It's a boring take from more than 30 years ago that was kinda true in the Regan years when the dominant voting groups could pretend that elected officials and government didn't actually matter because they all voted similarly and discrimination against groups that disagreed had been publicly accepted for decades. Historical electoral maps were not usually competitive at all like they are now.

The both parties are the same is such a lazy take, except in super limited circumstances like this naked power grab in the article. Both are going to use it in wildly different ways

>Even the left in France isn't as socially extremist as the Democrats.

Depends which left which you are talking about. LFI is certainly on that level in their way, PS/Place Publique are not(given that "printemps républicain" was part of what killed popular support for the party).

I mean, those countries have other further left parties with held seats in their legislatures up to and including outright explicit communist parties.

Those parties you listed are known for being center to center left in Europe, sometimes explicitly escuing the left as UK Labour and SPD have done.

Excpet PSOE which is farther left than the Democrats, having all of the identity politics of the Democratic party while being explicitly and empathetically pro union. Heads would have rolled if PSOE had broken the rail workers strike that like Biden did. The also tried to legalize abortion in the Spanish constitution in the 1970s, and haven't wavered on their view of abortion since. They passed same sex marriage when they got their first chance to (and before the US did), and used the same opportunity to expand transgender rights.

For migration, sure, but it is very related to the history of the US (nearly everyone is a relatively recent immigrant so it feels wrong to refuse that others come in). For abortion and gender this is not correct though. It is not as hot a topic but positions are not that different between European left and democrats. There is also a very wide scale of opinions inside the Democrat party itself. Some people just focus on the very left of the party but plenty of democrats are much more similar to Macron than the French left when it comes to social issues.

Many politicians just like social issues because they can win supporters without doing anything aside giving empty promises or arbitrary gestures.