Swan urges US Democrats to learn from Labor's mistakes

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Swan urges US Democrats to learn from Labor's mistakes

By Matthew Knott

Washington: The US Democrats risk blowing their chance to beat President Donald Trump next year if they ignore the lessons of Labor's shock election loss, former treasurer Wayne Swan has warned.

The ALP national president said he fears Democrats will lock themselves into an overly-ambitious and crowded left-wing policy agenda - just as Bill Shorten did at the May election.

"You can be progressive but you have to be careful about creating too many big bullseyes for your opponents to shoot at," Mr Swan told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age during a visit to Washington.

"You don't want to have an agenda that is too crowded to sell.

"I want them to be wary of the perils we ran into in Australia."

ALP national president Wayne Swan urged US Democrats not to repeat Labor's mistakes from the May election.

ALP national president Wayne Swan urged US Democrats not to repeat Labor's mistakes from the May election.

Mr Swan, who retired from Parliament at the last election, was speaking a day after the 12 leading Democratic candidates held a debate in Ohio featuring fiery exchanges about their party's policy direction.

Progressive favourite Elizabeth Warren was attacked for refusing to say whether her plan for a "Medicare-for-all" healthcare system would require middle-class Americans to pay more in tax.

"All the candidates are talking about big healthcare plans, big tax plans, big climate plans," Mr Swan said.

"You couldn't possibly achieve it all in four years.

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"You certainly need to upgrade Obamacare. But some candidates are talking about going even further than we have in Australia and abolishing private health insurance altogether."

The frontrunners for the Democratic candidacy, former vice-president Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren, presented competing visions at the party's latest debate.

The frontrunners for the Democratic candidacy, former vice-president Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren, presented competing visions at the party's latest debate. Credit: AP

Mr Swan will visit Ohio in coming days and speak to Democratic activists in the key swing state.

He said Labor's surprise election defeat - after it proposed an overhaul of negative gearing, changes to franking credits and more-ambitious action on climate change -  showed voters can only absorb so much change at once.

"Put simply, Labor had too many individual policies that, while fully funded, couldn’t be effectively communicated to the electorate and that made it too easy for our conservative opponents to characterise our agenda as big spending and big taxing," Mr Swan wrote in an article in the US journal Democracy last week.

"In an era of toxic distrust toward politicians and government itself, progressive parties suffer more because we promise more."

Mr Swan said Trump would seize on an overcrowded policy agenda to create fear and confusion in the electorate.

This would be especially easy given social media giant Facebook has declared it will not fact-check or censor advertising on its platform by political candidates.

This will allow candidates to lie in their political advertising without any fear it will be taken down.

"Trump is a master of scare campaigns," Mr Swan said.

"One of the things that is common across the US, Brexit, Scandinavia and our election is that the right has weaponised social media to run grossly dishonest scare campaigns.

"That can be fatal for a progressive agenda."

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