Ben Wikler - “This Is The Plan” & Taking On Elon Musk In Wisconsin | The Daily Show

[00:00:00]THIS IS THE PLAN.

[00:00:01]>> THIS IS THE PLAN. And let me remind the people so they may think to themselves, Ben Wickler's got a plan. I don't know Ben Wickler. I don't know why he would have a plan. Talk to me a little bit about the genesis of this because you ran the DNC in Wisconsin. And for those who do not know, the story of Wisconsin this century is Scott Walker and a Republican takeover of a state where they tried to rig the maps. They tried to rig the courts. They tried to do supermajorities of a relatively purple state. You helped devise the plan to fight that successfully. So talk about what happened there.

[00:00:41]>> Absolutely. So and thank you.

[00:00:43]>> That's all the time we have.

[00:00:46]So my state, Wisconsin, which has a deep progressive tradition and a deep far-right tradition, Joe McCarthy is from Wisconsin.

[00:00:54]>> Yes.

[00:00:54]>> So >> So is Fighting Bob.

[00:00:56]>> So is Fighting Bob Lefallet. It's the place uh where workers compensation, unemployment insurance, uh the Social Security Act was written by a Wisconsinite. All these things, great things came from our state. Progressive taxation, first state to ratify the 19th amendment, and also this far right street that runs through the state's history. We zigzag sort of like the country.

[00:01:16]>> Mhm.

[00:01:16]>> But in 2010, there was this huge right-wing wave fueled in part by Citizens United.

[00:01:22]>> Yes.

[00:01:23]>> And my senator Russ Feold, who I'd interned for, was my political hero.

[00:01:27]He'd passed campaign finance reform to get big money out of politics. He was swept out, replaced by Ron Johnson. In the state legislature, Republicans won, had been Democratic. They won majorities in both chambers. They won the governorship. M >> but when they came into power, they didn't just do the right-wing things that they' talked about. They immediately tried to rig the system permanently so they'd never lose control.

[00:01:50]>> They attacked unions. They basically declared war on teachers, created a teacher crisis in the state. They rigged our maps more than the country is gerrymandered right now. They passed one of the most extreme voter suppression laws in the nation. The judge said it was the most extreme anti- voting law in the nation. The next election, 2012, Democrats won statewide. Barack Obama won. Uh Tammy Baldwin won in the US Senate race. Republicans majority in the state legislature grew even though they got less votes than the Democrats because they'd rigged the system so they'd never lose control.

[00:02:23]>> They were rigging the state legislature so that they would always have a majority or supermajority or something to that.

[00:02:30]>> At that point, majority, they went for supermajorities later. And where's the where's this Wisconsin Supreme Court in this right in that moment?

[00:02:36]>> So Wisconsin state supreme court was almost evenly divided. There was a incredibly close state supreme court race in the spring of 2011. Republicans held on to their majority by less than one percentage point.

[00:02:48]>> Okay?

[00:02:49]>> And that meant that the state had a state supreme court that rubber stamped everything they did. So basically Wisconsin, >> all the maps, everything, >> all the maps, the voter suppression law, they uh basically allowed Scott Walker and his his friends and cronies, the Koch brothers network, this sort of right farright billionaire donor network to break election laws. And then they changed the campaign finance and election laws to suit their model of of winning elections. And once they'd broken democracy, they started defunding public services. So there were suddenly people called them scot holes after Scott Walker, potholes in the roads all over the state. People had to spend hundreds of dollars a year what they're doing is unpopular in the state, >> but the way that they have jerryrigged the system, unpopularity was no longer a barrier to reelection.

[00:03:35]>> That's exactly it. And that's the con, right? The >> That's why I've written a book.

[00:03:41]>> This is the John Stewart plan.

[00:03:42]>> Yes.

[00:03:43]>> So, it almost worked. Donald Trump in 2016 won Wisconsin.

[00:03:49]>> Yes.

[00:03:49]>> They narrow margin.

