How to Find Every Democratic Voter in Wisconsin
34:58 Share

How are you guys? Have you guys read this brief, the January 6th thing? Yeah, I wrote my column on it. I just want to say, like, so what? The famous phrase now from our former president. It's true. It really is kind of amazing. I'd love to know if Mike Pence found an unbiblical word in his vocabulary when he heard about that detail. Mother would not think kindly of that if so.

So, Susan, you just did your column on this, huh? Yeah. It's amazing how memory holds somehow we've made it to be. And I find it just amazing. I watched the whole CBS debate the other night, and it was left to Tim Walz to ask J.D. Vance about whether or not he's going to agree to the basic principle of American democracy.

I don't know if you saw the follow-up today, which was incredible. There are these two, like, comedy podcasters. Did you see this? Who kind of stand back? No, what is it? J.D. Vance. And they got him to actually answer the question that he wouldn't answer for Tim Walz the other day. And they said, do you think that Donald Trump won the election in 2020? And J.D. Vance said, yes. Yes, I do. Wow. Whoa. Whoa, really? They don't teach that at Yale Law School. No.

Welcome to The Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Hey, Susan. Hey there. Great to be with you. Hi, Evan. Hey, guys. Hello, Wisconsin. It's great to be back in this beautiful state with thousands of hardworking people.

This past week, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump rallied voters in Wisconsin. It is so good to be back in Wisconsin. The Badger State, with its entrenched Republican legislature and popular Democratic governor, is notoriously difficult to pin down. And in fact, four of the last six presidential races in Wisconsin have come down to less than a single percentage point.

So what's it like living on the razor's edge of the political divide in a state that could possibly decide the 2024 election? Joining us now is Wisconsin's Democratic State Party Chair, Ben Wickler. He's been hailed as one of the best state chairs in the country and perhaps the best state chair in the country.

in part due to his prolific fundraising. Ben, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm proud to be one of a bunch of chairs that are doing really exciting things in the states right now. And it could be the state infrastructure that we've been building intensively ever since Trump first won that makes the difference in this election. All right. Well, we want you to tell us who's going to win. So you already know the answer.

I am sure that we will not be outworked. I think the question of whether we win at the end is up in the air. But if it comes down to the margin of effort, then we're going to win by a hair's breadth. But you've been working hard in previous elections, too. It's pretty close. Do you have a where does your what is your intuition telling you today?

So my intuition is that it is super, super, super, super tight. We see a lot of enthusiasm and energy and interest on our side. We're also facing just an absolutely brutal and horrific scorched earth ad campaign, a flood of mail that's coming into people's mailboxes and Trump showing up in our state over and over. He's been here three times in the last five days.

Two visits on Tuesday, last Saturday, he's coming back this coming weekend. And his message is fear. It is fear of crime by undocumented immigrants. That's his central message. And it's to try to make people go into a defensive crouch and try to put up a wall, essentially. And our message is to...

kind of try to deflate that and then move the conversation to like, what kind of future do you want to live in? It's about freedom. It's about bringing down costs and an economy that works for everyone instead of just billionaires. And to make clear that Trump doesn't actually want to do anything to address issues around immigration as evidenced by the fact that he killed the bill, the bipartisan bill. All those arguments together

plus a huge ground operation, which the Republicans can't match, I think is just enough to win by a little bit. But I do not think that this is a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination. And if anything, I think the polls right now are a little bit too generous. You know, I wanted to ask you about that Republican ground operation. I mean, from what I've read, it sounds like they've

outsourced it. I think Elon Musk is paying for some of it and Charlie Kirk is doing some of it. And they've got like paid people going door to door. How is that looking and how does that stack up against the Democratic effort? On the ground, hands down, we've got them beat. We're running laps around them. Nancy Pelosi has this maxim on the ground and we can see that in effect here right now.

