Comment by rayiner
5 years ago
This is untrue when applied to social/cultural political issues. For example, the prevailing view during the Democratic primaries that undocumented immigrants should get universal healthcare coverage is to the left of nearly every EU country. Trump’s order required enhanced scrutiny of immigrants from certain Muslim countries is tame compared to Macron’s plans to essentially nationalize Islam. (And Macron is the left candidate—his far-right opponent is now receiving 45% of the support in polls.) Canada’s point-based immigration system, supported by the left and the right there, which heavily weighs English language fluency, would be denounced as irredeemably racist by the mainstream left in the US. What we are seeing in the media now, with attacks on the country’s founding documents and historical figures, would be utterly condemned in say France.
On social issues, our left is as far left as anywhere else in the developed world.
Hold on. That might have been the prevailing view counted by the candidates on stage, but it's not the prevailing view of the Democratic electorate, or of the nominee (Biden "supports" urgent care for undocumented immigrants, but does not support enrolling them in a national health plan). There was a crystal healer shaman on the stage for several of the debates; you can't just do this by roll call.
I agree with you in spirit, that we're further left than the American left realizes. But on this particular, I think you're wrong.
That’s fair. My point wasn’t to really assert a conclusion about the Democratic Party as a whole, but rather to show that there is a robust social left in the US. To my knowledge, only two Western countries extend universal (rather than emergency) care for undocumented immigrants.
The broad US support for this is at least in large part as a response to the enormous levels of undocumented immigrants present as a result of what is widely seen (across the political spectrum, though for different reasons) as an incredible failure of the US immigration system. You can’t meaningdully assess position on an ideological spectrum based on comparing preferred policy responses without considering the differences in the objective circumstances to which the policy responses are directed.
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>To my knowledge, only two Western countries extend universal (rather than emergency) care for undocumented immigrants.
Not to derail, but extending public health care to undocumented immigrants in a pandemic just makes sense. Undocumented doesn't mean vaccinated, so there's a clear public interest in minimizing the absolute number of COVID-19 carriers, no matter their legal status.
You're right that on issues of theoretical minority rights, the left-most position is actually pretty common in the US (gay rights, trans rights, feminism, we are all equal regardless of the color of our skin).
But even on the actual practical side of those rights, this is not true. Discriminatory policing practices, reparations for slavery, abortion rights for women, and others have very commonly held right-wing positions even among democratic voters and politicians.
And calling Macron left-wing is funny, especially since the election had a very clear divide: Le Pen for the (extreme) right, Macron for the center (even center-right), and Melanchon for the left (he won slightly less votes than Le Pen, while being universally derided and ignored in the press).
Note that I explicitly said that left-wing discourse is missing from the mainstream in the US AND Europe, and in fact this is true for most of the world in general, with only small pockets in South America and east Asia.
> And Macron is the left candidate—his far-right opponent is now receiving 45% of the support in polls.
A centre-right candidate doesn't become "left" just because there's a far-right candidate. Maybe in the US that rhetoric works, but not in the EU.
What poll are you referring to where Macron's far-right opponent received 45%? Le Pen has 26% - less than Macron - from what I can see [0].
[0] https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/france/
> A centre-right candidate doesn't become "left" just because there's a far-right candidate.
He's the more left candidate for purposes of this comparison, which is to compare where the U.S. is relative to France. So if Macron is to the right of Trump on muslim immigrants (and I think it's fair to say he is), and 45% of French support a candidate that is even further right, I think it's fair to say the U.S. is well to the left of France on the issue.
I was citing a head-to-head matchup in the second round: https://www.ft.com/content/6d8b9c7a-412c-11ea-a047-eae9bd51c...
> A recent Ifop opinion poll put Ms Le Pen narrowly ahead of Mr Macron for an assumed first round of the 2022 election, and within a few percentage points of victory in the second round (45 per cent to his 55 per cent)
Sigh, that's just so blatant cherry-picking. Macron is deeply unpopular for his neo-liberal "reforms" that caused the yellow vests protests, a head-to-head polling against other candidates would likely render similar results.
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>He's the more left candidate for purposes of this comparison, which is to compare where the U.S. is relative to France.
IMHO, the Democratic Party to En Marche is a fair comparison, but Our Revolution to En Marche is just silly. At that point, at least compare Our Revolution to the Parti Socialiste (a conventional European social-democratic party) and DSA to La France Insoumise (ie: the democratic socialist party founded by a former leader of the French Communists).
A centre-right candidate doesn't become "left" just because there's a far-right candidate.
Biden faces that. He's not a classic leftist, like Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, Gene McCarthy, or Hubert Humphrey, all of whom were presidential candidates. To today's GOP, Eisenhower and Reagan would be considered too far left.