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Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

And both Clinton and Biden are very conservative candidates, by any reasonable standard.

God I wish this trope would die.

All the political terms - left, right, conservative, progressive, liberal, etc have definitions which vary greatly from country-to-country, over time, and by which group is using them. Clinton and Biden are representatives from American's dominant liberal party and represent views which are left-of-center when you do the sane thing and define center as "median voter in the country being discussed" and not "my group of friends" or whatever time or place you're imagining.

You might as well say 'Bill Gates is very poor, by any reasonable standard' (because unlike the rich people of 2,000 years ago, he can't raise an army that rivals that of his home nation-state or the rich of the future who take vacations on the moon).

I think the parent means that both Clinton and Biden are establishment candidates. Neither of the are boat rockers like Bernie or Trump in 2016. I think the reality of Trump’s presidency is far more establishment than his original campaign but still.

Liberal & Conservative in the US usually have to do with what changes a person wants to make but Clinton, Romney, Obama, Biden, hell Bush are all literally conservative in the scope and amount.

I wish you would not refer to arguments that you disagree with as tropes, it's a thought terminating cliché. Clinton ran on "America is already great" and Biden is running on a "return to normality" ticket under which "nothing will fundamentally change." The Clintons were the center of the DLC, who assassinated the candidacy of Jessie Jackson to bring on an era in which the Democrats would "End Welfare As We Know It," sign the crime bill, and deregulate everything. Biden got into politics as a New England Dixiecrat, of the kind that was extremely popular around Boston when white children there were threatened with being exposed to black children in school. His VP is a prosecutor who bragged about jailing the parents of truant children. Both supported the Iraq War. Biden championed the crime bill that was passed under a Clinton administration.

Yes, they wouldn't be conservative for Saudi Arabia, but they would both continue to closely ally us with the Saudis and aid them in murdering Yemenis.

> center as "median voter in the country being discussed

Both Biden and Clinton, issue by issue, are well to the right of the median US citizen. It's pretty dishonest to restrict the people allowed to have their opinions considered to the people who thought that the distinction between Republican and Democratic administrations was important, when the argument being made is about whether both candidates are conservative. The median eligible voter is barely more likely to vote than not.

I know typing this is a waste of time.

I disagree with your claim that Biden and Clinton are "well to the right of the median US citizen". They are clearly to the left in literally every assessment - whether in the actual elections or polling done by any reputable organization. You're imagining that "median US citizen" is somehow far left of "median US voter" and that's just not true.

Additionally, everything you listed is just exposition on your initial claim. Saying that you will "End Welfare As We Know It" sounds like a potentially wildly liberal plan - perhaps UBI, government-guaranteed employment, housing and healthcare or some other fundamental shift. The victims of crime are disproportionately the poor, people of color and people who are structurally disadvantaged so removing the threat of violent crime from their lives falls well within the standard goals of liberals (even if the actual implementation of the bill you're referencing had more mixed results).

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