S04E03 – Elite’s Controlling Biden’s Election and the UK’s Turn to Labour

In this episode of Finding Common Battle Grounds, we tackle two topics. Joe Biden’s poor debate performance has been in the news a lot as of late. Rather than examine that, specifically, we discuss who is “pulling the strings” in the Democratic Party: who ultimately picks the candidates and who helps them get the nomination and get elected. This was spurred by a video clip from congressional representative Adam Smith (D-Washington), who argued that Biden was the beneficiary of the unnamed power brokers in the Democratic Party in 2020 but now may be playing defense against them as they try to convince him to drop out of the race. We then turn to a discussion of Labour’s victory in the UK and the forces behind it. Ryan and Tom agree that the election outcome was largely a vote against the Tories/Conservative party, but we also explore some of the other issues that have played out over the last 14 years of conservative control in the UK, including immigration and underfunding of public services like the National Health Service, education, and public transportation.