What is the Democratic Party? What Could It Be?

What It Covers

Ezra Klein interviews former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler about the structural failures of the Democratic Party, why it polls below Donald Trump as a brand, and what rebuilding the party as a genuine grassroots organizing institution — rather than a messaging apparatus — would require in practical terms.

Key Questions Answered

• •Voter psychology — constellation model: Voters who follow politics casually form candidate impressions from two or three salient facts, which function like stars forming a constellation. Once a star is visible, campaigns cannot remove it — they can only add new stars to shift the overall picture. Campaigns should identify which one or two defining frames they want voters to hold and drive those relentlessly rather than broadcasting broad issue lists.
• •Split-ticket analysis as performance benchmark: In Wisconsin 2024, Harris lost by under one percentage point while Tammy Baldwin won the Senate race in the same state. Harris outperformed Biden in Wisconsin compared to all other battleground states. Parties in close states should track down-ballot versus presidential performance gaps as a concrete metric for evaluating ground-game effectiveness rather than treating statewide losses as total failures.
• •Scott Walker loophole — state party financing: Wisconsin law allows the state Democratic Party to receive unlimited donations and transfer unlimited funds directly to state candidates, bypassing federal contribution caps. Wikler credits this mechanism as central to Wisconsin Democrats' ability to compete against wealthier GOP donors, including Elon Musk's spending in a state Supreme Court race. National party committees now have similar expanded capacity post-Supreme Court rulings.
• •Hyperlocal organizing as cost-effective voter contact: Building year-round neighborhood teams who personally know residents — including apartment building contacts and rural farm schedules — costs substantially less than running broadcast television ads hundreds of times to reach a fraction of relevant voters. Wisconsin Democrats built hundreds of such neighborhood teams statewide, and Wikler argues this model is replicable in any state party with modest investment and volunteer coordination.
• •High-leverage donation targets for blue-state residents: For people in non-competitive states seeking electoral impact, Wikler identifies the State and Local Election Alliance (SLEA/SLAY), The States Project, and giving circles pooling around $50 per participant as higher-efficiency vehicles than national party donations. State legislative races in competitive chambers can be decided by hundreds of votes, and a North Carolina Supreme Court race lost by 401 votes directly enabled Republican redistricting that shifted the U.S. House majority.