitely feel overwhelming. Because the truth is there's still a lot about AI that business owners don't exactly understand, but it still feels like your competitors are pulling away from you. Fortunately, there's NetSuite Next. NetSuite is an AI-powered business management suite that securely connects all of your data. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth trusted by over forty-three thousand customers. NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how business gets done because AI is built into everything you do. NetSuite Next automatically surfaces custom insights throughout your day. Their AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work. Plus, NetSuite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way your business truly works. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite Next, where your business meets AI. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai/on. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai/on. Now, you emphasize, though, that the Democrats have to run this permanent campaign, which Republicans seem to be doing, um, and it worked for the Wisconsin Democrats. A permanent year-round campaign is expensive and difficult to sustain, especially on the national level. Um, talk a little bit about this 'cause President Obama built an expensive, uh, expansive volunteer organization during his twenty-- 2008 presidential campaign, but it's extraordinarily-- Uh, to organize this machine is expensive, and to have it live on is difficult.

Ben Wikler 35:39 So it, it does take some money-

Kara Swisher 35:40 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 35:40 ... but the vast majority of campaign budgets is spent on what they call paid media. It's ads.

Kara Swisher 35:45 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 35:45 It's digital ads. It's TV ads. That's where the lion's share of the money goes.

Kara Swisher 35:49 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 35:50 It is comparatively very inexpensive to pay organizers to build teams of volunteers to do this work on a year-round basis.

Kara Swisher 35:57 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 35:58 Uh, that is a, a sliver of campaign budgets. Most campaigns don't even do that because this is money that only really works if you spend it early.

Kara Swisher 36:03 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 36:04 A lot of campaigns will hire people to knock on doors in the final weeks. That doesn't ... create something that has a snowball effect over time. What you wanna do is invest in real organizing, which means leadership development, finding people who are gonna get involved and c- keep talking to voters that they have relationships with.

Kara Swisher 36:19 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 36:19 On the right, you can see this with Ralph Reed's organization. He used to do the Christian Coalition-

Kara Swisher 36:23 Yeah

Ben Wikler 36:23 ... now it's the Faith & Freedom Coalition. Uh, on the Democratic side, there are groups doing versions of this kind of work. I think Swing Left is doing amazing work. MoveOn, where I used to work, does a, a ton of, uh, of organizing at the grassroots. Indivisible. Um, I could, I could go on with that list, and some Democratic Party organizations do this. But if you just wait until right before an election, you cannot build that trust from scratch. You actually have to show up long before you're asking someone for their vote and actually listen to them, as we, as we talked about before. To me, the, the amazing thing about the Obama campaign was that they-- And they started, you know, outside the Democratic Party infrastructure. They had to figure out a different way to win. They did this, this hard work of actually building local teams of people who were acting on their own values and building community, and they were, were able to win the White House. But because it was built around one candidate, it didn't wind up creating this kind of permanent infrastructure. And that, that to me... You know, we, we beat Trump in 2020. It was this incredible thing, and then in so many places, that organizing infrastructure melted away. So much of the funding for this kind of work melted away, and we-- it is now reared right back, and Trump is back in power.

Kara Swisher 37:32 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 37:32 So this, this next time when we win-- First we gotta win, but when we win, we have to keep going. And if we don't keep going, then 2030, the midterm elections after the next Democratic president is elected, will take us right back to 2010.

Kara Swisher 37:44 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 37:44 There'll be a backlash. Republicans will rig all the state houses, then they'll rig the congressional maps, and they will have tilted the playing field for the next decade.

Kara Swisher 37:51 So back and forth for the next-

Ben Wikler 37:52 Back and forth, uh-

Kara Swisher 37:53 For the next-

Ben Wikler 37:53 ... but, you know, one, one side or the other.