The Republicans, they are using this FEC ruling so that they can coordinate fully with independent groups that do door-to-door canvassing just for that one activity. And that has allowed the Republicans to believe that they've kind of found a loophole. So they're hiring election integrity staff whose focus is voter suppression and trying to tee up lawsuits to overturn the election results. That's what the RNC's payroll is full of. And then what they've done is outsourced exactly to those two people, Elon Musk's Super PAC and Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk's,

But those two groups, it's not like either of those people is out hiring canvassers. They outsource another layer to vendors who run paid canvasses. And the vendors that they're working with, I don't think that they're delivering good value for their money. Every time I talk to county chairs, every time I'm knocking doors, every time I talk to volunteers, I ask what they're seeing from Republicans. I was just on the phone with the chair of Oneida County, Wisconsin, in northern Wisconsin,

And we're seeing crickets. There's almost no activity on the ground. Every so often, we'll find some flyers tucked behind someone's door. You don't see Republican canvassers out in the same neighborhoods, which in a real election where both sides are fully engaged, you do. The Republican county parties are kind of in revolt about this. There's lots of grumbling, backbiting, leaking.

even Republicans yard signs operations are not at the level that we saw in 2016 and 2020, which is normally something they really specialize in. And we're in the midst of flooding the state with signs. We have a no yard left unsigned campaign. Why is it that the ground game on the Republican side is so weak right now? Why are you not seeing anything? Is it no money? Is it no enthusiasm? How do you read it? It's a really interesting question. My theory on this is that

the Trump campaign from the top has this view that they should just let Trump be Trump and go focus on the things that they can control. And they can control the TV ads, they're horrible, but they're pretty effective in terms of what they're running on the air. And Trump is

Trump is personally insistent on all this election integrity staffing and on stuffing the RNC with his family members and election denialists and all this stuff. And so the people who are in the positions that would be running the massive field operation, they're Trump loyalists who kind of fit his flights of fancy.

And that means they're not doing the stuff they did in 2019 and 2020. I think it's just like an easier fight for them to concede to him. I mean, a lot of these state parties are also led now by these loyalists who often kind of defeated the establishment Republicans in coups. And, you know, they're just not very high functioning. So I think that they're kind of trying to make a virtue out of a rolling disaster by claiming that this is a clever new strategy. But it's actually the Trump wrecking ball in effect. Yeah.

Ben, I was just out there in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago at the Capital Times Idea Fest right there in the heart of where you need to get out your vote in the heart of Dane County and where the University of Wisconsin is in Madison. And it was a sight to behold, I must say, to see this packed auditorium there, more than a thousand people cheering for Liz Cheney, of all people. I'm sure that a few years ago in deep blue, you know, Madison, that would have been unthinkable.

She's actually out there again today as we're having this conversation. I think she's literally on stage with Kamala Harris doing a rally. There are more two dozen something like former state Republican lawmakers and officials also along with them endorsing Harris in the birthplace of the modern GOP in the town of Ripon, Wisconsin.

What do you make of that? I mean, who does Liz Cheney appeal to in Wisconsin today? It seems to me that it's mostly possibly even Democrats rather than Republicans at this point. But how do I assess the strategic importance of that? You're right that Democrats are thrilled to have someone who was really an arch conservative candidate.

who was putting country before party and endorsing Harris. But there is a segment, a slice of the Republican base that Liz Cheney can open the door to them to rethink how they're going to vote this November. And that's true for all the folks who've gone public with their willingness to really take a brave action that will alienate a lot of people that they've known for their entire lives and to come out for Harris and against Trump. Normally, when you think of a swing voter or an undecided voter,

they have something in common with each other, which is that they don't pay much attention to politics. You know, people call them low information voters, which isn't to say they can't process information. They just feel about politics the way I feel about the Olympic javelin throw, which is, I'm very aware that it happens every four years, but I'm not really tracking it in between. Don't knock until you try it, Ben. It could, you could change your life. There you go.

So the voters that Liz Cheney can move are not really those voters as much as they're the high information, highly engaged Republican voters who have some very clear commitments to things like the Constitution, to democracy, to the idea of the rule of law.

