U. S. Politicians say democrats should fear the Election Results whats in there warning any candidate to fonts of the left could face the same defeat as the u. K. s opposition labor leader Jeremy Corbett but is this really true what lessons can the u. S. Draw from the vote across the atlantic this is exciting story. Hello there a very warm welcome to the program im Julia Mcdonald well the style of the u. K. s Prime MinisterBoris Johnson is frequently compared to that of us President Donald Trump the johnsons want to resign ending victory in the u. K. s latest general election u. S. Politicians are paying very close attention to what happened and its opened up a major debate amongst the democrats president ial candidate joe biden the liberal platform of johnsons main opponent Jeremy Corben for labors defeat and hes warning his poncy against moving too far to the left ahead of the 2020 president ial election he and all those doggy britains election result should serve as a wake up call for their party. Well lets take a closer look at some of the Democratic Front runners 1st up is joe biden after nearly 4 decades as a senator from delaware he served as Vice President under former president barack obama is also at the center of president trumps impeachment inquiry then there is Elizabeth Warren she served as a u. S. Senator for massachusetts since 2013 she is a leader of the partys liberals and has proposed counseling up to 50000 dollars of student debt for millions of us citizens theres Bernie Sanders he was a u. S. Representative for 16 years before being elected to the senate in 2006 where he represents vermont he wants free tuition at public colleges a 15. 00 minimum hourly wage and universal health care and then theres people to judge hes been mayor of south bend in indiana since 2012 hes a supporter of the legislation of same sex marriages. So lets bring in our guests joining us by skype from new york is Lincoln Mitchell an associate Research Scholar at Columbia University saltsman institute thomas gift is a lecturer of Political Science at University College of london and he joins us from london and eric ham is a political analyst and contributor to the washington diplomat newspaper he joins us from washington d. C. Gents a very warm welcome to you all those lots to talk about Lincoln Mitchell i want to start with you given the results that weve just seen in the u. K. It what should the democrats be reflecting on in terms of choosing their candidate it well i want to just begin as a democrat theres no real the democrats you you know its not Nancy Pelosi Chuck schumer time present a couple governors getting in a room its a whole lot of many people are not even democrats that will make a decision over the next few months having said that i dont want to reach into the election the you could work. It was driven to a great extent by one issue breaks it which obviously is not to be an issue in the United States and additionally the electorate you know you cant have a lot of people may not be aware of this its much wider than it is here in United States and the racial divisions in the elections here thats a big issue so i want to be and i want to be sure to reach you much into it on the other hand if we nominate a candidate who is both as far left and as kind of unlikable and as antisemitic if Jeremy Corbyn were going to be in trouble but nobody like that is among the front runner so that seems to me to be not too concerned about that erick com i saw you nodding there im wondering if there is a tune far left in the u. K. Is that were too far right in the u. S. Well some might say thats the case that there is a too far right in the United States but again this is a party that is from the controlled by President Donald Trump and we see that even though President Donald Trumps up polling numbers simply have remained at around the 38 to 43 percent range this is still a president that many believe could get reelected and also even if you look at in pietschmann if you look at some of those key states that could control or could. Determine the the outcome of the a coming election in those states President Donald Trump is still polling very well and being very competitive with his closest competitor namely president i mean former Vice President joe biden in terms of the American Voters right now polls are no where as early very early stage in the in the field is kind of crowded in terms of candidates but right now polls still a generic democrat if i can put it like that could be trump but how much does kind of saleability matter thomas gifts i mean it seems like around the world right now we do have some very big figures in politics and i want to stars that kind of i dont want to use the phrase likability is not quite the right word but how much does that matter. Well i think that democratic voters are certainly looking at the issue of electability because a real priority for them of course is to be donald trump going into 2020 and you talk about jarrett generic democratic candidate of course theres no real generic democratic candidate whenever it actually comes to the election and so ultimately what you have is are a real candidate with real policy positions with a real personality you know whether. The democrats think that they are going to be a better position with someone more on the progressive wing or more on the moderate wing i think reasonable minds can kind of disagree with that you know on the one hand you might think that a moderate may have a better chance of going up against donald trump simply because they can resonate with middle class