Sorry but the US doesn't really seem to have a left politics. You seem (to me) to have two conservative-centrist parties in power, both with extremely neoliberal economics, and with slight differentiations on very emotional side shows like abortion and gun control.
Pretty true for economics but not for much else. On pretty much anything cultural there are two very vocal poles and a bunch of people in the middle picking one pole or another as the lesser evil.
When it comes to housing both parties for different reasons promote something that looks a lot like protectionism. Republicans often try to keep housing values high, and Democrats like to punish real estate developers or alternatively have bizarre ideas about what makes housing affordable. They both accomplish their different goals by making it hard to build. Obviously there are regional differences in local parties. Republicans will often favor building out and not up, preferring suburban development. Democrats have lost the plot on housing, IMHO.
We get too caught up in two-party partisanship to focus on the larger picture.
It's a sort of prisoner's dilemma, actually. We could collaborate on solving mutual problems but we know the other party isn't trustworthy. Or we could focus on just getting our own way and making sure the other party doesn't take advantage of us.
Socially the US is far more liberal than basically every country in Europe (even ignoring Eastern Europe.) Only people who have not lived in both places say otherwise. The US also -by far- spent more per capita during the COVID economic recovery than any country on earth (even excluding the retainment loans.) No country comes even close. That doesn't really fit the "right" wing dogma.
There's a myth around American politics largely pepetuated by people that have only had political experience in one place or only uses the media as a means to know the politics of countries. Even on abortion, the US has among the least restrictive in the entire world, looser than Germany, France, etc.
The big thing America really lacks is universal healthcare, which is the main axe people wield over the head of American politics to claim it's only corporatist right leaning. Government outlays really tell a different story than the narrative.
It's more than healthcare, the entire social security net is far more extensive in Germany than in the US. This also affects the part about COVID, one really important measure here was to essentially have the government continue to pay people in jobs that would otherwise have been lost during the pandemic. That was an already existing measure that was expanded during the pandemic.
> Socially the US is far more liberal than basically every country in Europe
You're telling me that rural Alabama is more liberal than Sweden? I think your viewpoint is leaning on definitions of "social" and "liberal" and "US" that are not universally understood.
New York City alone has a similar population to all of Sweden, and is twice that of Alabama. I'm sure you can find 1.5% of the Swedish population that is just as conservative.
If California wanted more representation in both the Senate and the House, it could divide. Instantaneously the population of California would get 2 Senators and probably a large number of House Seats. Further, it would help with the political divide in California: coast is left, farmers are right. You don't see California, as a political entity, chomping at the bit to subdivide.
As to the particulars of your comment, States should have far more autonomy than they do under FDR's federalist system. States should be able to tax more, but with the Feds already eating 20-50% of the populations income, States have a hard time raising funds. If we weakened the feds, but first paying down the debt, Alabama might have a far more interesting economy.
California would likely divide itself in a way to advantage the current politicians that govern the state. Not really Gerrymandering as we know it, but a similar principle.
Republicans would obviously not accept this. We would likely replay the decades leading up to the Civil War, where adding states was a contentious and at times violent process.
The feds would also have to approve it. If Republicans can stop it, they will. If Democratic politicians can push it through, they would likely get blowback from moderates. Republicans would get power and seek to balance or even advantage themselves. We could end up with eight Dakotas (just kidding on this specific example; other Republican states might want to split too).
This is not a fight either party wants to start because it could be a disaster for them. The intended outcome (increase relative Senate representation) has slim odds and a high cost.
Extreme disagree. The United States does not have a party that represents the interests of working people, and has done almost nothing to stem the consolidation of corporate power for decades.
It’s not even a close contest. There’s literally not a labor party here.
They are, because in both cases the party wanting to change the status quo cannot possibly do so and the party leadership know it. They are simply exploiting it for political gain with showy but pointless time wasting banner legislation to stoke up the base. The activists don't know it's pointless, but generally speaking the activists on both sides are dissociated from reality.
On gun control there is no conceivable way gun ownership, gun crime and gun death statistics can be meaningfully changed. They are just too many guns out there already. Those states that do have 'strict' gun laws by US standards are right next to ones that don't and have open borders. As has been said many times, once Sandy Hook happened and didn't shift the consensus on the issue, it was all over. Face it, school shootings are going to be a fact for a very long time. You can have some local regulation like no conceal carry and such, fine, but banning guns and getting them off the streets and out of people's homes at a society level is impossible and pretending that it isn't is disingenuous.
On abortion, pregnant women are just going to go somewhere that allows abortion. Face it, women are going to get abortions if they rally want them. You can make it harder and coerce some vulnerable women, but broadly you can't stop them all you can do is mess with them.
The only effect of strict punitive anti-regulation in either case is to aggravate members of the pro-community, and harm people in edge case situations.
At least that's how it looks from the other side of the Atlantic.
The other way to view this is that america is a prosperous country, most americans recognize where that prosperity comes from, and instead are divided mainly be cultural issues.
I suspect immigration actually has a lot to do with it. I have a theory that, in the long run, immigration prevents the development of a meaningful left-wing party in the U.S. The left of center party ends up getting co-opted by immigrants who are open to same change, but not that much.
You can see this happening in the U.S. in real-time. Eroding support among hispanics may well cost Democrats the election in 2022. A notable fact about Hispanics is that they enjoy strong income mobility--typically moving up from the bottom to the middle within a couple of generations: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. If you're vastly better off than your grandfather who came here from Mexico, you may well be skeptical of efforts to change things too much.
