Ben Wikler

speaker

485 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 23 Jul

Ben Wikler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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On with Kara Swisher · Ben Wikler Has a Plan to Save Democracy · 23 Jul 2026 podcast

And those three principles, very, very popular.

Such a great question from Ested.

The thing that I love that happens in Wisconsin and a few other states, a growing number of states, 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 map out who's gonna go where, and they go to community events and they go door to door to the 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 the sense of like nobody consulted me changes when someone consults you.

I think there's a huge power to actually going out and talking to people and finding out what's on their mind.

Politically, I think of it like bumper bowling.

If you put the bumpers 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 taking their opinion seriously, first of all, it pulls you out of your own head.

I think Democrats often will want to go scream about the latest thing they saw on MSNOW 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 want to save democracy.

You should focus on what it is that people want to change in their own lives and how the government can be on their side.

And I think the same thing is true as a party, having actual connections to communities on the ground and not just being something that lives online or something that lives in fundraisers, 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.

There are things about the pothole on my street.

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