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The Plan for November—and After / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

0:08
[SPEAKER_03]: From the nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense.
0:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm John Weiner.
0:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Later in the show, John Nichols on Progressive Senate candidates to challenge Republicans in Maine in Nebraska.
0:20
[SPEAKER_03]: One is a Democrat and one isn't.
0:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But first, how are we gonna win the midterms?
0:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Then Whickler will explain in a minute.
0:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody in politics wants to know, what is the plan?
0:36
[SPEAKER_03]: How are we going to defeat Trump in the Republicans?
0:38
[SPEAKER_03]: How are we going to win control of Congress in the midterms?
0:41
[SPEAKER_03]: How are we going to win the White House in two years?
0:44
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the plan?
0:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, Ben Wickler has just published a book with the title,
0:50
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the plan.
0:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Ben was chair of the Democratic Party at Wisconsin for six years, ending in 2025, where he shaped what became the most powerful and effective state political party in the country.
1:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Ben Wickler, welcome to the program.
1:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Great to be with you, John.
1:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm great to be with you listeners.
1:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Well you open your book with the first major election of the second Trump term, April 2025, the first test of whether Trump and mega would continue to dominate all of American politics or whether regular people could fight back, would fight back.
1:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It was in Wisconsin.
1:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It was for the State Supreme Court, and it featured on one side, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.
1:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And on the other side, a little-known Dane County Circuit Court judge named Susan Crawford.
1:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And you say that now, the whole thing seems highly unlikely.
1:47
[SPEAKER_03]: But in fact, the winner of that first test of the power of Trump and Mega was not the richest man in the world.
1:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the little known Dane County Circuit Court Judge.
1:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us how that happened.
2:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a fight.
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love starting here because I think it illustrates both how dark this moment is, how big the crisis of this moment is and that it is realistic to hope if we roll up our sleeves and as Nancy Pelosi, I love quoting Flo Kennedy to say, don't agonize, organize.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So here came Elon Musk, he had his own lawsuits moving through the Wisconsin court systems over Tesla dealership, so he wanted to buy the court for his own bottom line, but also he wanted to demonstrate his power and lock in maga control of the state Supreme Court in the closest state in the country.
2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: He poured in more money into that race than anyone has ever donated to any judicial race in American history.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And what Susan Crawford did across the state, she said, I never dreamed as little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls was constant.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be up against the richest man in the world for democracy.
2:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But she energized this movement that had been building continuously, a permanent campaign on the ground in every small town, in every suburb in every city in the state for years.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: this organizing machine, turn out machine, communications machine, that insured that voter saw that this was a referendum not just on Brad Schimmel, the, you know, must prefer candidate and Susan Crawford, but on the question of whether Wisconsin could be bought, or whether it would still be a state that was governed by oven for the people.
3:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The state party working with the campaign wants to an effort called the People vs. Musk.
3:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a judicial election and Elon Musk was on trial.
3:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And we kicked his ass.
3:33
[SPEAKER_01]: He lost by 10 percentage points.
3:35
[SPEAKER_01]: His money wound up boomering and backfiring him on him.
3:39
[SPEAKER_01]: More people turned out in that election to support Susan Crawford against Elon Musk.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: than have ever voted for a Republican candidate for governor in a November election.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Normally Supreme Court raises as a fraction of the turnout in what you'd see in the gubernatorial race in a midterm election, what we saw was both a great campaign and the culmination of years of work.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And my argument in this book is that there are elections like that one that don't get nearly as much attention, but like that one that have enormous consequences for the whole country.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: that are taking place all the time.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we need to do as a movement, this is a book addressed to the person listening to this podcast right now to the to the concerned American who's maybe gone to a no kings protest or chipped it on act blue ones or twice, but it's trying to figure out what the hell do I do in this nightmare.
4:27
[SPEAKER_01]: If enough of us get together and pour ourselves into the races that no one's paying attention to, but that actually determine who will run the American electoral system, then we have a chance to win power in the states in 2026.
4:38
[SPEAKER_01]: They can allow us to have a free and fair election in 2028.
4:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They can then allow us to pass fundamental reforms to change this country and make it a democracy that works for everyone in 2029.
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is the plan.
4:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you and I and most of our listeners are political people.
4:55
[SPEAKER_03]: We think about politics every day, but that's actually pretty unusual in America.
4:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Most people do not relate to politics the way we do.
5:04
[SPEAKER_03]: In the last presidential election about 75 million people voted for each candidate, 90 million people did not vote at all.
5:13
[SPEAKER_03]: and even among the ones who did vote for most of them, politics is not part of everyday life.
5:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's sort of like the Olympics, it comes once every four years, you watch it on TV for a couple of days, you cheer for your team, and then you go back to real life and real life for most people.
