This Is How Democrats Win in Wisconsin
5,914
Published 2024-07-26
Democrats are still traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss in Wisconsin in 2016. It is a must-win state for both parties this year. And while Democrats have been on a fair winning streak in the state, they lost a Senate race there in 2022 — a race with some striking parallels to this election — which has made some Democrats uneasy.
But Ben Wikler is unfazed. He’s chaired the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2019 and knows what it takes for Democrats to win — and lose — in his state. In this conversation, he tells me what he learned from that loss two years ago, why he thinks Harris’s political profile will appeal to Wisconsin’s swing voters and how Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate has changed the dynamics of the race in his state.
Mentioned:
“The Democratic Party Is Having an ‘Identity Crisis’ (www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/biden-trump-dem…) ” by Ezra Klein
Weekend Reading (www.weekendreading.net/) by Michael Podhorzer
Book Recommendations:
The Reasoning Voter (press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3636…) by Samuel L. Popkin
Finding Freedom (www.racineheritagemuseum.org/product/finding-freed…) by Ruby West Jackson and Walter T. McDonald
The Princess Bride (www.harpercollins.com/products/the-princess-bride-…) by William Goldman
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast) . Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs (www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.…) .
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
All Comments (21)
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This interviewee feels more like he's stumping for Harris than giving unbiased analysis of her strategy in Wisconsin
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Ben Wilder...we are grateful for your service. Will be sending money to Wisconsin Dems. You earned it.
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It feels organic?
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A trifecta? There is no mathmatical way the dems can leaver with more than 50 senate seats. Most likely they will have 48 if Harris super performs.
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🙋🏼♀️ Cheese! Cheese is the answer.
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On Dems taking Wisconsin, let’s not and say we didn’t. 👍
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The Kamala candidacy taps into the dreams of the progressive movement even though the worry has been there that it’s unrealistic to even hope that a woman of colour could ascend in the US. It’s a battle of ideologies, equality and egalitarianism vs white superiority and nepotism. It’s pent up energy and without the consternation of having to make a decision and take a chance, this process sidestepped the challenge of the decision. I supported Kamala in the 2020 primary because I felt that she had the right stuff. I’m still hopeful she does and am so excited we are here. We need to help carry her across the finish line. And yes I’m a white male.
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By getting tons of Go Packers t-shirts? As you probably noticed, Mr. Klein, that's a joke - it's a joke because mixing modern advertisement techniques with politics is the shortest, quickest and surest way to destroy democracies. I don't know whether she was a moderate prosecutor or not but it seems that when compared to Democrat prosecutors she was in no way a moderate. I also don't think she's black and here in Brazil she would be considered simply a brunette (while Anne Hathaway would be described as a brunette with very white (fair) skin). Her life story is important but in the same way that Biden's, Sander's, Bill Clinton's and Daniel Inouie's - for instance - life stories were. Mr. Klein, please don't let the advertisement executive inside your brain controll you. You said something very important: we only realize how something feels like when we go through it. I once read a YouTube comment by a progressive and liberal Demorat supporting person that went something like this: "The only way to end trumpism in America is to neuter all Trump supporters". Yes ... his solution was to implement in the US a version of Hitler's Aktion T4! Though the solution he proposed is rare, the view a lot of Democrat voters have of Trump supporters isn't far from that person's views. I a few reasons for that: Propaganda, laziness and the fact that "we only realize how something feels like when we go through it" - and that last reason has no easy solution. The other two, though, have pretty simple solutions: journalists have to actively police themselves to remove all Propaganda from their work and, also, journalists and scholars have to make it easier for voters to understand why the people who support Trump do so - they should do what people like Nancy Isenberg and Joan C. Williams have done in their books "White Trash" and "Class in America".
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Laying out the fertilizer 💩 really thick....
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Good luck arguing that the sitting VP is a change candidate. Only a Democratic salesmen could pitch that BS. Smart move would've been to move outside of the ticket to run against the unpopular policies. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
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You filled a high school gymnasium with false enthusiasm and appeased corporate donors. Good job!
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the guests breathless excitement seems a platform for disappointment...WHT didn't the democrats ite federal abortion protections when they had both houses and the presidency?
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What a month this week has been?
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Yo E-dawg!
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💜💜💜
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kamala needs to disavow defund the police
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Only disappointment in Joe...yahoo not in jail or at least a black eye😢
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20:31 - “When you say the Calvary came in …” 🤔 Ezra, listen to the way Ben said the word: it’s “CAV-al-ry”, not “CAL-va-ry”. Who woulda thunk it? A nice Jewish boy confuses an army unit mounted on horseback with the place where Jesus was crucified. 🤔 Also, at 30:35 — “slavish” should rhyme with “knavish”, not “lavish”. (I get the impression that Ezra is a guy who picked up a lot of his vocabulary through voracious reading and therefore never learned how a lot of words are actually supposed to sound 😏
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Harris Psaki 😊. Holy shit trump is old😮..❤JOE😎
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thank you. i love the positive passion fueled by the princess bride!