And what Liz Cheney can do is say to them, hey, you can have integrity. You can be yourself and you can act based on this conviction. And that is okay. And you're a part of this kind of micro tribe of people who have this thing in common. We are conservative. We're Republicans. We're right-wing on so many things. But there's a deep connection.

commitment that we have that Trump has violated and we cannot vote for him because of it. So she's like basically the permission structure or the gateway drug to party switching? I think permission structure is about right, because I don't think it's... For some people, it does lead to a kind of wholesale reevaluation and rejection of the Republican Party writ large. But for some folks, they still want low taxes for wealthy people. They think that's the way to grow the economy. They still want to dismantle environmental...

environmental regulations, all those things. It's just that they think that if we're not a democracy and effectively become a dictatorship and cede territorial conquest to Putin and all these different things, that is a deeper betrayal of their core values than to side with someone who disagrees with them about other stuff. And the permission structure is exactly the way to think of it because

It allows people to feel like they're not giving up who they are if they vote for Harris. And I will say in 2022, those voters reelected Governor Evers. He had all the Democrats, but there were Republicans who crossed over and refused to vote for Tim Michaels, who was Trump's guy and who supported abortion bans. And that that's how we won reelection in a year that was pretty tough.

So you mentioned a minute ago, Ben, that you think that maybe the polls are right now too generous towards Democrats in Wisconsin. What do you see lurking in the numbers in the crosstabs? What are you concerned about? You know, a lot of people have post-traumatic shy voter stress disorder, the idea that there are Trump voters kind of hidden in the numbers. Do you imagine there is some dark matter in there that we're not seeing? How do you interpret these?

So what I'm actually most worried about is the voters who are hidden outside the numbers. And by that, I mean, Wisconsin has same-day voter registration. So there are going to be hundreds of thousands of voters who cast ballots in our state who are not currently registered to vote. They walk into the polling place, they show their voter ID and their proof of residence, and they register and vote all in one fell swoop.

And those voters in 2020, they favored Trump. In 2020, Wisconsin, same-day registration was really the people who had not voted absentee beforehand. And that was a much more Trumpy group. Wisconsin had by far the biggest polling error in 2016 and 2020. There was 7.0 percentage points off in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Our internal polls were not as far off, but there were still a lot of Trump voters who in our internal modeling and polling we didn't find.

So I think that it's gonna be smaller this time. And I think, you know, on our side, there will be lots of same day registration this time as well. So it won't be so lopsided. But I think there's a real chance that there are folks who don't normally vote, who will vote because Trump's on the ballot. And our job is to try to overshoot and to have enough of a buffer that if a bunch of Republican Trump supporters who normally hate politics and don't get involved, if they show up, we still have enough margin to be able to win.

Speaking of numbers, there's a number that I'm thinking of, and that number is 89 percent, which is an incredible number. That's the percentage that came out in Dane County in the last presidential election. That's a huge turnout. It's obviously way higher than our national average. As I understand it, the key for you, for any Democrat in Wisconsin, is to run up huge margins in the county. That includes Madison. I understand it's also the fastest growing county in the state. But so then I guess my question is, so then why is it so?

So competitive. Shouldn't we be seeing a difference if there are thousands of new deep blue voters moving into the state at a time when the rest of the state isn't growing?

Well, you have to remember that Wisconsin is mostly folks in small towns and rural areas. More than half of the population of Wisconsin lives in towns of less than 15,000 people. So Dane County and Madison, tons of Democrats, tons of Democrats in Milwaukee County. The third biggest source of Democrats is actually Waukesha County, which is also the biggest source of Republican voters. But most of the Democratic voters in Wisconsin live outside of Dane County and Milwaukee County, more than 60% of them.