[00:03:50]>> Narrow margin. Less than one percentage point. A lot of our elections come down to less than one percentage point. They had uh cemented what looked like for the foreseeable future control of the state legislature.

[00:04:00]>> Yes.

[00:04:01]>> And the state supreme court was so dominated by the right that in 2017 there was only one uncontested far-right candidate. No one wanted to run against that person. Someone wrote that it looked like the right was going to dominate the state supreme court.

[00:04:14]>> Yes.

[00:04:15]>> For a generation to come.

[00:04:16]>> It seemed as though they'd succeeded.

[00:04:19]And Wisconsin wasn't the only state where this happened. Take Iowa, Iowa, >> Florida.

[00:04:23]>> Take Florida. Wisconsin in 2018.

[00:04:26]>> No, I'm saying take Florida.

[00:04:30]>> State after state. In 2018, the right had a plan. They called it red mapap.

[00:04:34]They invested in winning state legislative races. And then as soon as they won, they used their power like getting a genie and wishing for more wishes to lock in control so that even if voters rejected them in the future, they would always have majorities of the votes in the legislature, they could not be fired >> to make themselves unaccountable. North Carolina's try to, you know, a Democratic governor whenever they win North Carolina, the North Carolina legislature, if it has Republicans on it, makes a new law saying, "Yeah, the governor is not allowed to do anything."

[00:04:59]>> That's exactly it. And they did same thing in Wisconsin. And my view, and I argue this in the book, is that project 2025 is reheated project 2011. This is a nationalized version of what they've been doing in the states when they took control. That's right. which is to defund public services, to rip off the public, to give tax cuts to the superw wealthy, and then break democracy so that when people don't like what they're doing, they have no say in the matter of fixing it.

[00:05:22]>> But as we stand here today, the governor of Wisconsin is now a Democrat. The state supreme court of Wisconsin now has a more progressive uh majority >> or two prodemocracy majority >> uh and and the legislature in Wisconsin is also now >> fair maps and Democrats have at least an even chance of flipping both legislative chambers on November 4th. And >> so so riddle me this Batman how? Because writ large that seems to be what uh is happening now on a national level. So what did you do?

[00:05:57]>> So this is I'm proud of having played a role. This is thousands of people including the the state party chair before me who worked on the groundwork laid by the state party chair before her. Allies national unions they'd been like decimated in Wisconsin. People still kept investing, kept volunteering.

[00:06:15]But what happened in Wisconsin is that we, a big we, built a movement of people >> who rolled up their sleeves and decided to keep fighting in mayor's races, schoolboard races, in local judicial elections, in state supreme court races where it seemed like we were going to always be outgunned and had basically no hope. We fought for all these different offices and mapped out a plan for what it would actually take to unrig the system. So that when people were like, why should I even work in the state legislative race when we know who's going to have the majority? The answer is if we stop the Republican supermajority, then if we win the state supreme court race and flip the majority there, they can pass new maps and the supermajority can't override the governor's veto. It's this intricate zigzagging pub.

[00:06:59]>> Which one of these is Milwaukee? I can't figure out. But how did you inspire people to not feel anxious and helpless like they couldn't do anything like this was a fade to complete? What was done?

[00:07:13]Somebody had to design the idea of how you could take it back. But somebody had to activate all those regular people to get involved. I will tell you this. When this the system was built starting in 2017 before I moved home to Wisconsin, the idea was we're going to find people in their living rooms who want to be part of the solution. Ask people to get friends together and say we're going to be responsible for our neighborhood.

[00:07:41]>> There's a huge big picture. We're all part of this big fight. But we're going to start here in this neighborhood in the election that's coming up in April that no one else in the country even knows is happening. But we're going to roll up our sleeves and elections here are so close so often that it might be that the five extra voters we find add up to enough around the state to tip this thing by a couple thousand votes.

