People are frustrated about “the establishment” in Democratic politics.
So, I asked Ben Wikler: To you, what is “the establishment”?
His answer:
“In a way the establishment is the people who want things to go back to the way they were or stay the same way that they are now. And so many people who other people see as being part of the establishment will tell you how frustrated they are at how stuck things can feel. That, in fact, there’s kind of a secret coalition of a lot of people that are involved in politics and government and — a lot of people that aren’t — who want things to change.
I was struck by this when I ran for DNC chair. You know, the Democratic National Committee is like the ultimate embodiment of “the establishment.” And I spoke to every DNC member. And, to a person, they were frustrated; they wanted change. They wound up, you know, voting for the person that they knew rather than the new guy who’d been focused on Wisconsin. So didn’t win that race. Totally honored that.
But, in this moment in our country, the overwhelming majority of the country does not want to go back. And they recognize that what’s happening now is not working. It’s not working for any of us.
And I think that Democrats can fall into this trap of pointing out when Donald Trump or the GOP smash something, attack something, defund something, that we can react by saying, ‘we’ve got to defend it, we’ve got to rebuild it, we’ve got to go back to the way it was.’ Even though, all of us know that the way things were before, it may have been normal, but that didn’t mean it was OK.”
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Perhaps a far more interesting topic for Wisconsin residents: the explosive growth in out of state political spending….. Wikler seemed to be an effective enabler.
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People listen to the stupid-smart guys, like him. Then they’re genuinely baffled when there’s a Kalashnikov pointed at their head as they’re staring at a cinder block wall behind the politburo headquarters. In a functional society, this clown would be a pariah. I have precisely zero empathy for his plight in NYC. He endorsed it. Now he can eat it, good and hard.
