This week on The Brief: Lessons from Wisconsin and why public education is Republicans’ 'glass jaw'
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This week on The Brief, hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld discussed updates on the situation in Ukraine before pivoting to talk about the political landscape for Democrats in Wisconsin, a crucial swing state that will also be a big battleground later this year. To speak on these issues, they brought on guest Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. As Wikler recently wrote of recent elections in Wisconsin, “In a 50/50 state, during a tough year for Democrats, we won more than we lost. Out of 276 races where WisDems actively engaged, investing in organizing, digital, and/or mail to voters, we won 147 of the races.”
Read on to learn more about what Democrats across the country can learn from this successful party committee!
For the first segment of the show, Moulitsas and Eleveld recapped the dynamic ground situation in Ukraine as Russia shifts its military strategy to press and close in on cities. As the conflict drags on and Ukraine receives more assistance to strengthen its military, Ukraine is only going to get stronger—Moulitsas noted—in stark contrast to Russia, whose military equipment is sorely lacking in quality: “These are like 40, 50 year old tanks. They’re not maintained, they’re in terrible shape … they’ll be able to cobble together a certain number, but their equipment is becoming older and less capable, while Ukraine’s equipment is actually NATO stock. It’s getting better and higher tech.”
The hosts then welcomed Wikler onto the show to offer his insights into Democratic messaging that works in Wisconsin and important takeaways from recent elections to keep in mind as we head towards November.
Wisconsin, a Rust Belt state that always seems to be close, will likely play a key role in how the midterm elections in November unfold. Wisconsin had the biggest slate of local elections the the country of this year on April 5, with no statewide candidates on the ballot—just school board candidates, county executives, county board, city council, “the folks who actually kind of do the work of making local government work.” Traditionally, these are nonpartisan elections. This time, however, the Republican Party [in Wisconsin] decided to go all in. As Wikler explained,
They predicted and expected and wanted to have a Red Wave across the state. Right wing top radio hosts started having slates of local candidates on their shows and publishing lists of local candidates to support on their websites … local Republican parties bought full page, front page ads listing candidates they endorsed and listing boilerplate Republican talking points about CRT and trans kids and open border laws—all their hot-button attempts to divide and distract and demonize and turn people against each other. They not only had the Republican Party transferring money into local county parties and into local candidates’ accounts—they also had the kind of dark money operations that you normally see in federal contests … and the biggest funders on the right poured their money into [attack ads].
“As we saw this happening, our side decided we were going to fight back,” Wikler added.
Much of the fight in Wisconsin has centered around public education and what children are being taught in schools. And that’s where Wisconsin Democrats decided to push back and take their fight to the Republicans. As Wikler elaborated, they ran local, digital ads that utilized the race-class narrative framework: start with a shared value, then explain what Republicans are doing and why they’re doing it, and then go to a call to come together and fight back against them:
The message was: ‘We all want schools where every child, no matter what they look like or where they live, can thrive. But Republicans are demonizing teachers, and parents, and students; banning books; and trying to divide us in order to advance their agenda of defunding public education. We need to come back, reject these divisive tactics, and elect people who actually believe in public schools so that our kids can have a chance at a better future.’
We ran those [ads] targeting Democratic voters in school board races all over the state, and the overwhelming share of [our] candidates in those races won those races, because we were providing a frame for what the Republicans were doing, and then making that into an attack that actually unites our side completely, which is well-funded, good public schools. And this is the deepest kind of division in Wisconsin politics going back to Scott Walker a decade ago—attacking teachers and massively defunding public education. It’s the Republicans’ glass jaw, and it is something where we still have a major advantage. And we cannot do the Virginia thing of effectively ceding education to Republicans. So we just punched back on this stuff.
Eleveld noted that as education is one of Democrats’ core issues, it can be a really important one to take a stand on to draw a contrast between Democratic values and Republicans’ poorly disguised attempts at defunding education:
[One of the reasons] Democrats have owned this issue for so long is because Democrats are known for wanting to fund education. And that was something, I think, that the Republicans in this culture war that they’re trying to push about, ‘Oh, you know, Democrats are trying to make you feel bad about being white; Democrats are trying to indoctrinate your kids,’ or whatever, it gets away from the fact that they don’t want to invest in education. I think that’s one thing that gets lost in that debate if you don’t see it.
