This Is The Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy

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From the Publisher Q&A With Ben Wikler What inspired you to write This Is The Plan, and why do you believe this moment is so critical for American democracy? What our country is going through now—a soul-ripping, mind-rending nightmare of corrupt authoritarianism in which a far-right candidate takes power on the back of economic discontent and culture wars and then uses his victory to claim a mandate for a sweeping, lawless assault on democracy itself— happened first in Wisconsin. Wisconsin circa 2011–2017 was the United States of America in the Trump era. But we Wisconsinites fought back. We fought, and we fought, and we fought. And, in time, we won, and we won, and we won. This strategy that worked to revitalize democracy in my own state can work nationwide. I wrote this book to inspire people to join that fight, and to provide a road map for how we can travel from this moment of crisis and despair to a future with a thriving democracy and a government that delivers for all of us. Your book promises not just diagnosis, but solutions. What is one of the key strategies you outline for reversing democratic decline in the United States? Fights for political power at every level of government are, in fact, interconnected. American political power is like the energy flowing through an electrical grid: short out one substation, and the lights flicker in the next neighborhood. The winners of races for local office oversee decisions about election administration that affect presidential campaigns. The outcomes at every level depend on the outcomes at every other. That means that, if you want to unrig American politics, you can’t focus on one single election. You need to build a permanent campaign that contests for power at every level. You need to build a community—with teams of people, working shoulder to shoulder from the grassroots up—that takes action day by day and year by year. There’s a word for it: organizing. It’s not the only thing that matters, but it’s something every one of us can do. Many people feel politically exhausted or powerless right now. How does This Is The Plan speak to readers who want change but don’t know where to start? In Wisconsin, there was a time not too long ago when it seemed like all hope was lost. A time when every day brought a new avalanche of migraine-inducing headlines, when relatives broke off contact with each other because of the bitterness of their political disagreements, and when regular people felt powerless as far-right billionaires ripped the state apart and deposited the most valuable chunks in their offshore bank accounts. Today, thanks to the work of thousands of people who rolled up their sleeves and got to work, our state is a thriving democracy. This book tells you how you can do the same thing. I map out a slew of ways to take action, organizations to join, and tactics to try. Most importantly, as the book argues, civic engagement is habit-forming. Taking action feels good. Becoming part of something greater than yourself— living in service to your highest ideals—generates joy, connects people to one another, and helps them feel better about themselves and the world around them. Grassroots energy is a renewable resource. When you use it, you make more of it. You’ve spent years organizing and leading political movements. What lessons from real-world campaigns most shaped the ideas in this book? The lesson that Wisconsin politics has imprinted on my brain is that the number of votes separating a future of crisis, unraveling, and tyranny from a future of democracy, opportunity, and freedom is often tiny, compared to the overall number of votes cast in the election. If just 114,885 Trump voters—spread in the right proportions across the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—had flipped their votes over to Kamala Harris, she would have won. That’s less than 0.1 percent of the votes cast nationwide. How about the GOP’s US House majority? In 2024, that was the product of just 7,309 votes across three ultra-close House races. This can be maddening, when we fall just short. But it can also be wildly motivating. The trick is to figure out what you personally can do to make a difference, where and when it counts. Which often means focusing on races far more obscure than the presidential contests that vacuum up all the public attention. It’s usually very, very hard to persuade someone to change their mind—about whether to vote, or about whom to vote for. Just think how hard it would be for someone to convince you to change your vote. But we don’t need to persuade everyone. We need to persuade enough people to win. The goal of this book is to equip you to do exactly that. Is this book all about winning elections, or does it also talk about what should be done afterwards? For those who want to defeat Trumpism—and, even more importantly, end the anti-democratic doom loop, rising oligarchy, and economic misrule that afflicts our country—it’s not enough t

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