This Week's Interviews | Ben Wikler, Megan Rapinoe, Elliot Page, and Karolina Wydra
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello! Welcome back to The Daily Show. Oh, my guest tonight, a political organizer, a strategist, former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, the author of the new book, This Is the Plan! How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy. Please welcome to the program, Ben Wickler!
Sir!
This is the plan. 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 super majorities of a relatively purple state. You helped devise the plan to fight that, successfully so. Talk about what happened there.
Absolutely.
That's all the time we have here.
So my state, Wisconsin, which has a deep progressive tradition and a deep far-right tradition. Joe McCarthy's from Wisconsin. Yes. So is Fighting Bob. So is Fighting Bob La Follette. It's the place where workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, the Social Security Act was written by a Wisconsinite. All these things, great things came from our state.
How did Ben Wikler describe the 2010–2018 right‑wing takeover and gerrymandering in Wisconsin?
Progressive taxation, first aid 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.
Mm-hmm.
But in 2010, there was this huge right-wing wave fueled in part by Citizens United. And my senator, Russ Feingold, who I interned for, was my political hero. 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. It had been Democratic. They won majorities in both chambers. They won the governorship. 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. 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. Tammy Baldwin won in the U.S. 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.
They were rigging the state legislature so that they would always have a majority or super majority or something akin to that.
At that point, majority. They went for super majorities later. And where's the Wisconsin Supreme Court in this right in that moment? So Wisconsin State Supreme Court was almost evenly divided. There was an incredibly close state Supreme Court race in the spring of 2011. Republicans held on to their majority by less than one percentage point. And that meant that the state had a state Supreme Court that rubber stamped everything they did. So basically, Wisconsin was all the maps, everything, all the maps, the voter suppression law. They basically allowed Scott Walker and his friends and cronies, the Koch brothers network, this sort of right far right billionaire donor network to break election laws. And then they changed the campaign finance and election laws to suit their model of winning elections.
And once they'd broken democracy, they started defunding public services. So there were suddenly, people called them Scott holes after Scott Walker, potholes in the roads all over the state. People had to spend hundreds of dollars a year on new tires.
So what they're doing is unpopular in the state. But the way that they have jerry-rigged the system, unpopularity was no longer a barrier to re-election. That's exactly it.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–2:02
2
How did Ben Wikler describe the 2010–2018 right‑wing takeover and gerrymandering in Wisconsin?
2:02–10:15
3
What strategy did Wikler say flipped Wisconsin from a GOP stronghold to fair maps and a Democratic governor?
10:15–25:09
4
How did grassroots organizing and local races factor into the Wisconsin turnaround?
25:09–45:59
5
What lessons does Wikler offer for national Democratic power and institutional reforms?
45:59–54:20
Speakers
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