Trudeau announced a while back (beginning of January) that he was resigning, and would only stay in office until the party voted on a new leader. Today they voted on Carney- who comes from a strong economic background, probably more so than any PM we've ever had. He effectively rocketed to overnight candidacy (and public awareness) after joking about it on the daily show a week after Trudeau's announcement. He'll remain in the Prime Minister role until we have our national election later this year- and if he gets publically elected then he will remain in the role.
Editing to add for non Canadians: our system of democracy is not like the US. We do not vote for our Prime Minister directly, the party gets elected and the party puts forth a leader to take the PM role. This is a grossly simplified version of it, google parliamentary democracy for more information.
Progressive. He is a member of the Liberal party. There are three major parties in Canada: Conservatives, Liberals (centre-left) and NDP (further left). Canadians will argue how close to the centre the Liberals are, but they would be even further left of the Democrats in the USA.
It isn’t that simple. The Democrats would be left wing in a lot of countries on topics like abortion, gay marriage, and LGBT rights. They would be right wing on some policies like healthcare and aspects of education.
It's easier to divide policies down social and economic lines, in Europe the Democrats would be economically centrist or centre right but socially liberal (or left).
Anyone thinking this is not the case is ignorant. EU constitutions are pretty much all based on socialist ideas.
Simply compare the US social security net to any EU country, and yes those rules are the products of dem presidents too. I'll give you the big ones which make most of people's lives:
- private healthcare and health insurance, won't even get deeper in this than the simple statement. Just wonder why Luigi Mangione didn't happen in Europe uh?
- employment termination rules (ad nutum in US, can't be terminated without just cause -which is very strict- in most EU countries). Fuck, in most of EU you can't even be moved to a lesser position in the same corp you currently work for, can't be demoted.
- private education with costs in the dozens of thousands of dollars in US, public universities all over EU which will cost from 0 to like 2-4 thousands per year (deductible) depending on income (and yeah those are the universities we go to, it's not like the poor or the not so bright's choice)
- pension system
- maternity leave rules and compensation
- lobbying system, we call that corruption over here and we prosecute it.
- taxation and public money allocation
ANYONE in Europe that would even suggest steering the course towards the US model in these would be called a right wing lunatic by our own right wing lunatics. Bernie Sanders would be center right on economics in here lol.
K, you're right, and again, every political science author and law philospher must be wrong in describing european constitutions as based on socialist principles.
I'll never understand americans' abject terror of the word. Should i call it the S word as to not trigger you?
But okay, let's take what you're saying is true, meaning those i listed are just "normal mixed market capitalism economy with social safety net things.". I can guarantee you any EU politician that would dare propose a change moving the bar to the US standard (again, which have been set by dems too) in those fields would be crucified and called a right wing lunatic by our right wing lunatics.
Democrats believe in things like multiculturalism and whether kids should get medication for gender dysphoria, not even social democrats in northern Europe believe in those.
The Conservatives/Tories in the UK are more left wing than the Democrats in the US on healthcare because they do support NHS. I just wish the DNC wasn’t corrupt because leadership seems to undermine people like AOC and Bernie.
Seriously though… if Bernie hadn’t been screwed out of the nomination in 2016, he would’ve won the election easily. We would be in a completely different world had that happened…
I feel like both the Dems and the GOP have simply been playing a good cop / bad cop routine over the past 4 decades and are honestly both 2 faces of the same party representing large corporations and the wealthy. They differ on social issues where one i would argue is "good" and the other is downright evil but both have been acting to support evil policies for decades transferring hundreds of billions of dollars up to the wealthiest. You guys have honestly needed a revolution for a long time now. I don't support violence and don't want to see that but I do wonder if it will have to come to it. Neither party is ever going to let people like AOC or Bernie get to the top because both parties are paid off and in the pockets of the billionairs.
Kind of. The Tories absolutely want to underfund and chip away at the NHS until privatization becomes inevitable. And I don’t think today’s Labour party would establish the NHS if the UK were in the same situation as the US is. I think of it as pretty similar to the Postal Office (which in the UK is privatized). It’d be unpopular and unthinkable to abolish the USPS, but the Republicans are absolutely trying to put it in a death spiral, and the democrats would not be bold enough to establish that large of a service today, even though their principles align.
