Beyond our borders the left wing parties are more right wing than us in many ways. For example, on immigration almost all left wing parties are to the right of the Republicans. On abortion the consensus is well to the right of the Democrats. Some countries have private social security systems. Single payer is even less likely to happen in some European countries than it is here. Multi-payer works just fine, thank you.
It’s hard to compare left and right ideologies of very different cultures, especially since a lot of the ideological positions taken by one party are in response to another party, or to unique conditions within a country. The Democrats have not historically been the party of liberal immigration. That became a political necessity due to the nature of the Democratic coalition. It has nothing to do with left-wing ideology, which recognizes that a generous welfare state and large scale immigration cannot coexist. Democrats are very liberal on abortion because Republicans are very conservative on abortion. In most countries, abortion isn’t a political football, so there’s a general consensus that it should be legal but heavily regulated.
So yes, the Democrats are left-wing and moving further to the left than usual this cycle. They favor the most generous immigration policy any country has ever had, pretty much no restrictions whatsoever on abortion, MORE socialism in the health care and pensions field at a time when our supposedly more liberal neighbors are going with less.
I take your [adaher’s] general point, but if “left” means “opposite of whatever the team on the right is doing,” then I guess the Democrats are extreme left-wing. But then the Republicans would be extreme right-wing, and we might as well just abandon the terms and call them by the party names.
I am extremely skeptical of all that. I think this election will either be like 2000 Bush / Gore close. . . or a blow out for the Republicans. It’s a swing year. VP Bush repeated a party hold on the White House back in 1988. . . but, since it’s been back and forth. Plus the election momentum over the last coupe of election has been to the right.
I think the real delusion is Democrats thinking the quality of the GOP candidates is poor. I really think all of the candidates are good in some way. That’s why this has been such a contentious year on both sides.
Unemployment numbers neglects a possibly important component - labor force participation. We’re still below the participation rate (look at the 10yr graph) before the mortgage crisis kicked in. We’re below average for the period from 1950 to now. Long downturns can produce people that stop looking and thus aren’t technically “unemployed” anymore. Looking solely at unemployment rates ignores part of the employment picture.
Wage growth is still pretty low (as tracked by the Federal Reserve Board of Atlanta) it’s only just getting into the bottom of the pre-mortgage crisis parts of the Bush administration and below Clinton’s second term. That leaves the possibility of many still not seeing wage growth or upset it’s below expectations formed during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Real median household income has been rising in Obama’s second term. It’s still down from when Obama’s butt landed in the chair though. that’s a lot of households that are worse off than pre-Obama. Economists, policy wonks, and dopers can argue about bigger trends and comparison of Obama to other possible policy options. A lot of people look at their household finances, though. On that test there’s reason for Obama to pretty poorly with a good chunk of people being polled.
It doesn’t take extreme partisanship to explain the poll responses for favorability and being ion the right track. It simply takes a good chunk of people responding in ways that focus on their personal finances rather than macro-economic trends.
However, we’re going to be below the pre-2008 rate for a very long time, because first of the baby-boomers started turning 62 that same year. In comparison to the generation just before them (the kids of the 1930s and the war years), this is a huge group of people moving out of the labor force and into retirement. That’s a point that a lot of people still don’t understand (the labor force participation rate includes almost all adults, not just 18-65), and the relentless chorus on the right makes the rate seem a much bigger deal than it is. Given American demographics, about the only way to substantially increase the participation rate to the post-WWII average is to make it too difficult or too expensive to retire.
For the reason that slash2k points out, participation rate isn’t a useful metric. Use U6 if you want - there’s no sane unemployment metric that shows Americans worse off now than at the beginning of 2009. That’s why Republicans are trying to bring up things like the labor force participation rate, or comparing today’s U6 to 2008’s U3.
They were falling when Obama’s butt landed in the chair. Now they’re rising. People’s memories are short, but I think most folks still remember what 2008 was like.
Sure, but there are always people whose personal situation is running counter-trend. Trend is what we look at to determine the fundamentals for electoral purposes.
If only we could do something like artificially hold interest rates close to 0%, that shouldn’t be a problem. Wait…
And if that doesn’t work, perhaps we could go to NEGATIVE interest rates! That will get those lazy people living off their retirement savings out of their easy chairs and back into the workforce.