The Mayoral special election between London Breed, Mark Leno and Jane Kim could be called “competitive”, but no matter who won (London won), the trajectory and policies of the City would have remained effectively the same with the only difference being who could advance their career that year.
Or to put it another way, it is a very competitive environment as long as you are a Democrat, but it is not an ideologically or politically competitive environment and the policies of the City government are stagnant (Fix homelessness! Save Muni! Stop car break-ins! Build more housing but only the right kind, maybe! etc.). This is unlikely to change under single party rule.
But it is a power struggle internal to the Democratic Party. Sure you have different people with different ideas about where to go, what to do, but overall the trajectory is largely the same, and to be frank, it isn’t a direction I like. I still don’t know if I was naïve in hitching my wagon to the Democratic Party when I came of age, if I was never really in agreement with it, or of it just left me, and I’ve been trying to figure that out. What I do know is that there’s no place for me in it anymore, but whether I was naïve before, then and now, they’re still the only game in town and the combination of Ranked-Choice Voting and Open Primaries is further cementing them both here and in localities around here. I have my ballot in front of me, and for every race below President, it is virtually indistinguishable from a Democratic primary ballot because that is in effect what our General elections around here have become, a question of whose career do you want to advance or maintain under the auspices of this particular party banner?
> Again, if your focus is policing people's sex lives and consensual relationships, it'll all look the same to you.
Since nobody has mentioned anything of the like in this comment chain, I’m forced to conclude you’re making certain assumptions about me and insinuating something unsavory there. Maybe my conclusion is wrong, you tell me. Unfortunately for you, that’s never been something I gave a crap about. I’m not some bloody transplant weirded out by the Castro, I grew up in the Castro, and for the moment it is still my home.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=nl&tl=en&u=htt...
Speaking of which, several European countries have privatized post offices; not just telecom companies that were parts of PTTs, but entire postal services. It is the rare European country that hasn't sold off at least part of their postal services. The EU explicitly requires postal monopolies to end in member states; whether government-owned or not, EU postal services do not have the USPS's monopoly on first-class mail. Yet no major party in the US seriously talks about privatizing the USPS.[1] Does this mean that American politics is "far to the left" of that of Germany and the UK, both of which have completely sold off their postal services to private investors?
[1] 1 And no, it's not because of the Constitution. Article I Section 8 only gives Congress the authority "To establish Post Offices", as opposed to requiring a government-run one. Certainly nothing in the Constitution mandates the USPS's first-class mail monopoly.
I have no idea how well this turned out in practice, especially considering that market harmonization/standardization is a basically a must have to have efficiency at scale.
The big difference seems to be healthcare and education. Where there's a primary state funded/owned/operated/mandated provider/option. Which sort of helps with keeping a ceiling on prices.
But at the same time youth unemployment was (and probably still is) very high, despite easy access to higher education. US unemployment rates reached its low point before covid19 probably because so much is tied to employment and there are so few restrictions on hiring and firing folks compared to some "average/median" EU jurisdiction.
Then of course there are very real far right parties with power too, so yeah, it's a lot less true that US Dems are so right of Europe politics. While at the same time a very authoritarian group runs the current US federal show, with a very real chance of that continuing, which unfortunately doesn't help with the polarization of politics.
https://sfelections.sfgov.org/candidates
EDIT: The Board of Supervisors also has a two-term limit, so even if you think incumbents are automatic winners (which they usually are - not usually unopposed, but, like most incumbents, I don't think they usually have to sweat it too much), there's going to be a competitive open-seat race at least once a decade.
Of course, if you e.g. are a single issue voter that cares only that women who has consensual sex not have the option to terminate unintended pregnancies you won't have a candidate to support in the general.