[Retric]

Party stances are always going to reflect the country they operate in.

On an absolute scale Republican’s support for expanding Medicare drug coverage was left leaning compared to at the time current law even though it’s to the right of many countries and Democrat’s stance on the issue.

[stareatgoats]

yeah, the left/right dichotomy is gradually becoming outright meaningless - usually just sloppily slapped labels that fit an agenda. Important nuances go completely unnoticed in the left/right universe, like libertarians siding with communists, and neocons siding with democrats - or whoever thinks regime changing from above is a good idea. Anarchism, militarism, libertarianism, conservativism, fascism, welfarestateism, social democracy, etc, these are all useful terms. Left and right; not so much.

[Retric]

The Left-Right bias is more clear when you look at the general population vs specific interest groups.

Voters in low population states have outsized political power and therefore get handouts. Same deal with elderly voters because they vote more often and everyone expects to get old Meanwhile groups who vote less often like 18-24 year olds get fucked over.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/voter-turnout-rate-by-age...

Detailed data on 2022: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individu...

In Nebraska 14% of 18-24 year olds voted vs 63% of 60+ year olds. Wow I wonder who elected officials pay attention to.