This episode is sponsored by More Than a Number, the brand new podcast from ICAEW.

Search for More Than a Number in your podcast app to hear Louise Cooper and thought leaders unpacking the numbers behind some of the most pertinent questions of our time.

Hello and welcome to The Edition, the Spectator's new weekly podcast where we discuss some of our

favourite features from the issue each week. I'm Lara Prendergast. America goes to the polls next year,

but can any of the Democratic candidates take Trump on? And with our own election coming up,

we look at what happens if you can no longer vote for the party you've always supported.

And finally, we take a look at George Elliott's 200th anniversary and find out a bit more about her unconventional life.

First up, can anyone unseat Trump from the Oval Office?

It's not that he's such a brilliant president, says Freddie Gray, but that the

17 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination are all united by what Freddie calls a mesmerising

mediocrity. So, is Freddie right? He joins me now, together with Carine Jean-Pierre, former

deputy campaign manager for Obama, a national spokeswoman for campaign group,

MoveOn.org.

Freddie, Trump seems pretty beatable, so what's the problem?

Well, it is odd.

I mean, this has been a very large field of democratic presidential candidates.

And always with large fields, you hear from people within the party that this is

exciting it shows how much kind of energy and dynamism there is in the party and that there's a

kind of wealth of talent but actually as this field has gone on you're seeing that there isn't

really a wealth of talent there's a sort of there's some quite eccentric and interesting candidates in the race,

but they're not doing very well at all. And the people bubbling up to the top, notably Liz

Warren, is a much worse candidate than people think. And I think this has been exposed in the last

...