[DoingIsLearning]

Just for an additional perspective, for most of the world's democracies both the US republicans and democrats are very much on the right-wing side of the political spectrum.

I am not saying there is anything wrong with American Democrats but if you look at actual policies they would be labeled centre right anywhere else in the world.

As an American friend once put it to me "Americans believe luck is made, so social handouts are basically perceived as tax payer theft".

[SllX]

The tyranny of the French National Assembly’s seating chart continues!

I’m just going to say it: the perception of where the American Democratic Party or the American Republican Party sits only matters to American voters. To whatever extent it interests foreigners, I’m happy to provide the entertainment as I take plenty of entertainment watching foreign politics myself, so fair is fair, but an outside observation of where we sit politically isn’t an actionable or useful observation because we’re not those other countries.

That isn’t to say there isn’t anything to be learned from the actions of other governments, whatever their domestic political makeup, but I am happy that if this were 1792 neither major American 2022 political party would be perceived to be getting buddy-buddy with the left of the French National Assembly. Actually gives me some hope for my country to think of it that way.

[poutine]

This used to be true, while it's hard to quantify it doesn't really seem to be true anymore.

[ameister14]

> Just for an additional perspective, for most of the world's democracies both the US republicans and democrats are very much on the right-wing side of the political spectrum.

I hear this a lot, but as someone who's fairly up on politics in a few Western European countries I don't think it's accurate.

For example, the current democratic party platform supports universal healthcare, mass immigration with a roadmap to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, expansion of visas and a removal of wealth/income requirements, a major commitment to environmental protection and an acknowledgement of climate change including getting to net-zero emissions and devoting tens of billions to foreign aid.

That's all pretty in-line with left wing political manifestos/platforms in most of western europe.

[AdrianB1]

It is a matter of baseline. Comparing to classical liberals (right wing), everyone today is very left. Comparing to Western Europe, that is very left, someone less to the left is relatively to the right, but it does not make it a right-wing, just a more moderate left. It's all about where you set the reference point, at the classical political left-right center or at the current one. The world is continuously moving left for 150 years.

[logicchains]

>the world's democracies both the US republicans and democrats are very much on the right-wing side of the political spectrum

Not in terms of social policies. How many European centre-left policies support giving puberty blockers to children? How many European centre-left policies support abortion right up to the time of birth?

[welterde]

Depends on how you define support. Legal for medical professionals to prescribe to children? If so, then quite a few EU countries do support that (with varying requirements of course).

And the recently introduced abortion bill by the Democrats which ultimately failed, does not match what you are saying (time limited by viability and exception for life-saving measures). It however matches roughly the (varying) standards in the various EU countries.

So both not really examples where the Democrats vary greatly from the average in the EU.