5:32
[SPEAKER_03]: paying the rent, paying the grocery bill, putting gas in your car, it's not about saving democracy in defeating Trump.
5:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Now you can say, this is bad, this is wrong, but this is the political world that we live in.
5:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you know about this, and I think you had to deal with it in Wisconsin.
5:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
5:52
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ask the average swing voter or a person who might or might not vote, how they feel about Trump's threat to federalized election administration, it doesn't ring any bells whatsoever.
6:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people do not think about the fact that elections are run at the state level, not the federal level.
6:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump's attacks on democracy are so remote from the concerns of people who, and maybe they'll vote, I don't know.
6:15
[SPEAKER_01]: that if you're really concerned about democracy, your job is to talk to voters who are on the fence, not about what you're freaked out about, but about what they're freaked out about.
6:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only way to do that is to actually ask them what they're concerned about and listen to them.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is my fundamental political advice for anyone who wants to make a difference.
6:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's to take the advice of Abraham Lincoln.
6:38
[SPEAKER_01]: in the 1840s he wrote a letter to the wig party and he said keep a constant watch on the most doubtful voters and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence which is to say talking to people who trust you listening to them if they're if they're not already with you that's the most important group of people to talk to
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: about what is concerning to them, and then meet them where they are about their concerns.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, so much of the kind of coverage of politics is like, this person said, this in a speech, what was that going to do to the election?
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: The voters were on the fence, did not hear that speech.
7:12
[SPEAKER_01]: That is so remote from their day-to-day concerns.
7:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to bring the news, the information, the politics, to the lives of the folks who are not thinking about it.
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: In Wisconsin, we have elections constantly that come down to less than 1% at point, five of the last seven presidential races have done that.
7:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way that you win a race like that is by talking to people who the last thing they want to think about is what's happening in the next presidential election, because everyone who's already thinking about the election already knows who they're voting for.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So it means finding the people that are not thinking about this, having patients, having curiosity, meeting them on the issues that they're concerned about, that they don't even think about issues necessarily.
7:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And then helping them see how the values and concerns that they have in common with you can lead them to vote for the person that you support.
7:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I map out how to do this, the groups that can help to train and support you to be able to do this, how you can do this even if you live in a red or blue state to support the work
8:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I call it your superpower, another word for it is organizing, and in the democracy, it is the thing that we can do to save the country.
8:17
[SPEAKER_03]: We want to know what is the plan for defeating Trump and mega, but the first eight chapters of your book, the great majority of your book is not about the battle for the presidency.
8:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not?
8:31
[SPEAKER_01]: The reality is,
8:33
[SPEAKER_01]: The presidency is the final boss in a video game where you have to fight through every level.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've ever played Super Mario Bros., you know that you get to Bowser at the end, not at the beginning.
8:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Every part of the American political system is built like a pyramid.
8:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's stacked on top of other parts of it.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Elections are run often at the municipal level, local city governments, set up the polling places.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe the county does the ballot design, it varies from state to state.
8:58
[SPEAKER_01]: They do it in laws set by the state government, constitutionally state governments oversee the elections and work with the local governments to administer them.
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are shaped by federal laws, but the reality is Trump is in the White House right now, because of a whole bunch of decisions by state governments over the last several decades.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And in Wisconsin, we see this very vividly because the Trumpian moment, this moment of crisis and nightmare really began in 2010 with the Tea Party wave and Citizens United and the takeover of state governments across the battlegrounds and so much of the country.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the systematic unraveling of democracy at the local level, not the national level that created the conditions that allowed Trump to be able to get into the White House.
9:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And as we've learned in 2020, we beat the the biggest bad guy.
9:44
[SPEAKER_01]: and he came right back because all those other conditions remained unchanged.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much more that we have to do.
9:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So the good news is that a lot of those smaller levels of government are actually more susceptible to the work, to the donations that you and I can give to the hours of volunteering that you and I can make because so few people pay attention to them.
10:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The vast majority of Americans don't know who their state representative is.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Which means that if you tell someone who the person is and tell them that they're a crook, or tell them that they're a champion, you can have a much bigger effect on their opinion about that person than you can on their opinion on Donald Trump, where everyone has an opinion already.
10:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is maybe ready to yell at you about it.
10:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The work we have to do is basically trace the lines of power through state and local governments, through state judicial elections, like Wisconsin State Supreme Court.
10:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But those kinds of races allow a group of friends to have an outsized impact on pushing over a domino that sets off a chain of dominoes that can really change the whole direction of the country.
10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's that is the path that we've gone in Wisconsin.
10:45
[SPEAKER_01]: which is to figure out exactly what set of races we had to win through everything we could into winning those races and systematically unravel the system of control and domination that Scott Walker or former Republican governor foot in place.
10:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We're on the verge of making Wisconsin a fully blue state now after years of work.
11:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the same kind of strategy of picking our fights, picking our battles, and then throwing everything we've got into them.
11:09
[SPEAKER_01]: In ways that can change the system itself, that's what we need to do as a nation.
11:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's talk about the Democratic Party.
11:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Right now, people are feeling a lot better about the Democratic Party than they were two years ago.
11:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all considered the alternative, but there are a lot of things wrong with the Democratic Party that our friends are able to explain pretty clearly.
11:31
[SPEAKER_03]: You say we should all work hard on the project of making the Democratic Party powerful and good.
11:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's part of the plan.
11:41
[SPEAKER_01]: If you ask the average person what they think of the Democratic Party, they will say a string of things that you can't say on a family-friendly podcast.
11:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's true for Democrats, it's true for Republicans, it's true for a lot of dependence to people who don't pay attention to politics.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And part of that comes from the sense that,
11:58
[SPEAKER_01]: that the party should be doing a million things that it actually has no power to do.
12:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The party, the formal legal organization of the Democratic Party doesn't set the message, it doesn't choose the candidates, it doesn't run the ads, the party has much more limited scope than that.
12:14
[SPEAKER_01]: People use the phrase Democratic Party often to refer to the amorphous blob of everything associated with any Democrat anywhere.
12:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But the Democratic Party itself does have this possibility that we, I think we have demonstrated through the work that I and thousands of people have poured themselves into in, in my state and Wisconsin, and you can see in some other places, but not enough, which is that it can be a home for year-round local, neighbor-to-neighbor, friend-to-friend, organizing that, that, that,
12:42
[SPEAKER_01]: built itself into the fabric of communities so that when people think who are Democrats they don't think they're some them far away that disagree with me that I don't like or that are failing to fight or meet the moment whatever it is they think instead oh that's my neighbor who I talked to you know yesterday at our block party who asked me to be involved in helping a like someone to the city council who's going to do something about that puzzle and the on the intersection
13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you build from below that way, you can actually create the kind of trust that allows you to enlist many more people in getting involved.
13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Wisconsin was the highest turnout state in 2024.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were also the most evenly divided, the closest state in 2024.
13:24
[SPEAKER_01]: there are so many elections where Wisconsin has been to the right of the national popular vote.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: This time we were right on track and we're moving towards being to the left of the country.
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not because Republican turnout went down.
13:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because Democratic turnout went up and the work builds on itself.
13:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you have a presence in every neighborhood and every community, it means that in the elections like the Supreme Court race, when Elon Musk Thompson
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a whole lot of people who are grounded in what's happening where they live, who are ready to stand up and say, hell no, and fight back.
13:57
[SPEAKER_01]: My argument is whatever you feel about Democrats and the Democratic Party, you actually have the power to join your local party, get a few friends together, and turn it into the party that you want it to be.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The door is wide open, it is much easier than people realize, to be able to build and organize within the Democratic Party itself.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: is that it is everywhere.
14:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It is legally in every single state.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It is possible to create a local chapter that you're not having to pass some set of lip-ness test box checks to be able to join the party.
14:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyone can join and get involved.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And that means that if you think that we should have more fight in us, if you think we should be organizing more intensively, more locally and more places, you can make that happen starting now.
14:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's talk about Trump.
14:44
[SPEAKER_03]: The first time Trump won, November 2016 was of course a terrible shock, but if you tried, you could sort of understand why a lot of people might vote to give him a chance and see if he could actually make their lives better.
14:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, he actually didn't win that election.
15:00
[SPEAKER_03]: He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes, but in 2024, everybody knew what Trump was.
15:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And he got more votes than he had the last time.
15:10
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot more votes.
15:11
[SPEAKER_03]: He got more votes than the Democratic opponent got.
15:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
15:15
[SPEAKER_03]: 2024 was actually much, much worse for what it said about our fellow Americans.
15:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, much more disastrous for the future of democracy.
15:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And yet, you say there's a different way to think about Trump's 2024 victory.
15:30
[SPEAKER_03]: One that offers some hope.
15:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Please, what is it?
15:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say at the outset of this, that one tenth of one percent of all the votes cast in that election determined the winner.
15:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It was less than 115,000 votes spread across Wisconsin Michigan and Pennsylvania.
15:47
[SPEAKER_01]: If those voters had voted for Harris instead of Trump, then Harris would be president right now.
15:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is because of the electoral college.
15:55
[SPEAKER_01]: which is an atrocity and disaster, and I lay out a plan to diffuse the electoral college, which is a whole lot of the conversation we could have, but it's a lot closer to happening than people realize.
