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Comment by ahoy | Hacker News Reader

There is no left party in America.

This is correct; the options in the US as of the last election cycle are center-right and far-right. A Sanders type party would be left or probably more accurately center-left. That’s not a value judgement (you’re not a bad person for picking one or the other) just an assessment relative to world politics.

Obama was a pretty center-right politician, and Hillary would have been also. He didn’t support socialized medicine, didn’t support socialized education, didn’t push for a $15 minimum wage, didn’t really bolster unions — though didn’t try and demolish them either — and didn’t really tax the wealthy. He was also fairly supportive of the surveillance state. To his credit he did a lot of good work bolstering environmental regulations and pushing forward climate science. I’m a leftist by Canadian standards and I liked and respected Obama and I can confirm he was no leftist.

I might add that even California, one of the "left" most states, still has a death penalty.

Only 13 men have been executed since 1978, none since 2006. Isn't really a good measure of being "left" or not.

They also have solitary confinement

With or without Internet?

I believe being deprived of internet access is considered “cruel and unusual punishment” in the SV area ;)

The rest of the western world sees the death penalty as morally wrong and more similar to murder than justice. By their standards you are essentially saying "The government has only murdered a few people recently".

More accurately would be the government murdered nobody recently. Sure they have in the past but California hasn't actually executed anyone in 12 years (13 in a few days). Also while California has the death penalty, it is fairly reserved in what can earn it: Repeatedly convicted first degree murder with a number of conditions, treason, intentionally derailing a train resulting in deaths, perjury resulting in someone else receiving the death penalty, or fatal assault as an escaped convict already in for life. With the exception of possibly treason, all of those seem like mostly reasonable conditions if a state had to have a death penalty.

> intentionally derailing a train resulting in deaths

That seems oddly specific, do you know why it singles out trains?

From what I can find that bit was added in the 1870s to help curtail train robbers who were using more aggressive and destructive means to acquire their loot.

Trump is not "far" right. He's not even really a conservative.

Sanders is a socialist, he says as much himself.

Trump's tax cuts, deregulation and increase in military spending are very much conservative policies.

But protecting local workers from competing with low cost Chinese workers and illegal migrants are very left wing policies, probably the most left wing policies enacted by any president in decades.

I wouldn't call increasing military spending left or right, just about every corner of the political spectrum has done this at some point, most notably the Soviet Union.

He uses illegal immigrants in his own business. He doesn't care about the workers, its all just a way to rile up his base.

Protectionism is not specifically a left or right wing policy. There are right wing and left wing reasons to support protectionism. But the left traditionally has been opposed to protectionism because it was seen as way for farmers and other industries to make workers pay too much for their food and other goods.

As far as restricting all immigration, that's very far right.

Yes. But tariffs and protectionism are historically center stones of the left. So it’s a mixed bag. A normal leftist party would support tariffs strongly according to historical precedence. We live in strange times though.

> He didn’t support socialized medicine

i'm a bit confused... wasn't Obamacare, like, that? (nb not a US citizen)

Usually, the definition includes the government determining what (basic) insurance covers and what price the insurers pay to the hospitals. Those two things are missing in ACA/Obamacare.

For example in The Netherlands, the government defines a extensive healthcare package that every insurer must provide to everyone, insurers must accept everyone for and all their clients must pay the same price, and they also determine what hospitals can charge for certain procedures. "Add-ons" like sport-related Physical Therapy are mostly unregulated.

That's far more far-reaching than Obamacare, which allows age-based price discrimination, only mandates coverage of 10 categories and does not regulate hospital pricing.

i see. thanks for the explanation!

It was just an broad extension of private health insurance. In fact it was very heavily based on a similar system implemented in Massachsets by, er, Republicans under Mitt Romney. That’s why Obama though he could get it through. The only reason the republicans fought it at the national level was because Obama.

In fact until they turned on it for political strategy reasons it was quite popular with Republican representatives and saw extensive bipartisan review and amendment. The Republican narrative that it was pushed through without them having a say is flat out false.

As a UK conservative I’ve had it up to my teeth with the US Republican Party. It seems like all they’ve got left is reactionaryism and nationalism. They’re now even dismantling trade deals largely built by free trade republicans, and can’t even support their own policies as soon as anyone else supports them too. They’re totally dysfunctional.

I’m a big believer that any political party that has power for too long becomes corrupt. Success attracts mouthpiece politicians that parrrot the party line because it’s successful, without thinking through and living the basic principles. I’ve seen it happen to the Conservative party. I voted con in 1997 but we deserved that defeat. It happened to labour under Blair and Brown. The US republicans have had the same disease since the Bush eras and just can’t shake it. The fact the democrats have occupied the centre right had forced republicanism into a reactionary corner. As a conservative myself it horrible to watch. They’ve become a twisted parody of the party I once loved under Reagan.

Oops. Rant.

Nope, that was mandatory private insurance that you paid for yourself.

Economically that is correct. The whole US is very much 'business-friendly'.

Business friendly? I am not so sure. Maybe "large/existing business friendly"? After all, the private sector spends a lot of money on pressuring government to maintain existing monopolies/status quos, and the government is happy to oblige.

In many US states, companies can fire employees without cause. That's very friendly to small businesses.

(I based in South Africa, but traveled the world. So I'm fairly neutral)

What you described is exactly one form of 'business-friendly'. Unfortunately, it is logical. Big business brings big investment and hold a lot of employment under its umbrella. Small businesses might, on aggregated level, provided more jobs or tax revenue, but they don't have a single voice to represent their interests.

So I guess you are right, it is truly 'big-business-friendly', whether that is good or bad, I don't know.

Business friendly often means giving big businesses tax breaks, which means that the government is seeing less of these big investements. May, instead, the lobbying power that big businesses can afford, have something to do with their power? I'll give you the employment argument, though.

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