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I live in europe and US dems are pretty much in line with our right leaning parties. Except for a handful of extremes.
The US republicans are very unique to US in that their opinions are very close knitted to US specific laws. So I cant really think of a similar party anywhere else.
But yea. A swedish left and US dems are very very far from achother politically.
Democrats are a right party with authoritarian tendencies. Not left at all.
Maybe your views have been distorted by right wing news calling Biden “far left” which is an objective falsehood.
I’ve seen over half the nations on earth and I stand behind the OP assessment of the US Dem party as center right. Do investigate a bit before knee jerk responding from a position of falsehood
The primary constituency of both parties is corporate America, whom they rely on for donations.
As far as I understand it, the fundamental and (seemingly) globally agreed upon divide is that Far Left = The State is in [presumably benevolent] control, and Far Right = The State is in [presumably malicious] control, while regular Left = The State knows what's best for The People (because it is derived from pure democracy) while regular Right = The People know what's best for themselves (and choose representatives for situations where multiple individuals are involved).
How far off am I, from a global perspective?
All of those are things that even the far right in Europe wouldn't dare suggest, yet the leftmost party in the US stands behind them, or is at least willing to accept them.
Voter ID is a non controversial issue in many countries. In the US I've seen arguments against it from both sides. Disparate impact concerns from the left, privacy and freedom from the feds on the right.
The Left does not criticize voter ID per se, the Left criticizes that many people are effectively locked out from voting because obtaining ID cards can be an utter pain in the ass.
I think this view of right/left as an axis of government optimizing for freedom/control is only very prevalent in particularly right-wing commonwealth discourse.
The law and construction of social systems in the common-law English tradition stem from a position that one can do anything unless barred by law, including in situations where it hurts others. The law of equity, largely derived from religious canon law, existed as a separate system layered upon the common law court system of 'hard rules' to fix situations wherein the application of common-law would lead to morally suspect outcomes. The situation in civilian countries, by contrast, generally define a sphere of acceptable behavior which explicitly excludes abusive and intentionally harmful behavior - the restrictions on behavior are baked in. Civilian-derived systems are far more common than those from the commonwealth, and accordingly the types of discussions had in each are very different on this point.
The result is it's very rare to conceive of left and right in terms of freedom, because most other nations derive from systems in which freedom is already viewed as one element to be balanced against other considerations rather than the unmitigated chief virtue upon which all analysis is founded.
Even in the commonwealth, progressive discourse is not driven in terms of de-jure freedoms, it's driven by de-facto freedoms, largely economic and social freedoms. The government only needs to be restrained when it restricts social rights or maintain economic systems that strip dignity from individuals. Generally, however, these aren't discussed in terms of the degree of freedoms afforded, but rather in terms of rights and equality before the law.
What?
I lived in America for over a decade before I could say that I begun to understand it. I have seen people like you who visit my home country and claim to understand it. All they do is project their faulty models onto our values and culture.
I literally spent most of my rhetorical time abroad trying to convince folks that there was any difference at all between our two main parties.
You can scoff at me, but you will encounter this conclusion over and over again. The world sees our two parties as beholden to corporate interests, as are centrist parties all over the globe. Money apparently makes the world go around
You sound like you didn't even go outside Europe.
There are two scales, nationalism-globalism, and capitalism-intervention.
Most countries have very little difference between their capitalism-intervention side, because there's only one country where someone who supports free markets and capitalism could move to, this results in the right wing of all the countries becoming purely nationalist supporting govt intervention facing globalist left wing supporting their kind of govt intervention.
For example my dad in my home country has very little opinion on capitalism/intervention scale. But on the nationalism/globalism scale he has a strong opinion. If I were to describe the economic policies of the Democratic party, he wouldn't truly form an opinion, but the moment I will start describing the social policies he would immediately understand it and call it 'the leftist party'.
In Europe there is a plethora of parties all throughout the political spectrum.