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But the big question of how this person who was demonstrably a disaster as a president got back into the White House is actually in my view impossible to understand unless you pull the lens so far back that you look at the entire planet.
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: because something happened in 2024 that has never happened before in recorded modern history of democracies.
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: In every single country in the world that has a wealthy or middle-class democracy,
16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: the ruling party in that country lost ground in 2024.
16:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It happened in Japan, it happened across Europe, right wing governments lost ground, left wing governments lost ground, mail incumbents, be mail incumbents, all across the world, whoever was in charge, took it on the chin.
16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, that's never happened before.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you ask why that is, across the board,
16:55
[SPEAKER_01]: voters were hit with inflation, which was a global phenomenon, higher prices drove everyone to distraction.
17:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's the reason why people are furious about the economy right now as well, I might add.
17:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you look in 2024 and you ask, who moved the most?
17:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Who wasn't that had voted for Biden who then voted for Trump?
17:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Who wasn't the voter for Biden who then didn't vote?
17:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Who didn't vote in 2020 and then moved over to vote for Trump in 2024?
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The biggest predictors were one that you said inflation had caused you great distress, the prices had affected you, and secondly, that you didn't watch the news.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The politics was far from the center of your life that you said you never sought out political news.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: If you read a newspaper, you were 70% likely to support Biden in the spring of 2024.
17:38
[SPEAKER_01]: If you said you never paid attention to political news, you were much more likely to support Trump.
17:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's so striking within the United States, the places where Harris campaigned the most and Trump campaigned the most, Harris did better than the places where neither of them ever showed up.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the people who just experienced something in their own lives and voted for change, without a lot of attention to exactly who was on the ballot, and what that person was promising to do, who made the difference for Donald Trump.
18:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason why that creates hope, in my view, is that, first of all, it does not mean that people wholesale adopted maga, or even endorsed Trump's policies.
18:11
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone was remembered what policies each candidate supported, they were much more likely to support Harris.
18:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Secondly, the country is not working for most people right now.
18:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the big chunk of the electorate that essentially says, do I like how things are going if not vote for change?
18:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That part of the American electorate is saying they want change right now.
18:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is something that Democrats and, you know, in some states, independent candidates or even non-Magger Republicans were ready to join with Democrats and an independence to build a pro-democracy pro-working people coalition.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That means that all those were promising and fighting for change have the upper hand at this moment.
18:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Our coalition cannot be about restoring a status quo that people already felt was broken.
18:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It has to be about delivering change to make things actually better for most people.
18:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And that means taking the keys out of the hands of the mega billionaires that are screwing everything up.
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There is not a pendulum swing that has gotten stuck on the right.
19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, there is this chance encounter between the economic cycle that Trump locked himself into watching into after COVID after the supply chain got gnarled and mangled and prices went up everywhere.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that Trump who does not believe in democracy and thinks that we should essentially belong to whatever billionaire pays him the most money and often attempts to pay himself, those two things intersected.
19:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump and this moment of high inflation and Trump got back into power, but that is not a permanent condition.
19:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, he's making inflation worse.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone who's freaked out about democracies against him now and everyone who's panicked about the economies against him now.
19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is a winning coalition that could allow us to create the change that people are crying out for.
19:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And you say there's one more big secret.
19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You call it the greatest secret of politics.
19:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about what happens to you if you make the fight for a better country a long-term part of your life.
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something that has transformed my life.
20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm delighted to share it with your listeners, although it's possible that folks who are tuning into this podcast have discovered it for themselves too.
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It is actually a source of meaning and purpose and joy.
20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: to get involved in something bigger than yourself.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I fell in love with my wife while we were putting up posters for a protest together.
20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And this has been a part of the fabric of our family and our circle of friends, where people who have discovered that when you're part of something bigger and then you actually win and make a difference together, collective action helps create collective joy.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Movements can be infectious.
20:34
[SPEAKER_01]: They can be sustaining.
20:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Political energy is a renewable resource.
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And in a moment when we are pulled away from each other, doom scrolling, spending time on our phones, getting panic by notifications driven by algorithms that know that humans are super alert to threats, but that make us terrible inside of our bodies and inner souls, that in fact, the feeling that we can join hands and have more power and actually make things better, that's something that makes everything feel better.
21:01
[SPEAKER_01]: The best answer to political anxiety is not to pop a pill.
21:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It is to take an action and then see the impact of that action on making your world better.
21:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyone who helped elect Barack Obama in 2008 probably has that memory.
21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: How great that felt.
21:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And the thing is that when you don't just do presidential campaigns.
21:18
[SPEAKER_01]: but you get involved in local elections as well.
