Ben Wikler and Geoff Bennett discuss the Democrats' plan on 'Settle In'

Geoff Bennett:

While there is no shortage of analysis about what's wrong with the Democratic Party, Ben Wikler is focused on what Democrats plan to do about it.

The former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair has written a new book. "This Is the Plan," laying out lessons from one of the most closely divided states in the country and what they could mean for Democrats nationwide.

I spoke to him for the latest episode of our PBS News podcast "Settle In." Here's a clip of that conversation.

I want to return to what you said about the systemic reforms that you are calling for, eliminating the filibuster, reforming the Supreme Court, effectively replacing the Electoral College.

When Democrats controlled the White House and Congress during the Biden presidency, they failed, chose not to enact many of these same reforms. So why should voters believe that Democrats would behave differently if given the option again?

Ben Wikler, Author, "This Is the Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy": Well, the first thing is to choose Democrats who are ready to take action if they have the power to do so.

Now, some of these things came very close to passing during the last Democratic administration. The national gerrymandering ban was contained in the For the People Act, and that passed the U.S. House. It was the first bill that the House majority passed in the U.S. Senate. There were almost enough senators to amend the filibuster to allow pro-democracy reforms to go through.

And Joe Biden called for that to happen, said he would sign it into law. The two senators who stood in the way on the Democratic side are not in the Senate anymore. That's Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Every major Democratic nominee for Senate that I'm tracking across the country is committed to either amending or ending the filibuster to do pro-democracy, pro-voting reforms if they get into power.

And that's a really big shift from where we have been just recently. Down the road, we will think through who will be in the presidential primary. And I don't know who the right person to meet the moment is going to be. But I do think that it's on all of us to look out for people that are not going to try to restore some status quo that, frankly, was broken in and of itself, but rather want to move to a future where things actually work for everyone.

And the thing that I kept kind of bumping into as I was working on the book is that to shift the way our institutions work in order to build a better democracy is actually in line with the best and oldest traditions in our political system. At our country's founding, there were horrific problems and crimes. There was slavery. There were -- only about 6 percent of people had the right to vote when the Constitution was enacted.

But there was also embed in The Federalist Papers and the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence the fundamental idea that the legitimacy of government came from support of the majority of, as James Madison wrote, the great body of the people, that that was the basic idea.

And over and over, we changed the number of Supreme Court justices, we changed the size of the House, we amended the Constitution, we added states, we changed the way people were elected. All those changes were commonplace. It was a matter of course that, as the country evolved, we were going to adjust how these things worked to be able to meet the moment.

And the circle of freedom kept expanding in fits and starts and contractions sometimes. But we became a better democracy over time. And then things got stuck. About half-a-century ago, it's like it all got frozen in place. The filibuster got more and more restrictive. We stopped amending the Constitution. The House got stuck about a century ago.

And now it's treated as though all these things were etched in stone, written from on high. We can't change any of those things. We have to wriggle through these tiny passageways to make any kind of change. And right now, the way our rules are set up, it's easy to cut taxes for rich people. It's easy to confirm Supreme Court justices who want to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip away protections for people across the country.

But it's very, very hard to do anything that helps protect the right to vote or supports people organizing a union or doing things that most people across the country across party are crying out for. So we don't have to live like this. We can elect people and then advocate and push those people to deliver changes to how laws are made that then allow us to make laws that serve everyone, that serve the common interest.

Geoff Bennett:

And you can watch that full episode and more from our "Settle In" podcast on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.