And that means that in rural areas, there might be a growth in Republican votes. We have to add Democratic voters in those areas, too. We can't just hope that an explosion in Dane cancels out the rest of the state. And that's why we have offices in 50 different places in the state, including dozens of counties that Trump won in and Republicans always went in. We're trying to find the last few extra Democratic voters in counties like Vilas County in the far north of the state that we know are going to be

overwhelmingly Republican in the final tally, but if we can find a few extra Dems, that can add up to just enough. Four of the last six presidential races here has come down to less than one percentage point because we don't have the kind of mega cities like the Twin Cities or Phoenix, Arizona or Atlanta metro region or these different areas. A lot of these states, it's like half the population lives in the biggest metro area. It's just not that way in Wisconsin. You have to be everywhere to be able to pull it off. The political scene from The New Yorker will be right back.

Every single aspect of a conflict...

And Pod Save America's Jon Favreau and Tommy Vitor. I don't think we're going to fact check our way to victory. Follow Wired Politics Lab for in-depth conversations and analysis to help you navigate the upcoming election.

In the lead up to the 2024 U.S. elections, more people than ever are wondering how our electoral process actually works. What systems are in place to ensure secure and accurate results? How

How can we recognize misinformation and be able to fully participate in our democracy? The new season of Democracy Decoded, a podcast by Campaign Legal Center, covers all of this. You'll learn from top lawyers and democracy's frontline heroes, such as poll workers and civil rights advocates, to understand how our elections function, the potential threats they face, and the checks and balances in place so voters can rest assured that the election results will reflect the will of the people.

Because here's the thing. Our electoral system works. And Democracy Decoded will help you understand why. Listen now at democracydecoded.org or in your favorite podcast app. And a big thanks to Democracy Decoded for sponsoring the show.

I just wondered, as you are busy trying to get the voters who might be swayed by Liz Cheney, are you also trying and are you worried that you might have a counter effect with progressive voters who are, for instance, you know, worried about Israel and Gaza? And I'm also curious about what you think the state of play is with black voters.

If I read the numbers right, they turned out in big numbers in 2012 and maybe have dropped off some since then in terms of percentage of vote. Well, you have to make your case really to everyone. And part of the way that you can embrace support from Liz Cheney while making the case to people who are very concerned about Cheney foreign policy is

is the Cheney family's foreign policy footprint in American history is to make clear that the reason why Cheney is supporting Harris has nothing to do with foreign policy. It is all other than Ukraine, Russia. It is fundamentally a question of democracy in the United States.

I mean, I think everyone is experiencing heartbreak and a huge stew of emotions when they look at the strongest supporters of Israel and supporters of the future of the Palestinian people and folks concerned about what's happening in Lebanon, all these places. It is a wrenching situation. I think there's a real argument that Trump would just make it worse for everybody if he comes in and that he's been, he's trying to be very quiet about this, but he is

would come in and essentially give a blank check to the most extreme forms of brutality without any regard for self-determination for the peoples of each of the nations in the region. And I think engaging on that is a really critical piece of the work.

And at the same time, the things that are making the biggest difference in Wisconsin right now are the arguments around the economy and who's going to fight for regular people versus tax cuts for billionaires. And then these questions around freedom, especially reproductive freedom. We had an abortion ban for 451 days here after Dobbs fell, a law from 1849 that

loomed over the state. Every abortion provider stopped providing that care because they were worried that they'd be jailed and people experienced horror stories. I think a lot of people in Wisconsin, me included, are just a degree of separation or two away from someone who had a personal experience when the ban kicked in.

And that means that these arguments are not hypothetical here. So that is a big part of why we were able to win the Supreme Court majority, because the Janet Podesiewicz in 2023 made clear what her personal values were and also that she just wouldn't be a right-wing rubber stamp for the pre-Civil War abortion ban. That ban is now tied up in court.

But we're born that election away from a ban snapping back into place, either at the state or federal level. And that is really galvanizing, especially to young voters, to women across the state. In the Supreme Court race, it was the plurality biggest issue among male voters as well. It's just not the case that this is something that men don't care about.

because we've seen how bad it can be. And that is, I think, a central piece of the argument here. And it's why so many events have been focused on that here. And there's still more work to do to make sure that voters who think of politics like the javelin competition recognize that they or their daughters or their partners, that they might face an abortion ban that could force them to not get urgently needed medical care if something went catastrophically wrong as they tried to expand their families. Okay.

