Madison native Ben Wikler came up short in his bid to become chair of the Democratic National Committee. But that hasn’t stopped him from seizing the national stage to offer what he calls a “field guide” for the party’s future.

On Friday Wikler kicks off an 11-city tour to promote his new book, This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy. The former chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party will be joined at the Overture Center by Pete Buttigieg, former U.S. secretary of transportation and a potential 2028 candidate for president.

After losing the election for DNC chair 15 months ago, Wikler, 45, says he was able to “step back from everything and really think through, step by step, what can people who share my sense that we can’t go on like this, what can we do? The book lays out the answer to the question.”

Big-vision books are often a vehicle for plotting a future run for elected office. Is Wikler, as has been rumored, considering a possible run for U.S. Senate in 2028, when U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s third term will end?

That’s a “down the road” decision, Wikler insists in an interview at his favorite neighborhood bar and grill, the Laurel Tavern, on Madison’s near west side. That’s where, in 2020, Wikler told then Supreme Court candidate — and now Chief Justice — Jill Karofsky that the Democratic Party he chaired was not only endorsing her but would make sure her campaign “wasn’t outspent.”

Wikler’s prescription for change starts with Democratic leaders who he says must convince concerned citizens — Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans — to use their personal “superpower” to “unrig” the current system.

In his book, he describes the “rigged” system as “MAGA Republicans” using “that power to shred anything that benefits the general public in order to ensure that the ultra-rich get ultra-richer and strip away the rights and freedoms of anyone who doesn’t look like Donald Trump.”

Still, “superpower”?

“Your superpower is not just your vote,” Wikler explains in the interview. “It’s your ability to build a group of people that engage with a whole lot of other people to vote — and not just in presidential elections, but in races for governor, attorney general, city council, county supervisors…Every one of these levels of government is going to play a role in getting us out of this.”

Former Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Martha Laning started the “snowflake” system of local organizing in which paid regional Democratic staffers meet local citizens to build — and maintain — networks of shared interests that lead up to winning elections, Wikler notes.

Keeping those systems in place year-round has led to Wisconsin Democrats winning many statewide elections, Wikler says.

Wikler has a simple message to Democratic leaders nationally, who are often volunteers who must shut down their organizations after elections.

“It is worth investing in building an enduring political infrastructure, so that the Democratic Party can be more than an anonymous series of text messages on your phone asking for money [and] can actually be a presence in the life of a community.”

Wikler’s book recounts Wisconsin’s political “resurrection” from the “Wisco Inferno” years of 2010 to 2017.

In that era, Wikler says, Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators passed the union-busting Act 10, gerrymandered legislative districts to guarantee majorities in future elections, passed a right-to-work law, dissolved the Government Accountability Board, required a photo ID to vote, and elected conservative Supreme Court justices that rubber-stamped all those changes.

But then came the “Forward from the Backlash” era of 2018-2026 that started with Walker’s defeat by Gov. Tony Evers, Wikler writes. With that win, “Democracy in Wisconsin was no longer in free fall.” (Wikler served as state party chair from 2019-2025.)

After that, Democrats narrowly defeated Republican pushes for a veto-overriding majority in the Legislature, re-elected Evers in 2022, and, in four subsequent Supreme Court elections, helped seat a liberal court majority that forced the redrawing of legislative boundaries in 2024 that give Democrats a chance in November of winning control of the Legislature.

At times before close elections, Wikler writes, “I was literally throwing up with anxiety.”

In the book, Wikler calls for many changes to the nation’s political system, starting with doing away with the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate that requires 60 votes to take up important issues.

The filibuster bans “majority-rule democracy in the Senate” since it requires 60 votes to consider a party’s priorities, Wikler writes. But because America is so divided, “Neither party is likely to win 60 Senate seats again.”

But those Senate rules do not require the same 60 votes to confirm conservative appointees and to "cut taxes on the rich,” Wikler notes.

Wikler's agenda for America also includes:

• Passage of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which would award Electoral College votes to whoever won the popular vote nationwide. Eighteen states have passed it, although Wisconsin has not.

If it passed, the Electoral College “would be a formality,” Wikler writes. “Candidates for president will have to fight for every vote in the country and every vote will count the same.”

• Reform of the nine-member U.S. Supreme Court to “depoliticize the court, address its corruption and wrest it away from control by partisan special-interests.”

Possible reforms include replacing the current system of lifetime appointments with 18-year terms, giving “senior justice” status to retirees. That would force Justice Clarence Thomas off the bench, Wikler says. Another option: add justices.

• Reforming how the 435 members of the U.S. House are elected to end the “asymmetric dysfunction” that prevents the House from functioning. Reforms could include “fusion voting,” which allows multiple parties to nominate the same candidate, or “nonpartisan” primaries like those in California, Washington and Alaska.

“Bring on the reforms,” Wikler says.

• Elect a Democratic majority in Congress that would pass the For the People Act, which would prohibit the partisan gerrymandering of U.S. House districts and require that districts be drawn by independent committees in each state. It would also allow automatic voter registration and same-day voting and make it easier to cast mail-in ballots.

• Pass the Right to Organize Act, guaranteeing unions the right to organize and ban right-to-work laws like the one Wisconsin enacted in 2015.

• Pass the Women's Health Protection Act, which would repeal abortion bans adopted by some states and set a national standard allowing that procedure.

Wikler writes in his book that Wisconsin’s 2028 U.S. Senate election could be pivotal to the nation’s political future.

“Defeating Ron Johnson…while winning the White House and House, could be the race that cinches the Senate majority for Democrats and opens the path” to making sure Republicans can’t gerrymander the nation after the 2030 Census.

A couple of weeks before Wikler’s book debuted he began popping up regularly on social media due to a new partnership with the liberal Civic Media organization, a network of online news and local radio stations. This video series, dubbed “This is Wisconsin,” aims to “tell the stories of working Wisconsinsites.” Wikler has shown up at Kwik Trip to talk about the high price of gas, and recorded a bit at Mickie’s Dairy Bar about the high price of everything.

Given Wikler’s public relations blitz this summer — six of the 11 book tour stops will be in Wisconsin, for example — the first “Ben for Senate” yard signs may go up in Madison next year.