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: When you get involved in supporting a highly contested race for state legislature, half the country away, but then you see that it actually worked and you pull off a victory by a few dozen votes and you know that you and your friends were part of that, it feels great.
21:35
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a fight that we're gonna win overnight.
21:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna take years to unravel all the damage and then to build something better than we've ever had, which is what we need as a country.
21:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But that does not have to be work.
21:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That can actually be something that helps to build a community in our nation.
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They can help reduce the partisan and polarizing temperature because if you wanna persuade someone, you have to first see them as a human being.
21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And that improves our own souls, as well as helping bring political opportunities to people who do not yet identify as our allies
22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And by doing that we can actually broke closer together and have the sense that we're part of a country that actually has a common project.
22:15
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, this is the underlying source of hope is that the process of fixing what's broken in our politics and our inner economy can also be.
22:23
[SPEAKER_01]: a process that the heels are civic souls and it helps us to grow rather than shrinking as Trump wants us to do.
22:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And that to me is the opportunity that underlies the political work is something that is deeply human.
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: One last thing, you yourself.
22:38
[SPEAKER_03]: What's your own plan for 2020?
22:40
[SPEAKER_03]: When Ron Johnson will be facing the voters in Wisconsin, and I can't paint for the Senate, a lot of our friends want you to run for the Senate in Wisconsin in 2020, and become part of the Democratic majority in the Senate when we elected Democrat to the White House.
22:57
[SPEAKER_03]: What can you tell us about your plans for 2020, 18?
23:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm honored and flattered.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I will tell you by overwhelming focus right now is on these next few months.
23:08
[SPEAKER_01]: What I want is for anyone whether or not you buy the book to roll up their sleeves and get involved not just in the fight for the House and the Senate, but also for the state and local offices.
23:18
[SPEAKER_01]: The acid test is whether we have free and fair elections in 2028 and that will depend on who's actually running them.
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And those people are elected in 2026.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: These next few months will determine whether Trump's next coup attempt will succeed or not.
23:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of people are wondering about who will be the presidential nominee.
23:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There's who will run for every Senate race, all that stuff in 28.
23:38
[SPEAKER_01]: All that can wait right now.
23:40
[SPEAKER_01]: all of us have to zero in on the things that we can do in these next few months to ensure that democracy survives this moment of enormous peril.
23:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we come out the other side, after 2026, with a electoral system run by people who actually believe in democracy, then this guy's the limit for what we can achieve to make this country better for everyone.
24:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Ben Whickler, his book is this is the plan.
24:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Ben, thank you for all your work.
24:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for this terrific book, and thanks for talking with us today.
24:23
[SPEAKER_03]: For today's political update, we turn to John Nichols, of course he's executive editor of the nation.
24:29
[SPEAKER_03]: John, welcome back.
24:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Good to be you, Jim Edrand.
24:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, just to remind or hear the Democrats need to retake the Senate, that means holding two and flipping four, we have strong candidates in many places.
24:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But we have one open question, Maine, who's going to run in Maine instead of Graham Platner?
24:49
[SPEAKER_03]: We have to defeat Susan Collins.
24:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Main is the most democratic state where the Republican Senator facing reelection.
24:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Things got a lot clearer over the weekend.
24:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Several candidates dropped out and the remaining one is Troy Jackson.
25:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be officially nominated at the party convention this weekend.
25:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Who is Troy Jackson?
25:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Fred Jackson is a really interesting candidate.
25:14
[SPEAKER_02]: He is a former logger from Northern Maine right up by the Canadian border and he got his start in politics, not as a candidate, but as a logger who was blocking the border.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: during a dispute over how much logger's got paid and what was paid for wood and things like this.
25:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Very, you know, might get a little technical for some folks on the podcast.
25:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But the bottom line was he was in a very political struggle.
25:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And the
25:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Sitting governor at the time said well why don't you folks who are blocking the border come down to a gust of come down to the capital and meet with me and basically Logger said no you come up and meet with us and it I think that's
26:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It's back story that sort of lets you understand where this guy comes from.
26:05
[SPEAKER_02]: He got into politics as somebody who was already pretty upset with the status quo and then he became ultimately a state senator and a very powerful, very effective state senator.
26:19
[SPEAKER_02]: rough and tumble in the, you know, the main legislature, which is often been divided over the years, has divisions within the Democratic Party, but he rose to a pretty high place, and then he ran for governor this year.
26:35
[SPEAKER_02]: In a both-a-candidate primary where there were three progressives running, Hannah Pingree, who eventually won the nomination, as well as Shenebello's who
26:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Troy Jackson.
26:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Interestingly enough, Graham Platner endorsed all three of them, because they have ranked twice-folding in Maine.
26:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But Jackson was pretty close to Platner politically.
26:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's an ideological parallel there on a lot of issues, pretty strongly, pro-medicate for all in favor of taxing the rich, like really aggressively in favor of taxing the rich.
27:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when Platner's campaign collapsed or when Platner left the race, there was a real sense that people didn't know exactly where this thing was going to go, where the mood was in Maine, where they go to somebody who's more traditional politician, where they go with somebody, it's kind of a centrist something like that.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You got a real signal in the
27:37
[SPEAKER_02]: County caucuses that occurred last weekend and Jackson swept them.
27:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe he won every place.
27:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the reasons for that, of course, is not just ideological.
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's long-term presence in politics.
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a guy who's been in main politics for decades.
27:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's been very well identified.
27:59
[SPEAKER_02]: He was the leader of the Bernie Sanders campaigns.
28:02
[SPEAKER_02]: in the state.
28:03
[SPEAKER_02]: He was somebody who's kind of always been very out front, especially on labor and economic issues, but ultimately having begun as a relatively more conservative fellow has become a really strong defender of a lot of social and racial justice issues.
28:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And so at the end of the day, I think yet a lot of people who'd come to really like him and know him.
28:27
[SPEAKER_02]: He will be the nominee and he will hit the ground running.
28:30
[SPEAKER_02]: He just spent
28:32
[SPEAKER_02]: the first half of the year campaigning all over the state for governor now he's shifting over to a senate race but he's been in every town he's you know knocked on the doors he's talked to the people and so he doesn't really start as somebody who is just you know building up trying to get get a campaign going okay
28:50
[SPEAKER_02]: The funny thing is that on his signs, which, say, said, trade Jackson for governor, and then in the corner said endorsed by Bernie Sanders, the signs still say trade Jackson endorsed by Bernie Sanders, but they've been having fun just putting a white strip across that says for Senate.
29:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Well let's talk about Susan Collins for a minute here.
29:09
[SPEAKER_03]: In 2020, it was the last time of course she ran for reelection every major poll showed her behind.
29:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Some showed her behind by 10 points or more.
29:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And in the end, she ended up winning by nine points, huge victory, especially since Joe Biden carried the state by nine points.
29:30
[SPEAKER_03]: The latest polls are
29:32
[SPEAKER_03]: taken just after Platner pulled out, show the candidates basically tied right now.
29:40
[SPEAKER_03]: How hard is it going to be for Troy Jackson to beat Susan Collins?
29:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Hard.
29:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Maine is a state that has in the last decade or so had very right-wing Republican governor.
29:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's had a Republican senator.
29:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Has the other senator is an independent?
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Maine is a battleground state.
30:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It is one that leans Democratic and in recent years, Democrats have done quite well there.
30:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that pattern is locking in, and maybe that would suggest that in the six years since Susan Collins was last on the ballot that there really has been a mood shift.
30:16
[SPEAKER_02]: If so, it'll be easier.
30:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think you should, I think you have to recognize this is a real race.
30:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Maine also knows Susan Collins well, even if they don't love her.
30:26
[SPEAKER_02]: they're very familiar with her.
30:27
[SPEAKER_02]: She's done a lot of constituent service.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: She shows up at the parades.
30:31
[SPEAKER_02]: She is an energetic and engaged candidate.
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So don't fool yourself that this is going to be an easy thing.
30:39
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a nationalization of this election.
30:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So at the end of the day, what Susan Collins will try to do is localize.
30:46
[SPEAKER_02]: make people not pay attention to the national.
30:48
[SPEAKER_02]: What Trojax and I think will do, it's also localized to some extent because he's really of the state.
30:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But he is going to, I think, deliver a very strong message that if you want to push back against Trump and Trumpism.
31:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And frankly, if you want to get the Democratic Party to actually stand for something other than, you know, platitudes that he might be the guy.
31:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, Maine is like the top flip opportunity.
31:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Farther down on the flip opportunity list is surprisingly Nebraska, Nebraska a deep red state Trump carried Nebraska 60 to 40 in 2024, 20 point margin.
31:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And the incumbent Republican is running for the Senate in the reelection their Pete Ricketts.
31:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Over the weekend, the Democratic Party candidates Cindy Burbank withdrew from the race, leaving the field open to an independent Dan Osborn.
31:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Dan Osborn is a favorite of ours, remind us who is Dan Osborn and can he defeat a Republican incumbent in the state Trump carried by 60%.
31:59
[SPEAKER_02]: The announcement is a fascinating fellow when he became old enough to vote he registered as an independent but just didn't particularly love either party and he came to prominence in Nebraska as the leader of a strike at a Kellogg's plant in Omaha and it was bitter strike it got a lot of national attention.
32:20
[SPEAKER_02]: He held out pretty strongly there, and it took a lot of attention.