A question about the down ballot. Tammy Baldwin is up for reelection this year, and she won a huge number of counties that or a significant number of counties that Trump did. I think something like 17 of them. How do you explain the Trump Tammy voter vote?

It's an interesting question. And by the numbers, about one in 10 voters in 2018 were Scott Walker or Tammy Baldwin voters. So this is a meaningful chunk of people at that moment. That said, if you look at the Cook Political Report poll that came out this week, there's only like one or two percentage point gap between Tammy and Harris in Wisconsin right now. Different polls have that number at different levels. Everything that we're seeing suggests that that is tightening.

Part of it is that Baldwin ran such an effective campaign that the Republicans essentially just abandoned their candidate in Wisconsin in 2018. And so in the final stretch, this kind of time period in that race, the Republicans pulled their ads off the air, they stopped seriously campaigning, like it just wasn't really happening. And that's when you can really run up the score.

Now, Eric Hovde, the Republican bank owner, has a multi-billion dollar California bank that he runs, is just pouring money in. And the Republican super PACs just announced $17 million in additional ad buys in Wisconsin to try to help Hovde beat Baldwin. So I think that race is turning it much more into a toss-up than a clean walk.

Now, when we have the advantage, Tammy's strengths are the people really trust her. They feel like she sees them and respects them. She's really good at engaging with people in all parts of the state. She spends a lot of time in rural Wisconsin. She has bills like the Dairy Pride Act, which requires that non-dairy

dairy beverages can't be called milk when they're on the shelves, which means something in the state of Wisconsin. The Go Pack Go Act, which says you have to be able to see the Green Bay Packers on broadcast TV, even if you're in a part of the state where the TV is coming in from Minnesota. But she also does things like Buy America legislation that ensures that when we

build stuff in the U.S., we actually source the materials from the U.S. And there are people who know that their jobs are due to her. That is a source of a lot of strength, but this is not a cakewalk race for the Senate at all. And we have similar huge fights in the House, and now we have fair maths in the state legislature. So that's a whole other battle that we're waging in a totally new way now that we've tripled the number of competitive districts at the state legislative level. It must make you a little bit

Crazy that Wisconsin is so often lumped in with the other battleground states. And I'm just curious, how do you see that? Do you think that inevitably, as you know, in the last few elections, those three have gone the same way in the end, even if by close margins? Is that still going to be the case this time? Tell us a little bit, you know, about the differences as opposed to the similarities between Wisconsin and the other battleground states.

So it's a great question, and it ties back to a piece of an earlier question I didn't speak to yet, which is African-American voters here. We have a meaningful African-American population and an extraordinary history of African-American leaders of civil rights struggles and people in all kinds of fields of endeavor. We were the first state to elect a Black woman to statewide executive office in 1978 with Val Phillips, who became our secretary of state. But it's a relatively small share of the population.

And Republicans have relentlessly targeted Black voters to try to disenfranchise them. So they passed a law in 2011 that during the deliberations over the law, there was a Republican staffer who was so infuriated by what he heard that he went public and said that when Republicans were briefed about the impact the law would have on Black voters, that they were giddy, he said, and frothing at the mouth.

Turnout in African American wards in Wisconsin plummeted after the law came into effect in 2015. In '16, it went down to closer to 50%.

And it went below 50% in '18. We're the only battleground state where African American turnout was lower in '18 than it was in '14, which is a famously low turnout year. There are amazing grassroots-led organizations in Milwaukee and other parts of the state focused specifically on Black voters. It's been a constant focus for us at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. But we're running uphill. Republicans right now are trying to put that voter ID law into the Constitution.