voters working class voters particularly in swing states but at the same time you know a lot of politics particularly in the United States right now is about mobilizing the base its about galvanizing that core of supporters particularly for the Democratic Party but also with the Republican Party and so there might be a concern that if the democrats nominate someone who is perceived as too moderate that a lot of voters wont be excited about that candidate and they might actually stay home come election day and lincoln meant so i wonder for the democrats and assuming that they have got to run on something broader than this message of just not trump i think thats a kind of an odd question because if you look at any candidate whos ever run for president modern times they run on a whole range of issues they talk about a whole lot of issues thats how you run for president you cant run for president not talk about the economy and not talk about Foreign Policy or not talk about health care there are some issues which the democrat regardless of who it is will talk about because they poll so well for the democrats so i would expect Climate Change and guns which we havent heard that much about in the primary but which pulled. Very well among swing voters to take a more center role once the general election rolls around the other thing to keep in mind is one of the thats the guest said that you know trump is still is 30 8. 00 to 43. 00 range and that is in fact true but with this economy a normal republican if this were i dont know marco rubio which is ethics and his conduct in the white house with this economy hed be cruising to react to reelection so the reason that this is a close race is because trump is such an appealing person and such an appealing president to so many voters so therefore it is important to keep that focus on trump to an extent we have heard over and over again from conservative commentators that the democrats should talk about trump shouldnt talk about impeachment and thats not all they talk about when theyre campaigning but they have to talk about somewhat those numbers those issues arent going to win the election for the democrats whoever the nominee if but its going to help so you have to talk about everything when youre running for president regardless of your party if youre a serious candidate so erick what im wondering is what is the conversation thats going on right now and will continue to go on until 2020 and the election in november next year for the republican pot say what are the issues that they want to take to the u. S. Fotis. Well clearly this is going to be a an election that i think squarely will be focused on a referendum on the president and thats just not because President Donald Trump is in office thats any president running for reelection and so we do know that donald trump ran on a number of key issues namely a border wall along the u. S. Mexico southern border and of course he ran on issues like trade the economy and the economy i think is actually whats keeping donald trump afloat right now if those numbers in any way move then i think we could see real trouble for Donald Trumps reelection chances also i think its important to note that one thing that i think will hold true in this election is the fact that what many voters i think are looking for and i think these are voters left right and center theyre looking for someone who is going to actually take on that establishment and i think weve seen that going back for nearly 30 years if you look look at the president ial uprising of bill clinton for instance this was someone who did not have a a National Profile who was not seen as perhaps the next leader of the party and so i think weve seen since bill clinton all the way to President Donald Trump candidates who did not have a high National Profile but someone that resonated with people because they thought they could go to washington and they could really make change and so i think thats also i think a component that voters will be looking for so thomas gift moving on there just from what eric was saying about this idea of kind of taking on the establishment what might that candidate and their message look like this kind of progressive idea. Well i do think that you see candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders making this case that kind of the moderate establishments just is and aggressive enough and putting forth very bold proposals for the Democratic Party and so you do see them talking about things like the Green New Deal and medicare for all you know those are big ambitious plans that you know them really excite the progressive base of the Democratic Party but theyre also incredibly expensive you know medicare for all has been estimated at potentially cost in around 30. 