Wikler agreed: “100%. And we have to point it out. We have to say, ‘Why are they demonizing public schools? Because they want to defund public education and close these schools down.’” Wikler also pointed out how unrealistic it is to give every kid a voucher to [go] to private school, especially given the fact that in rural areas, there are hardly any private schools to attend in the first place. The biggest Republican donors are also in lock-step supporting these attacks on public schools.
Democrats can strike back by taking Republican attacks and turning them into a counterattack on funding public schools, which is a deeply popular thing, Wikler recommended:
On the same day that there was this huge Republican effort to win these elections, we passed the overwhelming share of school funding referenda across the state of Wisconsin … And building on that core identification, even if people are panicked about the state of education in general, they overwhelmingly support and like the schools that their kids go to in their local community. It’s sort of like the way people feel about members of Congress. Our side is pro-school, and theirs is not. So it’s an area where we have a giant opportunity to punch back.
Wikler also thinks that the Republican strategy is a failing one, as every time they use the most divisive and incendiary and demonizing tactics to try to split people, and once they get power, they try to grab money out of public services that everyone relies on and transfer it to rich people. “That is the one thing that they do, every single time. Explaining that that’s their agenda and how we’re going to fight back against it is critical to how we’re going to win,” he concluded.
Moulitsas chimed in recalled what guest Jenifer Fernandez Ancona was saying last week about messaging and how Wikler’s words seemed aligned with what she had said:
It strikes me how the parallel to what she was really urging Democrats to do, and what you just said you yourself did, which was: First, you talk about what Democrats stand for, what our values are for, Two is, you point to the villain, right? The Republican Party and their values, how they’re trying to undermine everything that is good and wonderful. And then you have a hero, which is, ‘Together, we can come [together], we can vote these people out, we can save education.’
Given this and how the strategy Wikler described helped get the base out, what can we expect in the coming months? Moulitsas framed his question around how this messaging framework might resonate on a larger scale to meaningfully affect turnout: “This is the big fear about November. Can we get our base out? Looking at the results of this weirdly timed election, almost probably designed to minimize public participation, what does that tell you about November? Does it give you hope, do you think the success will carry over? Or is November going to be a whole different electorate, and you’ve got to just start from scratch and figure that out separately?”
Wikler cited several optimistic outcomes that he has seen that should give Democrats hope for November:
The total number of voters is very small. But here’s the really striking thing. In our spring election, the last time we had a spring election with no statewide candidate on the ballot … was 2014. And that year, there were only [505,000] Wisconsinites who voted. This time it was more than 940,000. It was an 86% uptick from the last time … The giant leap [happened in] the places where both sides joined the fight—the numbers shot up. And that’s what we’re going to see in the fall. I think the turnout will be incredibly high … [but] you have to explain the race, what the other side is doing. You have to ground it in a shared value, and you have to have a hero to empower voters to feel like they have the power to be able to make a difference … Wisconsin was the tipping point state in both of the last presidential elections. So you have to stop [anti-education] bills from going through, and [reelecting incumbent Tony Evers] as governor is the key to making that happen.
“We can do all that if we turn out all the Democratic voters we need to … there was record turnout in 2018 and 2020. It’s not about getting someone who’s a nonvoter who’s never voted to vote—although we want to do that too,” Wikler insisted. “But it’s critically to make sure folks that got engaged during the Trump era stay engaged in the fight. And we have to make clear in no uncertain terms to these voters that everything they voted for and fought for is absolutely on the line again in 2022.”
Moulitsas asked Wikler to share how viewers can help Wisconsin Democrats this fall. Wikler replied that interested parties could donate, volunteer, or work with the Wisconsin Democrats in this crucial cycle in the bellwether state. Wisconsin Democrats’ priorities remain consistent, and Wikler explained that the organization is going to spend the whole year calling individuals who voted absentee, as well as mobilizing and building teams across the state of Wisconsin who can talk to voters.
The full episode can be viewed below:
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