[00:08:01]>> And it actually started to work in races where Democrats kind of hadn't been focused in the same way. You know, nationally, >> love me some Democrats. Democrats can get focused on who the next presidential candidate will be in 2028. It's 2026 right now, right? instead of saying there is a judicial election happening in a month that could determine whether the state is gerrymandered for the next 16 years, >> right?

[00:08:26]>> And we brought the focus to these local races that added up in the in the kind of web of how American political power works in this country that added up to enough power to unrig our state system.

[00:08:37]So, and it's a great but what I learned about the book is you get specific on what actually what on a molecular level make up the levers of power from local to state areas and how you need to get involved. And it's very much a a a logistical and architectural blueprint for that. And I haven't seen something like that written in such an accessible way for people to get a hold of. And it's and it's great.

[00:09:14]>> Thank you. Who who is um but uh who is the Ben Wickler who is going to do that for what Democrats should stand for at the same level of specificity and connection because the blueprint is great. It strikes me as you've built an incredible vehicle, but the fuel is the inspiration that people get from candidates. I feel like the conditions that sparked this right-wing revolution, that people started to feel like government was no longer responsible in any meaningful way to the effects that their policies had on people at large.

[00:10:05]That's the area where this fills in a ton of gaps. Who's filling in that other side that isn't boilerplate like we've got to talk to them like real people at the kitchen table and you're like shut up.

[00:10:18]>> What who's doing that work?

[00:10:20]>> Here's what I'll say. There are dozens of people thinking about running for president. There are amazing people running for governor and senate and congress around the country. They are talking, you know, a lot of the great ones are talking about they want this policy. They want that policy that will solve a problem in people's actual lives. What I try to do in this book is say if you actually want to pass policies that can stick and actually deliver for people in ways that they can touch and see and feel, >> you have to unrig a political system that right now is built to allow a handful of far-right billionaires to write the rules for everyone and face no accountability. We in Wisconsin >> after 2024, Elon Musk came to my state to try >> he bought it.

[00:11:00]>> He tried to buy it. He tried to undo what we done in the state supreme court.

[00:11:04]He uh went to Green Bay, Wisconsin. He put on a cheese head and he said, "You might not think that this election will affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will."

[00:11:13]>> And for him, this was his demonstration that these pesky little Wisconsinites could not stand up to the world's richest man. That everyone needed to fear him. He spent more money in that race than anyone's ever spent in any judicial election in American history.

[00:11:28]And then we beat his ass by 10 percentage points and he was booted out of the White House.

[00:11:36]I get it. See, this is what what I what I like about this is what you present here is the theory of the case for power. You even make uh the case that uh the filibuster should be abolished. And I generally knowing how the Senate is in many ways affirmative action for Republicans and just in the way that it's established now. Uh that made me nervous. But the case you make is no, blow it up. Let them do the thing they want to do. When the country sees what it is, there will be a backlash to the poor nature of the policy. and then Democrats can come in and if they develop proper policies and can execute them competently, we'll have a chance to finally execute them.

[00:12:23]>> The American political system right now is Democrats get control, they mess everything up, the country goes into crisis. Imagine 2008.

[00:12:31]>> Flip that. I think you might have >> Excuse me. Thank you. Good point.

[00:12:35]>> Let me say that again.

[00:12:37]>> Have you read this book?

[00:12:39]>> Winkler.

[00:12:41]>> All right.

[00:12:41]>> Do I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE?

[00:12:42]>> LET ME TRY AGAIN. SEE, right now the way our political system works, the US Supreme Court has had a majority appointed by Republicans since 1970.

[00:12:50]>> Yes.

[00:12:51]>> And in electoral politics, Republicans come in, they get control of the federal government. They screw everything up.

[00:12:59]>> Yes.

[00:12:59]>> George W. Bush, we get to 2008, global financial meltdown, disastrous forever wars going on and on, mass death. Then you have a Democrat coming in, Barack Obama, great, very exciting. some emergency legislation passes to to clean up that mess. But so much of what Democrats fight for and organize for and advocate for, so much of the inspiring vision cannot pass.

[00:13:21]>> Yes.

