Nades wrote:
seaweed wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
How many moderate Republicans back:
- a public healthcare option
- two years of free college
- ending cash bail
- a $15 federal minimum wage
- paid family leave
- increased corporation tax
- repealing “Right to Work” laws
- banning private prisons and schools
Some of those are good ideas, some of them are bad ideas - all of them are leftist ideas, and all of them are changes which alter the status quo. No Republican would support those ideas, and even moderate Democrats would object to most of them. Biden would be the most leftist President in US history.
Biden brands himself as a moderate, and is able to do so because he ran against multiple communists, but really he’s a social democrat. He’s fooled both leftists and moderates.
Compared to Hillary Clinton he’s a disappointing candidate for liberals, but should be a strong one for leftists
all these things are barely left of right. he's not a social democrat at all.
Free health care, significant increase in minimum wage, free two years of college, banning of private prisons, increased corp tax, paid family leave. That all sounds like very substantial socioeconomic changes and they're only barely left wing? It's actually worrying if that's the case. Just how much further left can it go?
I have no issues with any of those points, Im just perplexed at how free health care for example is just "barely" left wing.
A public option is not “free healthcare”, which presumably is Seaweed’s objection.
There is clear daylight between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and I don’t see any value in pretending otherwise. Sanders is an extremist, Biden is a pragmatist. But likewise, there is clear daylight between Biden and Obama or the Clintons, with Biden being noticeably more left wing. I think he can get away without alienating moderate voters due to a combination of the total unacceptability of Trump, people’s political illiteracy, and most obviously, the fact that he’s a white man.
While translating politicians from one context to another is always difficult, all of those policies except healthcare (where the UK has its own peculiar hang-ups) would put Biden on the left of the UK Labour Party.
The labour party to me is also to far left for my liking. Under Corbyn it was extreme and drove voters away in areas he should have had a certain win. There is always a happy middle ground. I think a comparison to them certainly helps people in the UK make comparisons to use politics.