00 trillion dollars over the next 10 years so a lot of moderates are really pushing back and asking the question you know even if this is where we want to get to down the line right now maybe we need more incremental change and so we need to focus on practical policy solutions that can actually make a difference in the short term so thats very much a debate an active debate i think thats going on within the Democratic Party thank you michel if you will can you talk us through the democratic candidate field as it stands right now sure i mean dont we start with Michael Bennett and work my way up and you are so are we. Going to. Well the iowa caucus isnt isnt about 6 weeks so i want to announce now that i will not be a candidate that makes me no doubt in the Democratic Party but all seriousness i just want to maybe touch and follow up on something that one of my colleagues said for a 2nd every democrat not f. D. R. But every democrat since f. D. R. Who has been elected president in an open seat in other words not an incumbent has run and been elected as an outsider so that is and that is true of every republican in modern times except for nixon and george h. W. Bush you get elected president in modern america by running as an outsider. And maybe by starting with that one of the big perhaps understated cleavages here in the democratic primary field is that joe biden in addition to being older and more moderate is the true insider here and that is something that is not going to mobilize voters its not going to excite voters whether they be the base of the party which is not white progressives but as africanamericans or whether it is white progressives after americans will vote for him but theyre not going to mobilize in larger numbers you know one easy way to look at the electorate that the democratic primary field is kind of left right with this battery around warning sanders and on the on the left and blue to judging by i want to say right but in the center but there are some wildcards here too amy club which are who is you know now in about 6 or 7 place in the polls seems like the electable candidate shes younger shes into the center she would clean up with suburban women but her campaign is getting no traction andrew yang is the kind of oddball exciting candidate but if he gets 8 to 10 percent in some of the 1st primary fields you know he could get some attention too so this is on the other hand and i think most importantly joe biden has led in almost every poll since he got in the race and that in my view is means that there is a good chance maybe a 5050 chance that he just kind of does pretty well in the early primaries and is the nominee because what the party wants is the electable candidate but they dont know what that looks like and what that might mean is that once somebody begins to pull away voters just rally around that person because they want to end quickly and then lurking in the wings with their all intents and purposes an infinite amount of money is michael bloomberg. It was especially a liberal republican the most successful republican executive secretary in america of this century running in the democratic primary trying to make an argument around electability and guns and the environment and maybe lets not lets ignore his record on stop and frisk so i keep this going one of 2 ways its either a 5 candidate kind of open race coming out of the 1st floor or pulling away after the 1st or thats for sure or i would do Hampshire South Carolina and nevada thank you for taking us through that i know its quite a list which is of course going to be narrowing thank goodness i once i can get you to reflect on 2 things one is is the age of the electorate and how that might change the voting landscape Going Forward lets start with that how do you think the the all these new voters coming of age looking at things like the environment and so on how might that change what we see at the end of next year well i think that could certainly have an impact on the democratic primary particularly when you look at many of these voters that are now coming on into the voter rolls i mean youre looking at voters that are very young of a very Diverse Group of minority voters and of course women in fact many would say this would be the barack Obama Coalition that catapulted him to victory in both 282012 many thought that that coalition of voters would not be successful in 2012 many thought that was an electorate that we would see perhaps as early as 2016 definitely by 2020 so clearly its coming to fruition and the question is not only you know who can galvanize of those those those voters those potential voters but actually who can bring them to the polls and get them out we saw in an off year election in 2018 we saw stacy abrams do just that in georgia where she brought a number of people to the polls who simply had not been there the question is can that be replicated at the National Level and also its Important Note if we look at states like texas and arizona texas has been. Sort of a unicorn for democrats for quite some time but ive spoken to people who believe that texas is a state that perhaps could be in play and were seeing the Trump Campaign actually do a place and increasingly more resources are in texas because they believe texas could in fact be the ball game even though were looking at about a handful of states michigan pennsylvania wisconsin and perhaps florida but texas is a state that they believe is an all hands on deck state in the end if trump is in trouble in texas then that could actually change not only this election but elections to come i can see that you want to come in here lincoln and i will let you in a 2nd but i just want to ask thomas get this kind of apparent polarization of politics do we know whether it is sex people coming out to vote do we know how politically engaged the American Public is is there were kind of slight exhaustion as there was certainly we saw in the u. K. I know in other in other countries as well with politics. Well of course generally we do see higher outcomes turnout outcomes in president ial years rather than off here as i do think that a lot of voters are certainly going to be mobilized this go around simply because donald trump is such a polarizing figure people either really like him or really do not like him and so i would expect a relatively high turnout in 2020 simply because donald trump does have very good jo