32:24
[SPEAKER_02]: He became relatively prominent figure.
32:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And the interesting thing is that, you know, he's a machinist, I think, a technician who was very good at talking about fixing cars, fixing tractors, things of that nature.
32:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, obviously, folks talked him into running, and he ran two years ago.
32:43
[SPEAKER_02]: and sort of shocked everyone because his campaign took off, it was a very Nebraska-centric genuinely all about being an independent campaign, very critical in Democratic Party, very critical of the Republican Party, and economics that was pretty populist, pretty close to Bernie Sanders on a lot of issues.
33:03
[SPEAKER_02]: By the same token, he was, that is, I would say good, an immigration,
33:10
[SPEAKER_02]: or on some other issues and at the end of the day I think folks had to figure out, you know, what do we make of this?
33:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Where do you lean on this guy?
33:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, strange kind of way he succeeded in holding the democratic base and in Omaha the democratic base is actually quite progressive and in Lincoln some other places, but also expanding beyond that base into, I don't think Republicans per se,
33:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, Independence really seemed polling, really like him.
33:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And the interesting thing about this race against Ricketts is he's running against a super rich guy, you know, son of a billionaire family, who kind of paved his own way with dollars.
33:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the populist, you know, the machinist versus the billionaire, the machinist versus the billionaire, message has had a lot of residents in this year.
34:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Osborne has been very, very clear.
34:12
[SPEAKER_02]: He is not running to serve in the Senate as a Democrat, you know, it's many of the independence they run and then they align with the Democrats.
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be much harder.
34:21
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not, that's not an arrangement that's likely to come to place.
34:25
[SPEAKER_02]: What he says is he would like to get into the Senate and call the shots, call it as it comes, right?
34:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And he always says he'll do what's best for Nebraska.
34:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think in some ways, he'd be a thorn in the side of the Democrats a little bit, much bigger thorn in the side of a president Trump because this is a guy who really does favor tax in the rich, really does favor regulating corporations is passionately pro-union.
34:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I think a lot of the economics, if you start to look at stuff, he's somebody that would break with break toward the Democrats on a lot of economic issues might not always be there with them on some other issues, but would buy in large, I think I think that government shutdowns that really, you know, these places where we have these clashes, I think you would tend to do the right thing.
35:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have a question about Wisconsin, your home state.
35:24
[SPEAKER_03]: The New York Times is worried that the Democratic primary for governor to replace the Democratic incumbent Tony Evers might be won by a socialist.
35:35
[SPEAKER_03]: The candidate they're worried about is from Chesca-Hong, they describe her as a chef from Madison.
35:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that correct?
35:43
[SPEAKER_03]: A socialist chef from Madison could be Wisconsin's next governor?
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, in between the time that she was working as a color chef and she is a chef.
35:52
[SPEAKER_02]: She has the skills, but she was running a ramen noodle shop.
35:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's a very working class person who was a good cook, a good restaurant tour, COVID hit, and it really upended her operation.
36:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And so she ran for the legislature.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: and to the shock of everyone could she never been in politics, she wrote around a bike with a she wore a mask and wrote around a bike during COVID and had a sign on the back and stuff like that and they elected her.
36:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's she's been in the Senate or in the state legislature and say assembly for a number of years now.
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's done.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: The shorthand makes it more simplistic.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: This is somebody who's been elected in top primaries, re-elected and re-elected, and who carved out a place in the legislature as a very high-profile progressive.
36:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody who was on the left on a host of issues.
36:48
[SPEAKER_02]: She is now running for governor.
36:49
[SPEAKER_02]: When she started her race for governor, she was pretty much written off.
36:53
[SPEAKER_02]: She is a Democratic socialist, running in a state which, by the way,
36:57
[SPEAKER_02]: The biggest city, Milwaukee, had Democratic Socialists mayors for much of the last century and where there's a Democratic Socialist caucus in the legislature.
37:05
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not something that's entirely foreign to the state.
37:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It also has a great progressive tradition, et cetera.
37:11
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a swing state, it's a divided state.
37:14
[SPEAKER_02]: She got her traction in the Democratic primary by getting in the car and going everywhere.
37:19
[SPEAKER_02]: She literally was in every small town, every coffee shop.
37:23
[SPEAKER_02]: She got to know people very well.
37:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it goes, you know, and she'll go in the kitchen, she'll go in, you know, and she's got a, she's got a, a ride tough way of talking about a lot of stuff that is hit well the New York Times went and did a profile of her found a trump border.
37:43
[SPEAKER_02]: who was voting for her, or at least had her yard sign up.
37:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason was that she was way out from opposing data centers, saying there should be a more authoritarian on it.
37:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's pretty good at finding the issues that hit people whether they're left-right center, Democrat, Republican, and so anyway, bottom line is, she's got herself to a point where she leads in most of the polls.
38:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That's freaking out a lot of national Democrats and many Democrats in the state.
38:12
[SPEAKER_02]: trying to figure out how to prevent her from being the nominee.
38:16
[SPEAKER_02]: But every time they try to prevent her from being the nominee, I think they sometimes reinforce her argument that you need somebody from the outside.
38:26
[SPEAKER_02]: You need somebody different.
38:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll see where it all starts.
38:29
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got about a couple of weeks to go.
38:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Lots of money flying around, lots of charges, lots of
38:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the usual politics of a place, I will tell you that one of the leading centers candidate dropped out because her campaign finance reports were disaster and then the governor came in and endorsed another more centrist candidate, but that kind of looks like the party establishment might be back in somebody and that sort of helps, and I will suggest.
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: that for Wisconsin, it's going to be a very, very interesting next couple of weeks.
39:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Stay tuned.
39:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, now it's time for your Minnesota moment.
39:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's news from my hometown of St. Paul that you won't get from Sean Hannity.
39:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Last September, the Trump administration sued the state of Minnesota, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
39:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Over the state sanctuary policy, which prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with ICE and arresting and detaining people being sought for.
39:37
[SPEAKER_03]: detention and deportation.
39:39
[SPEAKER_03]: They also sued Minneapolis over a law that prohibits the police from identifying undocumented people for ICE or verifying the immigration status of people they come in contact with for ICE.
39:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Trump's Justice Department asserted that Minnesota sanctuary laws violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which says federal law must be supreme to state and local law.
40:07
[SPEAKER_03]: But on Monday, a U.S. district judge, Eric Tostrud, dismissed the case, saying forcing state and local officials to enforce federal immigration law violates the tantamment.
40:21
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the federalism.
40:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Amendment that the federal government has only the powers reserved in the Constitution for the federal government, everything else has reserved for the states.
40:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And the Supreme Court has upheld this many times.
40:36
[SPEAKER_03]: The federal government cannot force or, as they say, commandeer state and local governments to enforce federal laws.
40:43
[SPEAKER_03]: One more thing here, the judge, Judge Tostrid, who dismissed Trump's case, had been nominated by Trump.
40:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Turns out Trump has filed a total of 27 lawsuits against states and cities for sanctuary policies.
41:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So far, he's lost everyone that's come before the courts.
41:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And now he's lost in Minnesota.
41:08
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you make of that?
41:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, maybe this policy is wrong, call me nuts.
41:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you're losing with the people you appointed, that's a really problematic situation for a president.
41:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this is one of the reasons why you do lifetime appointments for federal judges so they can't pull them back out after they don't turn out to do what they want them to do.
41:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sure Trump probably would prefer to do that today.
41:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But here's the bottom line.
41:36
[SPEAKER_02]: For Donald Trump who ran for president initially and started in 2015 talking about immigration has made this central to his politics all the way through his three presidential races made it very central to his current term.
41:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Immigration has turned into an issue that
41:53
[SPEAKER_02]: doesn't work for him in the way that Mike once have done so.
41:56
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not just with the voters.
41:58
[SPEAKER_02]: That's also with judges.
41:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also with, you know, law enforcement folks at the local level because what they're seeing is the reality of the rhetoric, right?
42:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Trump's policies break rules.
42:11
[SPEAKER_02]: They, they upend laws.
42:12
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't follow procedures.
42:15
[SPEAKER_02]: They do horrible damage.
42:18
[SPEAKER_02]: and in the case of Minneapolis and a lot of other places around the country now we're seeing instances where these ice agents are killing people.
42:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So you end up in a situation where I think the mood has shifted a good deal.
42:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it's going to resonate for Republicans in the same way it has in the past.
42:36
[SPEAKER_02]: If Democrats get control of the House of Representatives and potentially even the Senate,
42:45
[SPEAKER_02]: There's going to be real investigations, maybe even efforts to deal with funding of GHS and advice.
42:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this ruling is just one more part of the picture that helps us to understand that this issue has become something very different than the slogan nearing that it began with
43:10
[SPEAKER_03]: John Nichols, read them at thenation.com.
43:13
[SPEAKER_03]: John, thanks for talking with us today.
43:16
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great honor to be with you, John.
43:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much.
43:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you very much, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank
43:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Ricky D'Ambrose is executive producer, Boskarsun Kara is president of the nation, Katrina Van Nouvelle is editor and publisher of the nation.
43:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Our theme music is Barcelona Afrobeat, License by Creative Commons.
43:54
[SPEAKER_03]: You can find out more about start making sense at thenation.com and subscribe to start making sense on ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
44:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm John Weiner, thanks for listening.