[00:13:22]>> Because of the 60 vote filibuster in the US Senate passes uh bills pass through the House, they die in the Senate. It's a mausoleum for the policies that people are begging for. Overwhelming majorities of the public, things people want, >> things like healthcare, things like Sure.

[00:13:35]>> Yeah. So then what happens? Then people are like, "Oh, >> this sucks. Democrats do give us you haven't delivered.

[00:13:41]>> That's right. Let's vote for change.

[00:13:42]Let's get the other guys.

[00:13:43]>> But to be fair, often times they don't.

[00:13:45]>> Yeah, but why is that? It's because the system right now is structured to stop things from actually happening.

[00:13:50]>> Oh, I'll give you that. That's for sure.

[00:13:51]>> You have to change the system itself.

[00:13:53]And this is my argument. Don't change the system.

[00:13:56]>> So, right now in Wisconsin and and I'm going to move my hands as much as you.

[00:14:00]You can't out You can't out move me.

[00:14:02]>> I have long just cuz they're longer. I My chair rolls.

[00:14:08]Who? LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING. JOHN, >> this is WHO SET THE RULES IN OUR SYSTEM.

[00:14:13]>> THAT'S RIGHT. BUT ALL RIGHT, SO now you got a governor's election now in Wisconsin. Ivers is out, right? He's he's done.

[00:14:20]>> He's served two great terms.

[00:14:21]>> You've got a system. You've got some progressive candidates. You've got some establishment candidates. The party is not backing any of the progressive candidates that have the plan. they want to stick with uh uh the the establishment candidates that might not want to rock that boat. Why? Why is that? Because what you're discussing is what moderates those plans sometimes what makes it not be able People always say don't let uh uh perfect be the enemy of the good, but don't let the good be the enemy of what will fix it. And that we tend to be in that position all the time. So in Wisconsin, the way that the party works, which I think is a good way that the party works, the party says whoever comes out of the primary, we're going to be the boots on the ground to support that person, get them through the finish line, but the party itself, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, will not put its finger on the scale.

[00:15:14]>> I'm the now the former chair, my successor chair, Devon Remmer, his commitment is we're going to work with every candidate to to make sure they know how the general election can unfold and then we hit go. I think that people lose trust when they feel like the party is trying to decide these things in smoke filled rooms. It should be the voters who choose the nominees.

[00:15:31]>> Yes.

[00:15:32]>> And then with whoever that is in some ways >> there's a real energy amongst, you know, the progressive candidate in Wisconsin.

[00:15:41]Would you would you agree?

[00:15:43]>> I think there's tons of grassroots energy and you know there's a yeah, you can see it surging and you know >> Sure.

[00:15:50]>> but it feels like they're trying to not make that happen. There are different elect. So there are currently five candidates for governor.

[00:15:57]>> Yes.

[00:15:57]>> I think there's a a lot of candidates.

[00:16:00]Yes. Have a lot of big ideas and a lot of them describe themselves as definitely progressive. One's a Democratic socialist. There's a variety of different views and strategies for how to get there.

[00:16:09]>> Right.

[00:16:10]>> And different elected officials are endorsing different people. Governor Ivers just uh made an endorsement of of one of the candidates as the the Democratic Socialist candidate who's currently in first in the primary. said everyone can have their own voice in this and the voters decide who's going to win. That is how democracy works. The party and the structure shouldn't advantage one candidate or one set of ideas. It should be the voters who make the choice and then we should come together and say let's do this and let's not only win the governorship, let's win the assembly majority and the state senate majority and then actually pass the things that can unrig the system and make the difference that we need. That's what I'M SAYING. THAT'S CALLED DEMOCRACY. THAT'S THE WHOLE IDEA. OH, >> YOU'RE TALKING MY LANGUAGE.

