Democrats will not follow Corbyn route, says Obama

‘My intention is to sleep, take my wife on a nice vacation – and she has said it better be nice’

PRESIDENT Barack Obama has said the Democratic Party will not “disintegrate” like Labour because even the party’s more ideological leaders are moderates compared with Jeremy Corbyn.

“I don’t worry about that, partly because I think the Democratic Party has stayed pretty grounded in fact and reality,” Mr Obama said in an interview with David Axelrod for a CNN podcast, who served as chief strategist for Mr Obama and later for Ed Miliband.

Mr Axelrod asked if Mr Obama was concerned about the “Corbynisation” of the Democratic Party, after Labour “disintegrated in the face of their defeat”. Mr Obama said that even Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator who finished runner-up to Hillary Clinton in the primaries, was “pretty centrist” compared with Mr Corbyn.

Mr Obama also contended that he would have won a third term had he been the Democratic nominee in 2016, and insisted America did not reject his vision for the country when it elected Donald Trump.

He said in the interview that Mrs Clinton “performed wonderfully”, but faced a double standard and chose to “play it safer” than she should have.

The president could not run in 2016 due to term limits, but said the results would have been different if he had been on the ballot and able to campaign on a message of unity and tolerance.

“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilised a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” he said.

Mr Trump responded last night, saying there was “no way” he would have lost the election to Mr Obama.

Mr Obama said he would need a period of “quiet” after leaving the White House. “My intention on January 21st is to sleep, take my wife on a nice vacation – and she has said it better be nice … I’m going to start thinking about the first book I want to write,” he said.