Ben Wikler on “The Daily Show”
Ben Wikler, Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair, appeared Monday night on “The Daily Show” and made an impression on host Jon Stewart. That’s not easy to do for a political operative. Wikler, 43, a founding producer for Al Franken’s Air America radio show and former national adviser to MoveOn, is running for Democratic National Committee chair.
“The passion that you’re bringing, that feels like what it needs in this moment,” Stewart said, remarking that DNC chairs he’s interviewed before felt much more corporate.
“You are approaching [politics] from a much more populist, bottom-up standpoint than I’ve heard in the past. Other than Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.” At that Dean reference, the audience applauded.
I’ve mentioned Wikler in the context of the DNC chair’s race twice already. The two front runners for the position are Wikler and Minnesota’s DFL chair Ken Martin. I met Martin in passing this year at a North Carolina party meeting. He’s known, experienced, impressive, and connected. But indulge me. How I met Wikler says worlds about the man.
Netroots Nation held its 2019 conference in Philadelphia. A few weeks earlier, I’d sent Wikler a link to For The Win via IM. At an after-hours party in a hotel suite packed elbow-to-elbow, I’d slipped into an adjacent bedroom for a conversation where the din was somewhat less. While attendees in the main room sipped beers, ate cheesesteaks, and traded political gossip, a guy sat in the corner of the bedcoom in a cushioned chair with his nose in a laptop: working. Seriously, working. I caught a glimpse of his name badge: Ben Wikler.
When he came up for air, I walked over and introduced myself. He recognized my name.
“Didn’t you send me a message recently?” Wikler asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Did I respond to it?” Wikler asked, recalling what I’d messaged about.
No, he hadn’t.
“I’m putting you in touch with my training director,” Wikler said, pulling up an email form and e-introducing us on the spot. I had a 45-minute call with her the next week.
That’s the kind of chair Democrats need running their national party. A guy who understands and appreciates field work and is passionate about boots on the ground work. It’s what Stewart saw across the table last night.
Update: Let me say again, There is no The Democratic Party. A lot of the negatives Stewart reacts to as “the Democratic Party” are more a feature of the Beltway caucus fundraising arms — the DCCC and DSCC — than activists farther down the food chain. But the DNC chair gets more media face time than the heads of those groups and can set a new tone and agenda, as Howard Dean did and caught grief for inside the Beltway:
“We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years,” Dean likes to say. “If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore.”
50-state worked while Dean lasted.