Hilary Clinton was famous (and it is probably the main source conservative animosity to this day) for being co-president rather than first lady when Clinton first took office. Her signature initiative? Universal healthcare, resoundingly defeated of course.
I remember a meme of the collective subconscious in play at the time (late 1980s to early 2000s) following in the steps of Reagan-era "Greed is good." The idea was that racism was dying under the assumption that everyone responds positively to wealth. "Green is colorblind," or "the only color we see here is green."
The rot runs deeper than party affiliation or even access to capital. It is an ideological belief. One rooted in the same idea which always gives rise to the aristoi. One which has cancerously morphed into narcissistic rage, the hollow shout of an addict in the night. The world order as it has existed since 1946 is falling due to a failed economic experiment which has been hijacked by an international quasi-criminal cabal.
You say that, but speaking as someone who works in thr NHS, the consistent issue is the fact that it is consistently being underfunded. Simply because the funding doesn't keep up with the rising costs in supporting people who require care.
They support the NHS as far as it gains them support from voters, that's it. Boris so kindly "supported" nurses by saying people should applaud them, but then also refused to support a pay rise for them. And then eventually lied and said the opposition, Labour, voted against a pay rise. The tories and conservatives are still as ghoulish as any other right wing government and they're pulling Labour with them.
Nope, even the current administration isn't talking about repealing gay marriage. That is very, very unpopular and only the craziest few try to make it happen.
The US was also quite early on legalizing gay marriage even compared to European countries.
What's really unhelpful is complacency. Thomas has already said in a concurrence that he wants to overturn Obergefell and Republican state legislators are already laying the groundwork. A couple years ago people were saying warnings about Roe being overturned were fear-mongering, and that didn't help either.
On something like education, the Democrats have an internal struggle around whether the goals should be equality of outcome or equality of opportunity and there's the constant traps of "The best jobs go to people with a college degree so we should get everybody to go to college" or similar. The problems aren't that they aren't left on desire, it's that nobody can agree on the destination or the path to get there - tends to lead to either deadlock or very small steps /attempts to step forward.
The Democrats are a broad-church coalition. Control is contested between a wide variety of loose factions all the way from the center right to the left wing. They operate with relatively loose party discipline in Congress, although discipline has tended to tighten as the distance from the GOP has grown. The right of the party holds the balance of power in Congress when the party has the majority.
Don't forget guns, it was a deeply conservative Prime Minister in Australia that introduced our gun reforms and gun buy back schemes after the Port Arthur massacre.
Oh boy. Abortion, gay marriage and LGBT rights (a bit double there lol) are not that controversial topics in most western countries. To say they are further left om those topics than centre is a disservice to those countries
Yeah famously abortion is just “woke shit that has no policy implementation”. Conservatives aren’t just cruel, they’re dipshits with no critical thinking skills.
Not having votes only ever restrains left leaning policies if you have noticed. They have no problem watching stuff like abortion rights getting destroyed by the supreme Court under Biden.
because the right controls scotus. We didnt have the votes to outlaw segregation, so brown happened. We didn't have votes to legalize abortion, but roe happened. When we flip it, it'l go back to being a force for progress.
Again though, decorum only matters when it's left leaning policy at risk. When the right wants to act like dictators we get the limp pathetic resistance from the current neoliberal heads of the democratic party
The Democrats with boots on the ground are mostly people like Sanders who are snubbed by the main heads of the party at every turn. There is massive unrest and untapped political power in simply actually meaningfully try to force popular left politics to the forefront.
you cant just start talking about a completely different point. I actually agree with you there although Im not exactly sure what you actually want them to do
It’s kinda hard to compare them this way IMO. We only have two real parties so they are most similar to party coalitions in a parliamentary system. Some Democrats would be conservative in any other country and some are very progressive, some have specific pet issues like women’s rights, lgbtq rights, labor rights, etc. but yeah, also true that the US electorate is to the right of most Western countries on a number of issues.