[00:16:51]AND NOW AND and we're in that same place now where uh all these new ideas suddenly the Democrats are these democratic socialists they're crazy and you're like well but that generally their crazy ideas aren't where the energy is. The energy isn't around like we shouldn't have prisons or borders. the energy is around a belief that their economic populism and when you call it socialism I think it's a misnomer like in the same way that if you call social security socialism that's kind of a misnomer it's about strengthening a safety net for a country that has suffered too long uh overvaluing capital and money and undervaluing labor and WORK THAT'S a million that's it and it's so I don't get the whole halaloo I think one of the reasons why you see some candidates catching fire right now, >> yes, >> is that they speak directly to what a total meltdown crisis we're in as a country. What people are actually experiencing in their day-to-day lives >> and then they tell people you can do something about this and I, you know, I invite candidates and there are candidates who identify as centrists, you know, running in some states, there are democratic socialists in other states.

[00:18:07]>> Takes everybody. It takes >> it takes it is a big tent and I would say that right now the most exciting parts of the tent wherever you are in the geography are the parts where people say this is not working and we need to change it. We don't need to go back to something that wasn't so great before.

[00:18:21]We need to go forward to something where there's spec specificity.

[00:18:25]>> Here's what we're going to do xyz things and they lay it out and then again to this is the plan. When you get in power, you need to be willing to change how the system works so you can actually change the policy, deliver for people and sustain it. If the US Supreme Court, to take one example, if the US Supreme Court >> keeps striking down everything a Democrat does, anything that is intended to protect democracy from the power of big money >> or workers >> or workers striking down workers protection, anti-corruption laws, Wisconsin created the first workplace uh protection agency for love Wisconsin. I know I know. But this is my point. You know, they will keep >> Jerseyy's no piece of by the way.

[00:19:02]>> All right. I mean, it's great. Every state, I mean, Wisconsin.

[00:19:06]>> All right. Fair.

[00:19:06]>> Okay. But they the US Supreme Court's going to keep striking the stuff down until we reform, meaning either expand or put term limits on the US Supreme Court.

[00:19:15]>> We got to do that, too.

[00:19:17]>> Going big.

[00:19:17]>> This is big or go home, baby.

[00:19:18]>> Let's go make it. We are We The pendulum swings in American politics. But what the right does is when it swings their way, they catch it and they grab it and they don't want to let it go. Yes. And you need to electrify the pendulum so that you cannot grab the thing and stop it from moving.

[00:19:33]>> Were you ever a magician?

[00:19:36]>> I think I saw the pendulum.

[00:19:39]>> This the what I lay out in the book is step by step. It starts at the end of the book's a chapter called this is the plan that that ties together all the pieces. Yes.

[00:19:47]>> The first part of the the this is the plans plan is this week every Tuesday there's an election somewhere.

[00:19:52]>> Yes.

[00:19:53]>> And most of those elections have no volunteers across the country. They have no people chipping in $27 from wherever.

[00:20:00]Nobody gets involved.

[00:20:01]>> A lot of them are unopposed.

[00:20:02]>> A lot of them are unopposed.

[00:20:03]>> But if you look around and find the races that actually start a row of dominoes that can affect future legislation around gerrymandering or affect money and politics in a state where people like Elon Musk want to walt in and take over everything, then getting involved in a mayor's race here, a county recorder's race here can have a huge effect.

[00:20:22]>> That's right. But it goes from that step, something any of us can do where the margins of victory are often sometimes a single vote. And I list some of those races in the in the book. It goes all the way to then 26, we win in states, we win in Congress. 28, we win a federal trifecta to 29 we pass.

[00:20:37]>> You even DEAL WITH THE BACKLASH TO ALL THESE VICTORIES.

[00:20:40]>> I DO. AND THAT'S to remove the power of that backlash to break our democracy from 2030 to 201m policy, not just process. That's it. YOU HAVE TO HAVE YES. You have to actually deliver AND MAKE THE DIFFERENCE. THAT'S THE PLAN. And we can do it. Every person HERE CAN DO THIS PLAN.

[00:20:58]>> YES, WE CAN.

[00:20:59]>> YES, YOU CAN.