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by Jedd 1749 days ago
> .. Labor is Center Left and further to the left of the Democrats.

Do you think? I'd have pegged things like Green New Deal, fairly strong consensus around fossil fuels and renewables, as strong US Democrat party line -- compared to AU's Labor being still wedded to a fossil fuel future, still keen to satiate Murdoch and co.

What broad policies / positions are you suggesting indicate AU Labor is more left than US Democrat?
2 comments
lsiebert 1748 days ago
On a lot of things, universal health care, how strongly they are in favor of nuclear disarmament, gun control, etc. Remember President Biden is the head of the Democratic Party, And the US itself has been pushed further to the right by a conservative dominated supreme court.

Here's the 2021 Labor party platform https://alp.org.au/media/2594/2021-alp-national-platform-fin...

Here's the 2020 Democratic Party platform https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/202...

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Jedd 1748 days ago
Okay, so there's 249 pages of policy to read and then correlate, which is a bit beyond me.

> ... universal health care, how strongly they are in favor of nuclear disarmament, gun control, etc

As I understand it, US Democrats are keen on those three, and in Australia, we've already embraced all of those.

Are you suggesting there's a policy mis-match, or that one of the two groups leans even more strongly towards these principles than the other group?

Either way, I'm not sure how this strongly differentiates them.

> ... the US itself has been pushed further to the right by a conservative dominated supreme court.

The USA's supreme court arrangement is indeed a curious artefact, for those of us outside its domain.

AFAICT it's been 'pushed' in one direction by political appointees in the previous presidents' term.

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lsiebert 1744 days ago
While many Democrats do support it, Biden doesn't support medicare for all.
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Jedd 1740 days ago
Sure, and that's objectively a weird position to take for someone who appears to be as empathetic as he is.

But it (as you observe) does not reflect 'the party policies' - simply the current elected leader. And while that's obviously important, it doesn't necessarily define policy of either party of (current) administration.

The fact it's at odds with what the majority of the rest of the party would advocate speaks to my earlier claim / question.

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astrange 1749 days ago
People don't appreciate how left the Democrats are because almost everyone's political opinions are 5-10 years behind reality. The Democrats are one of the most successful left parties in the world currently; as soon as you count "respecting immigrants" then e.g. Europe loses cred no matter how good the healthcare systems are. And those systems weren't designed by the current generation.
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