This Week's Interviews | Ben Wikler, Megan Rapinoe, Elliot Page, and Karolina Wydra

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions, they've got answers.

**Ben Wikler** (0:05)
Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:08)
Lima.

**Desi Lydic** (0:09)
How do you say, where's the restroom in Spanish?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:12)
Dónde está el baño?

**SPEAKER_5** (0:14)
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:17)
Technically, no. Spiritually, yes.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:20)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:23)
That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?

**SPEAKER_7** (0:27)
Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:30)
This episode is brought to you by Facebook.
So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:01)
You're listening to Comedy Central.

**SPEAKER_8** (1:23)
Hello, welcome back to The Daily Show.

**Jon Stewart** (1:26)
Oh, my goodness, tonight, a political organizer, a strategist, former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, the author of the new book, This Is The Plan, How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy, the people's program, Ben Wikler! This is The Plan!

**Ben Wikler** (1:57)
This is The Plan.

**Jon Stewart** (1:58)
And let me remind the people so they may think to themselves, Ben Wikler's got a plan. I don't know Ben Wikler. I don't know why he would have a plan.
Talk to me a little bit about the genesis of this, because you ran the DNC in Wisconsin. And for those who do not know the story of Wisconsin this century, is Scott Walker and a Republican takeover of a state where they tried to rig the maps, they tried to rig the courts, they tried to do super majorities of a relatively purple state. You helped devise The Plan to fight that, successfully so. Talk about what happened there.

**Ben Wikler** (2:36)
Absolutely. So, and thank you for having me.

**SPEAKER_10** (2:38)
That's all the time we have.

**Ben Wikler** (2:42)
So, my state, Wisconsin, which has a deep progressive tradition and a deep far-right tradition. Joe McCarthy is from Wisconsin. Yes.

**Jon Stewart** (2:50)
So is fighting Bob.

**Ben Wikler** (2:52)
So is fighting Bob LaFollette. It's the place where workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, the Social Security Act was written by a Wisconsinite. All these things, great things came from our state, progressive taxation, first state to ratify the 19th Amendment, and also this far-right street that runs through the state's history. We zigzag, sort of like the country.
But in 2010, there was this huge right-wing wave fueled in part by Citizens United. Yes. And my senator, Russ Feingold, who I interned for, was my political hero. He passed campaign finance reform to get big money out of politics. He was swept out, replaced by Ron Johnson. In the state legislature, Republicans won, had been Democratic. They won majorities in both chambers. They won the governorship. But when they came into power, they didn't just do the right-wing things that they talked about. They immediately tried to rig the system permanently, so they'd never lose control. They attacked unions. They basically declared war on teachers, created a teacher crisis in the state. They rigged our maps more than the country is gerrymandered right now. They passed one of the most extreme voter suppression laws in the nation. The judge said it was the most extreme anti-voting law in the nation.
The next election, 2012, Democrats won state-wide, Barack Obama won, Tammy Baldwin won in the US. Senate race. Republicans' majority in the state legislature grew, even though they got less votes than the Democrats, because they rigged the system so they'd never lose control.

**Jon Stewart** (4:18)
They were rigging the state legislature so that they would always have a majority or supermajority or something akin to that.

**Ben Wikler** (4:25)
At that point, majority. They went for supermajorities later.

**Jon Stewart** (4:28)
Where's the Wisconsin Supreme Court in that moment?

**Ben Wikler** (4:32)
Wisconsin State Supreme Court was almost evenly divided. There was an incredibly close State Supreme Court race in the spring of 2011 Republicans held on to their majority by less than one percentage point.
And that meant that the state had a state Supreme Court that rubber stamped everything they did. So basically, Wisconsin was...

**Jon Stewart** (4:51)
All the maps, everything.

**Ben Wikler** (4:52)
All the maps, the voter suppression law. They basically allowed Scott Walker and his friends and cronies, the Koch Brothers Network, the sort of right far right billionaire donor network to break election laws. And then they changed the campaign finance and election laws to suit their model of winning elections.