Kara Swisher 37:55 So let's look at-- So let's, uh, finish by talking about what happens if Democrats actually win a governing trifecta in 2028. People are very skeptical the party can pull that off, but let's say it does. You write a lot, uh, needs to happen in a short period of time to get to real structural reform, which I think is at the heart of what you're saying, including abolishing the filibuster, as you just mentioned, reforming the Supreme Court, which you haven't mentioned yet, uh, passing a national ban on partisan gerrymandering, D.C. statehood, uh, safeguards for union organizing. It's, it's an ambitious list. Um, even with this, i- if there was ever a Democratic trifecta, there's gonna be debate within the party about the details of these major structural reforms. The filibuster alone continues to divide Democrats. Um, w- of these, w-what, what, what is the most important from your perspective or all of them at the same time? Um, I mean, Pete Buttigieg was the one that brought up, uh, reforming the Supreme Court, and that was sort of slapped down when he did, um, many years ago. That was one of his first bigger ideas.

Ben Wikler 38:54 And look where we are now.

Kara Swisher 38:55 Yeah.

Ben Wikler 38:55 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 38:55 Exactly. He was correct. Um, which of these-- They all need to happen at once, and what should be the plan?

Ben Wikler 39:02 This is part of why I wrote This Is the Plan, 'cause there actually is a sequence for these things to, to happen.

Kara Swisher 39:07 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 39:08 The-- One of the biggest reforms is something that happens through the states. In 2026, if Democrats win unified control of the battleground states that I mentioned before, they can pass something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and that basically is-

Kara Swisher 39:20 Yeah, this is the NPVIC.

Ben Wikler 39:21 NPVIC, yes. Thank you.

Kara Swisher 39:22 Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's just-

Ben Wikler 39:23 This is, uh, my way to pronounce an unpronounceable acronym.

Kara Swisher 39:25 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 39:26 So NPVIC would, uh, basically join a bunch of states together

Ben Wikler 39:30 to say, "We're gonna give our electoral college votes to whoever wins the national popular vote," and if they do that, it means the end of swing states and safe states. It means that every New Yorker, Californian, Texan, Wyoming, Wyomingite, everybody's votes count the same in choosing the president of the United States, which would be a revolution in American democracy for, for the better in so many ways. It would give people everywhere a reason to organize and get involved, uh, in order to affect the most powerful office in the world, uh, and it would mean that the government, federal government has to be responsive to everyone on an equal basis in a totally different way. So that can happen even without Congress, and that, that is one of the things you can do when you, when you win at the states in '26. As soon as Democrats have a majority in the Senate, I think they immediately should end the filibuster. And, you know, there's different proposals for reforming it in different ways. The most critical thing to me is it has to be a majority rule institution. That has to happen before any of the other reforms can pass because all these things will take, uh, uh, passing through both chambers [chuckles] of Congress and then going to, going to the, the president for signature. Um, but if Democrats win in 2027, I hope that they'll abolish the filibuster right away. Let's just get that over with and put that behind us. So after that happens, then you have the chance to pass a new Voting Rights Act, to pass a national gerrymandering ban. I argue, uh, I explore different ideas for reforming the U.S. House. I think-

Kara Swisher 40:48 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 40:48 ... great-- we're in a situation right now where almost every House district will be decided in advance by state legislators drawing the maps, and it's ridiculous.

Kara Swisher 40:54 Correct. Partisan gerrymandering.

Ben Wikler 40:55 Um, so one great idea is to have, uh, proportional representation and multi-member districts and expand the size of the House. That's something that, uh, you know, there's not a majority for yet. But the more you look at how it would actually work, if, uh, you know, if, if a state said, "We're gonna give a, our, our House seats based on the proportion of votes that each party wins," it means that if you're a Republican in a blue state, you have representation. If you're a Democrat in a red state, you have representation. And it means you just get a lot more democracy and responsiveness. For the Senate, adding-- ensuring that, that D.C. residents elect senators, that Puerto Ricans have a chance for a referendum-

Kara Swisher 41:29 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 41:30 ... to elect senators, it allows the Senate to be a much more representative body, and it, uh, ends this ridiculous situation where American citizens are governed by people who they have no voice-

Kara Swisher 41:39 Yes

Ben Wikler 41:39 ... in, in electing.

Kara Swisher 41:40 Yes, I'm a D.C. resident. I'm not happy about it.