And to do that in Wisconsin requires passing something through back-to-back sessions of the state legislature. They've done it once. So if they win the majority in the state assembly, again, it goes into the constitution to make this law effectively permanent. But that kind of pulls back to this broader picture. So Wisconsin is a whiter state than the other battlegrounds. It's also a state that does not have

ballot initiatives the way that Michigan does. So they were able to end gerrymandering, restore voting rights, and restore reproductive freedom through ballot initiatives. Wisconsin doesn't do that. The only way to change the Constitution is through the state legislature passing it, and we've had this ultra-gerrymandered state legislature. All three states have had a dip to the right and then have come back, but it's moving the most slowly in Wisconsin because our laws are set up in such a way that it's very hard to translate popular will into public laws.

And now that we've defeated the gerrymander, if we win the state legislature this year, we might have a path to doing what Michigan did and restore union rights, for example. But right now we've had a bigger decline in union density than any other state in the country this century. And that puts us in this situation where, you know, demographically and in terms of our laws, we look like a red state. And then we organize so intensely and vote so intensely that we're able to win statewide elections by a hair's breadth. In Pennsylvania, Michigan,

In the midterms, they've won double-digit victories in races for governor and for attorney general and so forth. In Wisconsin, the 3.4% that we won the governor's race in 22 was a landslide. That was triple the market of victory from 2018. That keeps us on the edge. It keeps us on edge. The other blue wall states might be very close. There's a lot of modeling that suggests that they'll all wind up breaking the same way, but...

It's a different kind of fight in each of these states because we have different laws, we have different populations, we have different kind of structures of power. I'm in constant touch with Michigan's chair, LaVor Barnes, with the folks in Pennsylvania, especially their executive director there. But we all have different problems we're solving for, especially the way things have played out over the last 14 years in our states.

What do you anticipate the actual unfolding of Election Day to be like? It seems pretty clear that Trump and his allies are trying to find ways to kick up dust about this election. The chance that he gracefully concedes and waits until all the ballots are counted seems very low to me. The good thing is that collectively in each of the battleground states, the governors, the secretaries of state, the attorneys general, these are people who have

either are Republicans who've refused to overturn elections for Trump or they're Democrats who believe in democracy and the rule of law. And that means that the biggest, I mean, the scariest thing is the U.S. Supreme Court, but which I don't have a huge amount of faith in at this moment. But outside of that, if we can win by enough that it is really hard to litigate up to the U.S. Supreme Court, we can protect it. And I feel like

pretty confident that given the huge amounts of work that's going into preparing for scenarios around the post-election, we're going to be able to fight it out and make sure that the votes that are cast determine the winner in this election. There might be some twists and turns and ugliness along the way to be able to get there. The biggest thing that we can do is to win by more. In Wisconsin, if you win by more than one percentage point, then there's no recount.

The reason we had recounts in '16 and in '20 is because it was less than one percentage point. So if we can push the margin of victory just a little bit bigger, that can make all the difference in the world. And the bigger the margin, the earlier it gets called, essentially. Republicans, their strategy last time was to try to slow things down and then throw wrenches into the gears of democracy. And the bigger the margin, the faster we move forward. - I wanna ask you one just sort of more personal question.

Is this an adrenaline rush for you that is like what a political operative lives for an election like this? Or is this just like endless amounts of Pepto-Bismol and you'll be like up all night, sleepless nights? I mean, what's it like? Listener, he looks pretty calm. He's actually laughing. So he seems pleased, but you never know.

So it's kind of a combination of both of those. Not to be too graphic, I've had moments, not yet this cycle, I had at the end of 22 when I was just throwing up with anxiety because it felt like... Literally, huh? Literally throwing up. So will you call us if you start throwing up this time? So that will be like our own metric of panic? My hope is that we don't get there, but it can be...

I mean, sometimes the sleepless nights are happening because things are happening in the middle of the night. I was up at four in the morning on election night in 2020 when we crunched the numbers and realized that once the absentee ballots were opened, we were confident we would not lose. And we were terrified that Trump would declare victory before the count was in. So I tweeted that we were confident that Joe Biden has won Wisconsin before they'd finished counting the ballots because we knew mathematically we had it, even by a very narrow margin.

