[WJW]

Looking outside in (from the EU), even the democrats are quite a bit further to the right than even some of the parties we label as "radical right" over here. Even Bernie Saunders (the most left-wing democrat I can think of off the top of my head) had standpoints on things like gun control and universal healthcare that would never fly here.

[bee_rider]

What does gun control have to do with left-right politics?

For healthcare, he is site says he wants a single payer system with no deductibles, so, entirely government funded… what’s the more left wing option?

[WJW]

What I was getting at with both points:

- Gun control in almost any country is WAY stricter than in the US, and people in the EU are absolutely fine with the government interfering heavy-handedly in that subject. There would be riots in the street here if schools would need to have "active shooter policies" for example, we'd rather have a blanket ban on private firearm possession and have the police enforce that. In that sense, even Saunders seems quite fine to have a relatively hands-off gun policy and that lack of government regulation is typically more associated with the right than with the left.

- For healthcare policy, I only briefly skimmed his site but I don't think I actually saw a plan to have the government nationalize the hospitals and take them out of private hands? AFAIK in most EU countries most doctors/nurses are government employees with only a small minority working in privately owned clinics.

[dagw]

I don't think I actually saw a plan to have the government nationalize the hospitals and take them out of private hands?

Nationalizing all the hospitals would put you way to the left in many EU countries. Most right of centre parties (and even some left of centre parties) in the EU are pushing for more private health care, not less.

[bee_rider]

It looks to me like there’s some variation in the number of private vs public hospitals and beds (figure 3).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8005513/

So at least we could say the idea of having publicly owned hospitals did fly in Norway and the Netherlands, for example. Unless I’ve misunderstood the data.

WRT guns, it is true that we have a crazy amount of guns in the US, more than one per person, which is totally absurd. But there’s significant state-level variation, for example I grew up in Massachusetts where we have around 7 guns per 100 people, which seems OK compared to some EU countries. Bernie represents a fairly rural state (and also one with gun manufacturers), so he’s more little-l liberal (in the “anything goes” sense) on guns than a lot of Democrats.

Anyway, I’d agree that he’s more left-leaning than most democrats and maybe he’s a little to the right of, at least, some centrist EU political parties. But IMO the fact that one of our most left wing politicians happens to be weak on guns is more of a coincidence that overplays the difference (which certainly isn’t to say there isn’t any difference). You could look at Liz Warren for someone who’s just smidge to his right, but is also more willing to restrict guns.

Another interesting departure from Democratic Party principles for Bernie was that he was more of a NAFTA (free trade in North America) skeptic, and is less of a proponent of immigration. In the US these are generally Republican-party aligned positions, so if we want to call the parties our arrows for “left” and “right,” that puts him more to the right. But, he came to those positions through worker protections concerns. And, it is not that uncommon for left wing parties in Europe to have similar concerns, I think? IMO, there are just too many issues to make a one or two dimensional map.