Ben Wikler 41:42 [chuckles] You know exactly what this is like. Taxation without representation, not, not something America's, you know, traditionally really into, uh, or, or at least in theory not into. Um-

Kara Swisher 41:51 Right

Ben Wikler 41:51 ... and, and, uh, and then you need to reform the U.S. Supreme Court as, as, as you noted. There's several ideas for this. My favorite idea is the idea of term limits where-

Kara Swisher 42:01 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 42:01 ... Supreme Court justices serve for 18 years in active status, then they take senior status where they're not voting on, on active cases. And it means that every president appoints a Supreme Court justice in their first and their third year.

Kara Swisher 42:13 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 42:13 And that not only, uh, you know, changes the, the membership of the Supreme Court over time. More importantly, it creates a world where every member knows that the body's going to evolve, and so they should think about how to create rulings that can endure-

Kara Swisher 42:26 Yeah

Ben Wikler 42:26 ... in different political conditions.

Kara Swisher 42:28 Right.

Ben Wikler 42:28 You wanna turn down the partisanship of the Supreme Court.

Kara Swisher 42:30 Yep.

Ben Wikler 42:31 You don't want it to ping-pong or be a pendulum in this way.

Kara Swisher 42:33 Right.

Ben Wikler 42:33 And that's-- You know, I'm not-- I, I want an even playing field for everyone.

Kara Swisher 42:37 Rather than expansion of term limits.

Ben Wikler 42:39 And I wanna bring this thing to Democrats.

Kara Swisher 42:39 I agree with you.

Ben Wikler 42:39 Exactly.

Kara Swisher 42:40 Yeah.

Ben Wikler 42:40 And that to me is the, the goal is, you know, parties can get things wrong, presidents can get things wrong of both parties. You want the public to have the ultimate say. You wanna have a system that's not rigged for one side or the other, and that allows you to have the, the flexibility to adapt to a world that is being transformed by AI and by so much else. As long as the public can write the rules, and as long as, you know, when people are hurt, they have some recourse to do something about it, I think that we can get through just about anything that the world throws at us. But in a world where all the power and the decisions are made by a tiny group of people who are interested in serving themselves, then things can go terribly for-

Kara Swisher 43:13 Yeah

Ben Wikler 43:13 ... for millions of people.

Kara Swisher 43:15 Yeah, this is my issue with the tech people.

Ben Wikler 43:16 And that's, that's what we wanna avoid.

Kara Swisher 43:17 They're like, "Well, they're smart."

Ben Wikler 43:18 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 43:18 I'm like, "I don't really care if they're all nice. I don't-- If they were all agreeing with me, I don't want them in charge."

Ben Wikler 43:23 There's an economist, uh, Amartya Sen is this, uh, Nobel Prize-winning economist, and he did this deep study that found that there's never been a famine in a democracy. And the reason for that is that having a democracy means that if people are starving to death, it becomes a political problem for the people in charge. You have famines, uh, in colonies, in, in, you know, in places where someone is in charge who's not accountable to the public. And w- I feel like we sort of have a political famine right now [chuckles] because we don't have enough democracy. There's, there's so many ways the government is not responding to basic needs that people have for, for childcare, for housing, to be able to-

Kara Swisher 43:58 Right

Ben Wikler 43:58 ... afford the food they need, all this kind of stuff. Uh, this only happens because you have a government that is not ultimately accountable to the, the needs of the public.

Kara Swisher 44:05 Absolutely.

Ben Wikler 44:06 And it could get worse or it can get better, and This Is the Plan is my roadmap for how we make it better.

Kara Swisher 44:10 So I have two last questions. Last week, President Trump claimed that American elections were rife with, quote, "hacking, manipulation, corruption." It's part of his old song that he's done for a while. Um, he had a speech that, uh, he tried to push off. It didn't get a whole lot of resonance, I would say, but he still did it. Homeland Security, uh, Secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, also threatened local election officials with prison time if they didn't comply with the administration's efforts to change election policies. So what concerns you most about the Trump administration's attempt to weaponize the federal government ahead of the midterms, and how should local election officials prepare?

Ben Wikler 44:46 We should have the expectation that Trump will use every one of his powers to try to stop the democratic process from working. We've seen him testing things like seizing ballots, trying to seize voting machines, prosecuting local election officials-

Kara Swisher 44:58 Right

Ben Wikler 44:58 ... uh, claiming that election results were invalid.

