We get too caught up in two-party partisanship to focus on the larger picture.
It's a sort of prisoner's dilemma, actually. We could collaborate on solving mutual problems but we know the other party isn't trustworthy. Or we could focus on just getting our own way and making sure the other party doesn't take advantage of us.
There's a myth around American politics largely pepetuated by people that have only had political experience in one place or only uses the media as a means to know the politics of countries. Even on abortion, the US has among the least restrictive in the entire world, looser than Germany, France, etc.
The big thing America really lacks is universal healthcare, which is the main axe people wield over the head of American politics to claim it's only corporatist right leaning. Government outlays really tell a different story than the narrative.
Throw in employee protections and reasonable amounts of vacation time, and I'm with you 100%.
You're telling me that rural Alabama is more liberal than Sweden? I think your viewpoint is leaning on definitions of "social" and "liberal" and "US" that are not universally understood.
As to the particulars of your comment, States should have far more autonomy than they do under FDR's federalist system. States should be able to tax more, but with the Feds already eating 20-50% of the populations income, States have a hard time raising funds. If we weakened the feds, but first paying down the debt, Alabama might have a far more interesting economy.
Republicans would obviously not accept this. We would likely replay the decades leading up to the Civil War, where adding states was a contentious and at times violent process.
The feds would also have to approve it. If Republicans can stop it, they will. If Democratic politicians can push it through, they would likely get blowback from moderates. Republicans would get power and seek to balance or even advantage themselves. We could end up with eight Dakotas (just kidding on this specific example; other Republican states might want to split too).
This is not a fight either party wants to start because it could be a disaster for them. The intended outcome (increase relative Senate representation) has slim odds and a high cost.
It’s not even a close contest. There’s literally not a labor party here.
I suspect immigration actually has a lot to do with it. I have a theory that, in the long run, immigration prevents the development of a meaningful left-wing party in the U.S. The left of center party ends up getting co-opted by immigrants who are open to same change, but not that much.
You can see this happening in the U.S. in real-time. Eroding support among hispanics may well cost Democrats the election in 2022. A notable fact about Hispanics is that they enjoy strong income mobility--typically moving up from the bottom to the middle within a couple of generations: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. If you're vastly better off than your grandfather who came here from Mexico, you may well be skeptical of efforts to change things too much.
On gun control there is no conceivable way gun ownership, gun crime and gun death statistics can be meaningfully changed. They are just too many guns out there already. Those states that do have 'strict' gun laws by US standards are right next to ones that don't and have open borders. As has been said many times, once Sandy Hook happened and didn't shift the consensus on the issue, it was all over. Face it, school shootings are going to be a fact for a very long time. You can have some local regulation like no conceal carry and such, fine, but banning guns and getting them off the streets and out of people's homes at a society level is impossible and pretending that it isn't is disingenuous.
On abortion, pregnant women are just going to go somewhere that allows abortion. Face it, women are going to get abortions if they rally want them. You can make it harder and coerce some vulnerable women, but broadly you can't stop them all you can do is mess with them.
The only effect of strict punitive anti-regulation in either case is to aggravate members of the pro-community, and harm people in edge case situations.
At least that's how it looks from the other side of the Atlantic.
Furthermore, the US left leads on progressive social values compared to Europe, such as immigration and social justice. The average European sentiment on race and immigration, such as their attitude towards Romani/"Gypsies" and Muslims is definitely considered right-wing in America.
Just because the US is fixated on identity politics does not mean it leads on progressive social values. Germany, a country with a quarter of the US population and way less territory has hosted a third of the amount of refugees the US has. Not even mentioning the data on total amount of refugees hosted by the EU because it absolutely dwarfs the US. As a migrant to the EU, the path to (legal) residency was extremely straight forward and easy, compared to the US. This is without going into topics such as socialised health care.
Worth going through this entire article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-...
Slight differences? In the U.S. right now there are states that would ban abortion immediately if Roe were overturned, and ones that allow abortion until birth, limited only be the conscience of the doctor. The two sides are further apart than the most extreme poles of the EU.
Sometimes the policies both parties agree on are in stark contrast to the will of the US electorate, such as the case of many recent wars, or Medicare for All.
By contrast, our disagreements regarding what you teach my kids about the nature of marriage and our purpose on the earth, or the laws around terminating human life, or whether we should have a color blind society or not, seem pretty important by comparison. Whatever problems we perceive ourselves as having, we don’t trust others to fix them if we disagree about fundamental things like the socialization of children.
For wars, the occupation of Afghanistan has been opposed by the public for at least 10 years before Biden withdrawing, with strong support from voters of both parties, as seen in both Obama, Trump and Biden winning with a platform of ending the war, but without any concrete action from the first two (if anything, Obama intensified the war, ordering even more illegal drone strikes on civilians than George Bush, and even publically admitting to assassinating an American citizen on "suspicion of terrorism").
Also, voting with your wallet doesn't work when Amazon undercuts the Mom&Pop, pumps billions into marketing, and outright buys what they can't compete with - as do all others.
[0] https://morningconsult.com/2021/03/24/medicare-for-all-publi...
Polling like that (do you want this free stuff?) is meaningless. Look at polls that ask how many people support taking action on climate change, versus ones that ask what people are willing to pay in higher utility bills for such action. People want change, but only if it costs less than $10/month: https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-...
Even millenials, who skew liberal, generally would prefer smaller government if bigger government meant higher taxes: https://reason.com/2014/07/10/millennials-prefer-small-gover....
Americans support universal healthcare--right up until you propose to pay for it the same way everyone else pays for it, with payroll taxes on middle class people.
> And yet, neither party is willing to implement it (a public system would significantly reduce Healthcare costs for the entire economy - remember that the USA has by far the largest expenditure on health-care out of any country on Earth, while doing relatively bad among rich countries at outcomes).
And here is where the abstract choice rubber hits the political reality road. After the Obamacare experience, very few people believe that they'll get more from a government program while paying less. Also, people are broadly in disagreement about why healthcare costs more in the U.S. and what drives our outcomes.
> For wars, the occupation of Afghanistan has been opposed by the public for at least 10 years before Biden withdrawing, with strong support from voters of both parties, as seen in both Obama, Trump and Biden winning with a platform of ending the war, but without any concrete action from the first two
Obama won because he was willing to recognize the war as a mistake, but that isn't the same thing as believing we should pull out. Opposition to ending the war didn't reach a decisive majority until 2012: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/world/asia/support-for-af.... And by the end of Obama's term, we were down to 1/3 of what they had been at the start of Obama's term: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-41014263. Even then, the majority of Americans disapproved of the execution of Biden's pull out: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-give-biden-low-ma...
> (if anything, Obama intensified the war, ordering even more illegal drone strikes on civilians than George Bush, and even publically admitting to assassinating an American citizen on "suspicion of terrorism").
Virtually nobody cares about that.
Maybe from a European or South American perspective but not from the perspective of the world as a whole.
tldr; compare the US with China, Japan, India, or any other large country. The US is considerably less conservative than most—though not quite all—of the world.
The claim that the US is particularly conservative only really makes sense coming from an extremely Euro-centric worldview.