The Overton window has shifted insanely right in the US. The democrats would be considered centrist or even centre right in much of the EU.

When people say this, they just seem to mean European countries have more universal healthcare than the US does. But /keeping/ your healthcare program after it's already been invented is conservative!

European parties are definitely not to the left of the Democrats on immigration or minority rights.

Nah, there's far more to it than that. Workers' rights, consumer rights, privacy laws, and strong regulations around corporations for a start.

The issue with new rights vs preserving existing rights also applies here I think.

Lina Khan's FTC is left of most of these though. They're trying to break up Google right now!

No they wouldn't.

Mass immigration, paying for transgender surgeries for prisoners, affirmitive action, all left policies in EU. Tons more too.

All of which are "social liberal".

These, and a lot of other things are pretty much randomly left/right. For example in the UK it was the traditionally right wing party that legalised same sex marriage. In the 70s the left (then actual socialists!) opposed EEC membership, by the time we left the EU it was the right who wanted to leave.

What the US never had (and which is pretty much dead in the UK now) is a real economically left wing party. In the UK this has lead to a lot of people (including myself) feeling that there is not much difference between the big parties. This helps for extreme parties in the UK. In the US which is more of a two party system perhaps it helps feed the rise of extreme movements within the existing parties?

Social liberal policies are left.

And yeah, politics are a lot more complex than left/right so you will often see a party you'd normally consider left/right enact a policy you'd see from the other side.

> Social liberal policies are left.

How so? Only because we say so now. TO some extent I think we identify issues as social liberal because they are what the left in the US favours.

There are plenty of examples of let wing parties and governments being quite the opposite - take a look at gay rights in communist China or the toing and froing in the Soviet Union. The same with many traditional socialists around the world.

Those are not left policies. Just liberal. We have both left and right parties that have similar policies. We also have left and right parties that area against it.

Left are liberal policies, right are conservative policies.

you think conservatives in europe want tax hikes, mass immigration and abortion at 9 months?

Most dems, and certainly Harris, want nothing to do with abortion at 9 months. This is adding nothing to this discussion.

If Dems don't want it why have they passed a bill that allows exactly that? My post is already censored btw.

I think they do want those strange made-up strawman policies.

Considering that our far right government in italy hiked taxes and approved the biggest number of visa for slave workers, yeah they do except for women's rights

Nobody wants abortion at 9 months.

Women who are otherwise going to die because of a medical condition might want to have an abortion at 9 months (for example). The idea of being "for abortion at 9 months" just means allowing those women to live (instead of having to have their babies whether or not it kills them).

Very much depends on the issue being discussed. Economically? Perhaps. Socially? Absolutely not. The US is far out on its own branch when it comes to things like LGBTQ issues, racial and other identity issues, immigration, etc. I’m not sure these played as much of a role as the economy in terms of this election, but they are absolutely next in line in terms of the issues looming large in voters’ minds.

Americans want a better future than what seems in the cards for the EU

Then they've chosen a poor route toward it.

Liberal isn't left. Maybe their problem is that they actually didn't go left (workers).

We just had by far the most pro-union administration in decades, eg they saved the Teamsters' pensions, and in return the Teamsters didn't endorse them. Americans don't care if you respect the working class or not, they're postmaterialist voters.

But they're also "education polarized", so they definitely care if you respect people who didn't go to college. But "respect" doesn't mean you're nice to them or even that you do things for them as a group. It could just mean you don't come off like you went to grad school.

What, in practice, was too crazy and left in the Biden administration? (Honestly asking)

Uncontrolled immigration is a big one

There's 2x the amount of border apprehensions under Biden than Trump. I'm sure more people are trying to get into the country under Biden than trump so let's say the control is pretty even but not uncontrolled.

https://usafacts.org/topics/immigration-border-security/

And what happens after the migrants are "apprehended?" Saying there are more apprehensions is meaningless.

The number of border apprehensions is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the number of illegals who enter the country. If 0 illegal immigrants enter the country that would mean there are 0 border apprehensions. Would that mean the border was less secured?

Everything indicates there were less illegal border crossings under Trump than Biden

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2024/02/11/trump-...

The parent comment said "uncontrolled".

It also boggles the mind that immigrants are the issue while the 1% own as much as the entire middle class, while the bottom class owns nothing at all. When you pay more for groceries, or rent, or gas do you think it's the immigrants making it expensive?

What do you think illegal border crossings are if not uncontrolled immigration?

Cost of groceries/gas are a separate issue. Does not mean immigration isn't.

And do you think immigrants do not make rent more expensive? If you increase the demand, without increasing the supply, what do you think happens?

You are sounding a bit demeaning. Do you really think people are only capable of caring about one issue?

Regardless, immigration can harm the poor by having increased competition for low paying jobs. Bernie Sanders called open borders a Koch brothers plan to get cheap labor.

This is especially true of illegal immigration since they will naturally be paid less because there is a legal risk.

Defending trans people apparently was a bridge too far for many, for one.

>Defending trans people apparently was a bridge too far for many, for one.

Which is ridiculous. Trans folks are less than one percent of the population.

Why shouldn't they be allowed to be who they are? Given the tiny number of these folks, it really shouldn't make any difference to anyone who's not trans anyway.

But, apparently, some folks, who appear to believe that their trained-in prejudices are the laws of nature, feel the need to tell other people how they should live and, even more egregiously, try to force them to do so.

That's not liberty. That's not individual rights. That's not religious freedom. Rather, it's busybodies trying to tell other people what to do.

The problem isn't the people, it's the policy.

e.g. https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...

The only reason this could happen is because of policy that prioritizes self-declared "gender identity" over sex, and over women's dignity and safety. That's the actual problem, not people just quietly living their lives.

- open borders (including literally flying in illegal immigrants and giving them free money) to shift the electorate permanently left (like California)

- banana republic-level lawfare (trying to jail your political opponents on phony charges - they literally changed the laws just so that Donald Trump could be charged!)

- extreme corruption in the name of "climate change" (e.g. spending $7B on "EV chargers" at $1B per charger)

- trampling women's rights (trans propaganda, men in women's sports, etc.)

- racism / sexism (in the name of "equality", affirmative action, reparations etc.)

- bailing out the rich (student debt relief, when some of the most educated people's debts are paid by taxpayers)

- complete disregard for rule of law and constitution (student debt relief was ruled unconstitutional)

- denying science (e.g. pushing COVID vaccine as "it will stop the spread" despite absolutely no scientific proof)

It's more that their marketing targeted people who are already Democrats and moderate Republicans. The first group didn't need convincing, and the second group is small. The independents and swing voters they should have courted were left in the cold and either didn't vote or went for Trump. They kept preaching to choir, and the choir kept shouting "Hallelujah!", so they thought they had it in the bag.