Disclaimer: Trying to use this definition prior to the year 2000 is unsupported and will result in some really weird shit.
I primarily wanted to highlight that the people quipping about "there's no far left in the US" or "the far left in the US is the mainstream left in Europe" are far left hence why they don't see much to the left of them in the US. Left-right, tall-short, skinny-fat, if you find yourself on a spectrum and one side of you is sparsely populated you are the extreme by definition.
Second, these people are generally ignorant of how far right some of the "other half" of Europe leans on social issues. Sure, they have lots of government services and safety nets, healthcare included. But they don't lean as far left on many social subjects as the US does. Identity politics, sexual orientation and abortions are three good examples of topics on which the left half of the bell curve of opinions on these subjects has more of it's meat to the right than the US equivalent. (Arguably a lot of this is a function of the US's history of reactionary politics but that's outside of the scope of this discussion, the positions today are what they are.) So even in a context that includes "nations who literally tried communism and kept the stuff they liked when they were done" the opinions of the "far" left in the US is decently out there.
I mean that's literally a fact, so... Even Orban is just a racist "far leftist"... Give me a break.
> Sure, they have lots of government services and safety nets, healthcare included.
Sure, they're 100000% far-left wing, but they're not far-left at all. Okay dude, gtfo.
> Identity politics, sexual orientation and abortions are three good examples of topics on which the left half of the bell curve of opinions on these subjects has more of it's meat to the right than the US equivalent.
Except most of the 3/4 of a billion people do. It's not a bell curve at all. Did you even bother to look into this or just go with your gut? Even in the east where it's the lowest, for example, gay marriage support is still 43%... higher than in the US in 2009 (Gallup)!
He’s saying the left went so far left that his only reasonable choice is a guy on the right. Imagine that. A guy who has voted Democrat is now moved to vote for a right wing candidate because the left's policies have deviated so much.
The far left have to come to terms that moderate liberals do not identify with people on the far left with their attitudes toward crime, identity politics, economics and other mainstream political issues that the moderate left of Bill Clinton and Gore of yore would not have supported.
If Bill or Al Gore or Kerry of 2004 were running, Musk would vote for them. So would the many who will vote out some democrats in congress come 2024. In large part people voted for Biden because he promised to return to the mean --but instead has embraced the left wing of the party rather than the center of the Dem. party.
You forget he's voted Democrat or independent in the US before now. He's leaving because he believes the left has left him (moving too far left for him).