Kara Swisher 45:01 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 45:01 We saw him trying to have elections retroactively canceled after 2020.

Kara Swisher 45:05 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 45:05 He's gonna pressure everyone who he has power over to-

Kara Swisher 45:08 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 45:08 ... you know, manufacture ballots like he tried to do with Brad Raffensperger in Georgia after 2020. And we can see him using the machinery of the, of the state to do it. The, the good news is that the people who have been suing against these, they keep winning in court.

Kara Swisher 45:21 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 45:21 And so all the, the lawyers that are preparing advise a group called Democracy Defenders that's, you know, preparing legal actions to

Ben Wikler 45:27 go immediately after Trump when he tries to pull this stuff. That creates some measure of protection in places where the, the courts are, [chuckles] are functional and, and on the up and up, which is not all the courts at this moment. But the most critical line of defense is actually the local officials. If you look at Minnesota, when Trump, uh, sent in ICE, and they were-- people, you know, people were being shot in the streets. And then, uh, the attorney general said that they would pull ICE out if Minnesota turned over private voter data. The state and local officials said no. And that, that is why people's Social Security numbers and private driver's licenses, all this kind of stuff, didn't flow to the federal government. They were, they were trying to get their hands on it. And right now, local officials should be running scenario plans, and I know a lot of them are, are, are doing this. They should be, uh, looking at all the different vulnerabilities and, and sort of lines of attack. They should be building plans with their emergency operation centers. Uh, for in the public, people should be doing the kind of, like, local organizing, making sure that everyone has someone that they can check in with for if the, you know, if the shit hits the fan in, in, in the fall. They should-- Everyone should ha-have a plan to be able to vote. They should-- You know, people should figure out who they're gonna go voting with. Um, and we've all gotta be ready for what could be a, a moment that I, I hope and pray doesn't come.

Kara Swisher 46:42 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 46:42 But I think we should have the expectation that, that they're gonna try to pull something off-

Kara Swisher 46:45 Assume the worst

Ben Wikler 46:45 ... that prevents power from actually changing hands.

Kara Swisher 46:48 Right.

Ben Wikler 46:48 The more we prepare, the less likely the emergency becomes.

Kara Swisher 46:51 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 46:51 The more we, we win in court along the way, the, the fewer tools they have at their disposal to mess with the elections.

Kara Swisher 46:56 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 46:56 The more, uh, poll watchers sign up to be, uh, you know, poll watchers, observers, poll workers in their local communities. The more people vote early, uh, the, the, the fewer people, the shorter the lines on Election Day itself.

Kara Swisher 47:07 Mm-hmm.

Ben Wikler 47:07 There's all these things that people can do. Um, but we've got four short months to do this kind of organizing and, and get ready. I'm grateful to everyone who's been preparing along the way. [chuckles]

Kara Swisher 47:16 Yeah.

Ben Wikler 47:16 Um, and now it's a sprint. If we win this fall, especially for these state and local offices, then we have people who can continue to say no to T-Trump's attempts to overturn the elections in the future. And, and that's the first acid test for whether this, uh, this big movement to make the, the government actually work for the public-

Kara Swisher 47:31 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 47:31 ... rather than for, for Elon Musk and friends. Um, this is the first test for whether we can pull this off.

Kara Swisher 47:37 What does our electoral system look like if just 50% of your plan is implemented?