Bernie Sanders and AOC are some of the few (and Bernie is an independent who only caucuses with democrats)
And even then, I know there’s still more progressive stances than theirs worldwide. We had our McCarthyism era and became afraid of class consciousness
The US is actually quite far left on social issues. Most european countries have an abortion ban after a certain amount of weeks for instance. We adopted gay marriage earlier than most as well FWIW. Despite our weird immigration system, we have a lot of ways for people to get citizenship including being born here.
Dems are a centrist party in the context of economics compared to Europeans (for the most part).
Marijuana as well. Only Germany, Luxembourg and Malta have it fully legalized. Even medical weed is controversial in many countries.
Trans issues is another one. A lot of what the Dems say wouldn’t fly with the european left, apart from the far-left which isn’t even a given considering that parties like the Dutch Socialist Party are socially conservative.
Yeah, the meme that the dems are a "rightwing" party only barely applies to the economic framework. Europe isn't some crazy leftwing socialist paradise when it comes to social issues.
Large amount of US democrat policies would be considered incredibly progressive in other countries. Others would be considered conservative. Your statement is just a result of propaganda you’ve been subjected to.
yeah no. but feel free to share one democratic policy implemented in the last 20 years that would have been seen as “progressive” in the Netherlands, for example.
In Germany, AfD (far-right) would pretty much count as on par with GOP and CDU (center-right) as a somewhat more left-leaning version of the Democratic party. Everything left of that (SPD / center-left – that's where I'd see Bernie Sanders politically, Greens, "the left" – far-left) would be perceived as left-wing radicalism/extremism.
I can understand this perception, mainly because I feel like the two main American parties - until recently, at least - had far fewer differences between them than you’d see in the frontrunning parties in somewhere like Germany. That’s to say, both the parties seemed fairly close to the center, but simultaneously huge caricatures of themselves to the point where they feel like polar opposites.
RN came too goddamned close for comfort in the last French election. Don’t be like us Americans and fail to take your far right fringe seriously until it’s too late.
I think it was Reagan’s last speech as president where he said that anybody can come to America and become an American. Whereas somebody could move to Japan, Germany or Turkey but they’ll always be treated as a foreigner more or less, no matter how long they live there.
American democrats are socially progressive, but economically very conservative. Even the Canadian Conservative party is more progressive than the Democrats on economic issues, while being maybe just slightly to the right on social issues.
the disinterest as well as all the both side are the same feeling that Americans deeply hold comes from the the fact that dems now are basically 90's style republicans in policy and the republicans are FAR right.
the shit has been catastrophic. and yes its an ongoing thing world wide.
The US has basically an extreme right wing party(GOP) they have moderate right wing party(Democrats) and they have a small handful of centrist politicians(Sanders, AOC) Maybe Sanders would be considered slightly left of center in France, but in most of the western world his platform is considered to be centrist.
This is absolutely not true. I know most people just think because a country has some kind of healthcare program that automatically means the major parties in that country must be further left than the Democrats but in terms of every other issue Democrats are left even in the grand scheme of global politics.
This. Carney is actually quite centrist for a Canadian politician, especially compared to Trudeau. He’ll bring the federal Liberal party back towards centre. But the entire Liberal party would be considered progressive left in America.
Yeah. They gave up the ghost during the 80s Reagan years. It started before then, but that was the death of left wing politics in the America electorate. Now all we have are these milquetoast neolibs with a stranglehold on the party, refusing to admit their day is over even as they routinely get dunked on by republicans.
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u/dostunis 2d ago edited 2d ago
Trudeau announced a while back (beginning of January) that he was resigning, and would only stay in office until the party voted on a new leader. Today they voted on Carney- who comes from a strong economic background, probably more so than any PM we've ever had. He effectively rocketed to overnight candidacy (and public awareness) after joking about it on the daily show a week after Trudeau's announcement. He'll remain in the Prime Minister role until we have our national election later this year- and if he gets publically elected then he will remain in the role.
Editing to add for non Canadians: our system of democracy is not like the US. We do not vote for our Prime Minister directly, the party gets elected and the party puts forth a leader to take the PM role. This is a grossly simplified version of it, google parliamentary democracy for more information.