That was flagged on Twitter as election disinformation because it hadn't been called it by authorities. But it was this like very, you know, jumping out over the cliff moment. And it came out yesterday that Trump was planning to declare victory before the ballot. Exactly. You were onto it. Oh, my God. That kind of like hold your breath. Holy smokes. This is really happening moment. It happens every

fairly often than Wisconsin politics. And I both love it, but it's also overwhelming. And I need to kind of come back down to earth and touch grass. And this morning, I took a walk in the woods with my kiddos, and we went to High Holy Day services, Rosh Hashanah services last night. And that kind of thing is very important to actually be a human being in the middle of what can feel like a Titanic struggle. You have a dog too, don't you?

Always with the dogs, Jane. Always with the dogs. Don't you think Evan should get a dog? You know what? We've digressed from our main... Well, I can't help to tell you a little story. So we have a Bernie's Mountain Dog. And we got a Bernie's Mountain Dog. Did you guys put him up to this, by the way? There's a strong two-to-one dog constituency on this podcast. Burners are beautiful. The floor is yours. My parents were on a hike long before I was born.

A car pulled up and a very elegant gentleman got out of the car, opened the back door and this giant, beautiful dog bounded out. And my parents said, what kind of dog is that? And the guy said, well, when I lost my wife, I was so sad and I couldn't find hope. And I went to the doctor and the doctor wrote me a prescription for a Bernese Mountain dog. But whatever might be happening in your life, I know the solution for it is to get the same kind of dog as Pumpkin Mickler.

I feel like we better let you get back to the fight. You've got quite a battle on your hands, but it's been completely wonderful to have you with us today. Thank you so much, Ben Wickler. Thanks, Ben. Great to be with you. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me on. Really a pleasure to be with all of you. The political scene from The New Yorker will be right back.

If you've been enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening.

- Hi, this is David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. The New Yorker Festival returns on October 25th to the 27th. Now some events have already sold out, so hurry and check out the schedule. We'll be joined by Julianne Moore, Atul Gawande, Julie Nuretu, Alan Cumming, Liz Cheney, John Mulaney, Dax Shepard,

and Brian Washington. Plus, there'll be live podcast recordings and panels on politics, literature, technology, and much more. You can learn all about it at newyorker.com slash festival.

I have to say, nobody touts their state better than Ben Wickler touts Wisconsin. I mean, he makes you want to go there and, you know, buy some of that foliage. It's just amazing. Yeah, we didn't even get into the whole cheese curd factor. Exactly. That was hanging over his desk. There was a poster that we could see right behind him that said that Bratz and cheese curds were going to save democracy. So we didn't get into his theory of the case there. So what did you take away from Ben? I would say that

He wanted to have a pretty sobering message. And from the get-go, he said, you know, the polls, if anything, might be too generous. I did not come away thinking that this was going to be the election where Wisconsin breaks out and has a really overwhelming result for Democrats, that it looks like it's shaping up as another nail-biter. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to realize, as he said, that they had a seven-point polling record.

in 2016 and 2020, meaning that that's how far the numbers were off. So the idea that here we are now less than five weeks out and the guy who has his hand on the dials as much as possible is telling you,

This thing is a dead heat, despite this huge difference in how much activity there is on the ground. I mean, that's that's really remarkable. And to hear him say that he's not seeing Republican activity at the level that the Democrats are going, that's that's something I didn't know. Well, and by the way, to the point about the ground game, I will say that.

There is a belief that he really is a very, very strong organizer, particularly on the ground. And that was the overwhelming message I heard when I talked with activists, particularly Democratic activists in Madison was, you know, Ben Wickler alone might be worth half a point. That's what somebody said to me. And even if that's hyperbole, I think in a very close relationship.