Ben Wikler 47:41 50% would be a giant improvement. This is an am-ambitious, bold plan. Let's-- I'll-- I'm, uh, I'll be realistic about that. Uh, if we have a national popular vote for the presidency, but we, let's say, haven't, uh, uh, been able to, to reform the way the United States House works, the national popular vote in itself would be such a change. You know, right now, presidential candidates spend all their time in, like, seven states, maybe five, maybe four states. Most people are essentially ignored. Most people feel like they're spectators in our democracy. They-- there's, there's no stakes for them. The level of turnout in, in many states is below fifty percent. In my state, it's like three-quarters of people cast a ballot because everyone can see that their vote might be the thing that determines the outcome. And building a, a civic culture in this country of this is not a spectator sport, this is something where everyone actually has power, has a voice, what you do matters, uh, that can affect government at all levels. So much of what everyone's frustrated about is not about which party can-- controls government. It's about whether government itself, uh, has accountability to the public and has to move and deliver to be able to, to make life better for people. And there's so much that people in, in red and blue areas can do even though their elections aren't close. But it's, it's hard for that to feel real when it feels like your vote doesn't count because you already know in advance who's gonna win. And so I, I think there's multiple paths. I think the same thing is true in, in House races. If we have competitive House races across the country, if gerrymandering bans are enacted, and especially if we get to something like proportional representation, then many more people will have a meaningful say in who represents them in, in a chamber of con- a chamber of Congress. If we can reform the US Supreme Court, then maybe we can actually do something about money in politics, which-

Kara Swisher 49:18 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 49:18 ... right now, the Supreme Court is on the, uh, you know, money is politics-

Kara Swisher 49:21 The money side

Ben Wikler 49:21 ... side of the equation. They're on the money side.

Kara Swisher 49:23 Yeah, they're on, they're on the money side. [chuckles] They've-

Ben Wikler 49:24 But imagine if, if that can change.

Kara Swisher 49:26 So last question, if you were made head of the DNC right now and could do anything you wanted, what would that be?

Ben Wikler 49:33 Well, I first don't wanna [chuckles] don't wanna relitigate the DNC chair's race. I don't wanna be the head of the DNC now.

Kara Swisher 49:38 I know, but I just made you head of it.

Ben Wikler 49:39 Leading, leading a different life. But, uh, let's say I am the head of the DNC now. I think the first thing that I do is start working with states to write a plan in each state to unrig the political system in that place and make those public. In Wisconsin, we, we had a, a plan that was years out. This is actually something that I learned from Ken Martin, who was the chair in Minnesota next door. After I was elected, he brought me to Minnesota, and he said, "When I was elected chair, we made a ten-year plan, mapped out all the races that we needed to win," and Minnesota traveled this path, won a Democratic trifecta, and passed things that made the lives of everyone in that state better. In, in Wisconsin, we mapped out a long-term plan, and we've been moving through that plan step by step, and it culminates this fall. We could win a Democratic trifecta this November, governor, both chambers of the legislature. We have a pro-democracy Supreme Court. Uh, I know the, the DNC has folks that are talking to different states about this. I wanna, I'm-- I wanna see those plans in each place. I wanna sing them from the rooftops. I want people to see how their work adds up to something bigger because when it feels like every election's the most important one we've ever had, and then suddenly there's another one, it is exhausting. You need to see a path from what you do to actually delivering change in people's lives, and that has to be built from the bottom up everywhere in the country. Uh, I, I think that's a, a thing that the party can facilitate and support, and I think it's something that people can do, you know, whether or not the, the party where they are is doing it, and they can get involved and, and build the kind of party that they want. Um, but to me, all these things are connected to each other, and until you understand the connection between what a state legislature does and how the house maps are drawn and then-

Kara Swisher 51:08 Mm-hmm

Ben Wikler 51:08 ... who controls Congress and what laws pass, if you're, if you're not fighting on all those playing fields at once, you're losing. The right has been fighting on those.

Kara Swisher 51:15 They've been doing a good job.

Ben Wikler 51:15 Elon Musk came to Wisconsin for exactly that reason, but we can fight back and win if we look at the whole picture.

Kara Swisher 51:20 All right. Ben, thank you so much. It's a terrific book. It really is very smart. There's a lot of these books out, but I like this one. I appreciate it.

Ben Wikler 51:27 Thank you.

Kara Swisher 51:28 All right.

Ben Wikler 51:28 Really, really grateful for having me on.

Kara Swisher 51:30 Today's show was produced by Michelle Aloy, Katherine Milsop,

Kara Swisher 51:33 Megan Bernie, Madeline LaPlante Dubbe, and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Corinne Ruff, Julia Sharpe-Levine, Bradley Sylvester, and Dave Shaw, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you've staved off authoritarianism for another day. If not, good luck wandering the democracy desert for the next forty years. Thanks for watching. See you on Monday. [upbeat music]