CNN’s Fareed Zakaria: UK Election Could Foreshadow How 2020 Election Plays Out

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria said today that the Conservative Party’s landslide victory in the United Kingdom’s general election could be a preview of how President Donald Trump and the Republicans will overcome impeachment and win the 2020 election.

Zakaria opened his Sunday show by going over how the Tories obtained their Parliamentary majority with only a minimal increase in party votes, whereas the Labour Party experienced a massive drop. After saying how Boris Johnson has a personality appeal that Jeremy Corbyn does not, Zakaria said the general election results boiled down to two strategic victories among the conservatives.

Zakaria first pointed out Johnson expressly campaigned on the completion of Brexit, which was a “clear, simple message” compared to the “muddled” one the Labour Party ran with. After that, Zakaria noted how Johnson increased the British government’s spending and won over the working class voters despite public skepticism about free market economics.

Zakaria compared this to Trump by saying the president was able to coalesce pro-free market people and populists behind him through a combination and polarization and party loyalty. As for the Democrats, Zakaria said they share a vulnerability with the Labour Party since a failure to win over socially-conservative working class voters will cost them key states in the Electoral College.

“They’re doing little to address this vulnerability,” Zakaria said. “Democrats keep arguing over economic policy, lurching ever leftward. But the public is largely supportive of the party’s existing positions on these issues.”

Zakaria said the Democrats’ “Achilles heel” is immigration, which Trump will continue to use against them as a wedge issue:

“The irony is The Republican Party, like the Tories, has become ideologically a bigger-tent party, while the Democrats — historically defined as a large coalition — are ideologically narrow on the issues that might well define the 2020 election.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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