It certainly could make a difference, along with these questions that we were just getting to about, you know, are Republicans, did they make a mistake by outsourcing their ground game to Elon Musk and not handling it themselves in the traditional way that the two parties have? That's an interesting question. But I will say this for Kamala Harris. There's really not a very concrete or viable path to the presidency that doesn't include Republicans.

her win in Wisconsin. So it has to be a sobering conversation from that point of view. Yeah, I'm curious how you guys are feeling. Here we are now, four weeks out or so, and I'm getting on a plane tomorrow morning going to Michigan to see Harris where I saw her in August. And I think it's important to try to get a feel for the energy level right now, the enthusiasm. What are you picking up? I mean, this is, I know this is a, an

amorphous factor. But everybody senses one way or the other. And one of the things you hear from people these days is it feels like things have dissipated a bit since the convention. Yeah, I mean, I think there is still to the extent that it is one of the most important intangibles in an election, the sense of momentum or which party is headed towards it.

I haven't seen anything that suggests that Trump and Vance have gotten back their mojo. If anything, Trump's comments recently on the campaign trail in his rallies suggest a guy who is ratcheting up the rhetoric because he's panicking a bit. The crowds are not

overwhelming that are showing up for Trump. I will say that when I was in Madison recently, it was literally gridlock in the city. It was overwhelming and a lot of excitement among young people, which is really important, especially in some of these battleground states like Michigan, where you're going

The immovability is where we've kicked back into. Before I came over here, I looked at the polling average on 538. It's about 2.9 percent in the national numbers for Harris right now. That's more or less exactly where it was several weeks ago. Even though she was widely judged to have won the debate, it didn't have a durable and lasting effect on the overall numbers. And there's certainly no indication in these battleground states either.

And I think that, you know, for that reason, anybody, it seems to me, who comes telling you, well, we know that, you know, like the outcome or she's going to assemble a lead that's outside of the margin of error. I just think reliably speaking, we're going to have to consider this a too close to call election, most likely.

And in the end, I think maybe not Election Day or the day after a prolonged fight. And that's what I think we're sort of hearing from him also that they're preparing for. Well, he hasn't reached the throwing up stage yet. So maybe he'll call us back and let us know when that moment comes.

Well, listen, guys, thank you so much. Thank you, Susan. Thank you, Evan. It's great, as always, to be with you. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Jane. Well, this was a great guest to have. Thank you.

This has been the political scene from The New Yorker. I'm Jane Mayer, and we had research assistants today from Alex D'Elia. Our producer is Julia Nutter, and our editor is Gianna Palmer. Mixing by Mike Kuchman. Stephen Valentino is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thanks so much for listening. My name is Madeline Barron.

I'm a journalist for The New Yorker. I focus on stories where powerful people or institutions are doing something that's harming people or harming someone or something in some way. And so my job is to report that so exhaustively that we can reveal what's actually going on and present it to the public.

You know, for us at In the Dark, we're paying equal attention to the reporting and the storytelling. And we felt a real kinship with The New Yorker, like the combination of the deeply reported stories that The New Yorker is known for, but also the quality of those stories, the attention to narrative. If I could give you only one reason to subscribe to The New Yorker, it would be... Maybe this is not the answer you're looking for, but...

I just don't think that there is any other magazine in America that combines so many different types of things into a single issue as a New Yorker. You know, like you have poetry, you have theater reviews, you have restaurant recommendations, which for some reason I read even though I don't live in New York City. And all of those things are great, but I haven't even mentioned like

the other half of the magazine, which is deeply reported stories that honestly are the first things that I read. You know, I'm a big fan of gymnastics and people will say, oh, we're so lucky to live in the era of Simone Biles, which I agree. We're also so lucky to live in the era of Lawrence Wright, Jane Mayer, Ronan Farrow, Patrick Radden Keefe. And so to me, it's like I can't imagine not reading these writers.

You can have all the journalism, the fiction, the film, book, and TV reviews, all the cartoons, just by going right now to newyorker.com slash dark. Plus, there's an incredible archive, a century's worth of award-winning work just waiting for you. That's newyorker.com slash dark. And thanks. From PR.