Democratically: 2020

This week, Karin checks in with Dr. Rachel Bitecofer of the Niskanen Center to find out what her political model has to tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of different candidates, whether impeachment is good for Donald Trump (spoiler - no it's not), why whoever is the nominee ought to pick Stacey Abrams as their VP, and much, much more. We also play the Gut Check game, testing our thoughts about each candidates' argument for their electability from last week's debate. In the news roundup, we also cover Bernie's improvement in the polls, the commencement of the Impeachment trial against President Trump, and much more.

This week, Karin speaks to Aimin Walsh, creator of the But Their Emails blog, about her project analysing all the emails sent by every Democratic candidate. We discuss the extent to which the candidates' personalities come through in their supporter communications, who emails the most (and least) often, how effective email is as a campaign tool, and how it has changed her view of the race. We also play an email themed version of the Gut Check game, and of course Karin does a News Roundup covering Julian Castro's endorsement of Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer's qualification for next week's debate, and the insane amount of money being spent by the 2 billionaire candidates.

In this special New Year's episode, Karin is joined by Friend of the Pod Emma Burnell to talk about how we can have healthy and constructive political behaviors this year. We also have a lot of news to cover, including the Q4 fundraising announcements, Julian Castro's departure from the race, Marianne Williamson firing all of her staff, and the (I suspect slim) possibility that Joe Biden might choose a Republican Vice Presidential running mate. Plus! We play a fun round of the Gut Check game, matching candidates with some New Year's resolutions.

This week, Karin answers your questions - tackling some challenging issues like, who would make a good VP pick for each of the top candidates? What comes next if we lose in 2020? Are Democrats smart to hold back the impeachment referral from the Senate? Has the online vitriol crept into real life in the UK as it has in the US? How to organise overseas voters to get on the Dems Abroad Primary ballot?

This week, Karin is joined by journalist and Friend of the Pod Emma Burnell for yet another debate watch, this one taking place in the same week that the House voted to impeach Donald Trump.  We discuss why we like it when Bernie gets funny, how excellent Amy Klobuchar's hair looks, the clash between Buttigieg and Warren on campaign funding, and much more.

This week, Karin looks at the UK elections, and Boris Johnson's "stonking majority" to try and understand what happened in the UK and whether there are any lessons to be learned for Democrats in terms of the challenge of running against Trump in November, and what kind of candidate the left should be nominating in an age of right wing populism such as Johnson seems to represent. She's joined by her colleague James Morris, MD of Edelman Public Affairs in London who talks us through what he learned about voters' mindset from conducting focus groups all over the country during this election.

This week, Karin speaks to Pat Rynard, Managing Editor of the Iowa Starting Line blog, about what is happening on the ground in this vital state. He'll give us a sense of what the candidate rallies and events feel like on the ground, why some candidates seem to be taking off there while others are slow to catch fire, and talk us through the pluses and minuses of having Iowa go first in the first place. 

Also this week, we'll cover the primary news, paying particular attention to the exit of Kamala Harris from the race, and asking where her supporters might go from here.

This week, Karin speaks to Joseph Marks, a Doctoral Researcher in behavioural economics at University College London about his research showing what kind of people make compelling messengers. Joe explains the difference between hard messenger characteristics like status, dominance, attractiveness and competence, and softer messenger attributes like warmth, trustworthiness and charisma. And, he reveals to listeners the findings of his original research looking specifically at the 2020 Primary candidates - so do stay tuned for the 2nd half of the interview to findout which candidate is underperforming on competence, which one is seen by people as clearly the most attractive, and why the "best" messenger from this point of view is a person you might not have expected. Also this week, we play the Gut Check Game with testing some arguments the candidates themselves have made for why they are the right messenger for the moment, and of course we do a News Roundup covering the shift in the polls away from Elizabeth Warren, the Bloomberg's refusal to investigate Mike Bloomberg, and some new allegations of gender based workplace discrimination against Andrew Yang.

On the week that marks the 1 year anniversary of creating the podcast, Karin sits down with Journalist and longstanding friend of the pod Emma Burnell to recap the 5th Democratic Primary debate. We check in with some former guests throughout the episode sending their birthday wishes to the podcast. And, of course, in the News Roundup we cover this week's historic impeachment hearings and much more.