We have a left, it's just overshadowed and punished by the Democrat centrist majority, and the right wing political majority. Plenty of politicians in the progressive caucus have been pushing for reform for years, but the sad reality of our political system is that it's incredibly difficult for them to pass legislation. But that's not to say we don't have a left.
Furthermore, the US left leads on progressive social values compared to Europe, such as immigration and social justice. The average European sentiment on race and immigration, such as their attitude towards Romani/"Gypsies" and Muslims is definitely considered right-wing in America.
>Furthermore, the US left leads on progressive social values compared to Europe, such as immigration and social justice. The average European sentiment on race and immigration, such as their attitude towards Romani/"Gypsies" and Muslims is definitely considered right-wing in America.
Just because the US is fixated on identity politics does not mean it leads on progressive social values. Germany, a country with a quarter of the US population and way less territory has hosted a third of the amount of refugees the US has. Not even mentioning the data on total amount of refugees hosted by the EU because it absolutely dwarfs the US. As a migrant to the EU, the path to (legal) residency was extremely straight forward and easy, compared to the US. This is without going into topics such as socialised health care.
I disagree. If anything, US is far too left. The current leftist politics and the administration is distinctly different from Obama's run. Btw, this goes for right as well (Trump vs. Bush era).
Compared to Europe America skews politicians more slightly to the right and or center. Also, elected presidents become more centrist once they are in office .
> slight differentiations on very emotional side shows
Slight differences? In the U.S. right now there are states that would ban abortion immediately if Roe were overturned, and ones that allow abortion until birth, limited only be the conscience of the doctor. The two sides are further apart than the most extreme poles of the EU.
I think the GP was missing a comma or something - they probably meant that differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties (I should stress that this is about the parties, not thr voters), even those as embittered as abortion, gun rights, gay marriage etc, are small compared to the overwhelming amount of policy they agree on almost entirely (foreign policy, medical care, primacy of corporate interests, little will to battle climate change).
Sometimes the policies both parties agree on are in stark contrast to the will of the US electorate, such as the case of many recent wars, or Medicare for All.
Small in what sense? We have Obamacare and most people now support it, and there isn't that much support for program that's $3 trillion a year bigger. We supported foreign wars, and did a few, then we didn't, and so now we're not intervening in Ukraine. As you observe, we have little will to battle climate change. Everybody dislikes corporations in the abstract, but we vote with our wallets and keep voting for Amazon over the Mom & Pop. If you keep in mind that the median voter is like 45, I don't really see how the country doesn't closely reflect what most people want.
By contrast, our disagreements regarding what you teach my kids about the nature of marriage and our purpose on the earth, or the laws around terminating human life, or whether we should have a color blind society or not, seem pretty important by comparison. Whatever problems we perceive ourselves as having, we don’t trust others to fix them if we disagree about fundamental things like the socialization of children.
While Medicare for All itself is only polling at 55%, with most Republican voters (62%) opposing it, a public option is polling at a whopping 68% support, including 55% support among Republican voters [0]. And yet, neither party is willing to implement it (a public system would significantly reduce Healthcare costs for the entire economy - remember that the USA has by far the largest expenditure on health-care out of any country on Earth, while doing relatively bad among rich countries at outcomes).
For wars, the occupation of Afghanistan has been opposed by the public for at least 10 years before Biden withdrawing, with strong support from voters of both parties, as seen in both Obama, Trump and Biden winning with a platform of ending the war, but without any concrete action from the first two (if anything, Obama intensified the war, ordering even more illegal drone strikes on civilians than George Bush, and even publically admitting to assassinating an American citizen on "suspicion of terrorism").
Also, voting with your wallet doesn't work when Amazon undercuts the Mom&Pop, pumps billions into marketing, and outright buys what they can't compete with - as do all others.
> While Medicare for All itself is only polling at 55%, with most Republican voters (62%) opposing it, a public option is polling at a whopping 68% support, including 55% support among Republican voters [0].
Polling like that (do you want this free stuff?) is meaningless. Look at polls that ask how many people support taking action on climate change, versus ones that ask what people are willing to pay in higher utility bills for such action. People want change, but only if it costs less than $10/month: https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-...
Americans support universal healthcare--right up until you propose to pay for it the same way everyone else pays for it, with payroll taxes on middle class people.
> And yet, neither party is willing to implement it (a public system would significantly reduce Healthcare costs for the entire economy - remember that the USA has by far the largest expenditure on health-care out of any country on Earth, while doing relatively bad among rich countries at outcomes).
And here is where the abstract choice rubber hits the political reality road. After the Obamacare experience, very few people believe that they'll get more from a government program while paying less. Also, people are broadly in disagreement about why healthcare costs more in the U.S. and what drives our outcomes.
> For wars, the occupation of Afghanistan has been opposed by the public for at least 10 years before Biden withdrawing, with strong support from voters of both parties, as seen in both Obama, Trump and Biden winning with a platform of ending the war, but without any concrete action from the first two
> (if anything, Obama intensified the war, ordering even more illegal drone strikes on civilians than George Bush, and even publically admitting to assassinating an American citizen on "suspicion of terrorism").
tldr; compare the US with China, Japan, India, or any other large country. The US is considerably less conservative than most—though not quite all—of the world.
The claim that the US is particularly conservative only really makes sense coming from an extremely Euro-centric worldview.
