Asklemmy

43731 readers

1148 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

121

Why does a state like California that has supermajorities in both houses of the legislature not have a livable wage, housing guarantees, universal healthcare, and other very progressive policies? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I keep being told it's because of the Republicans that we can't have nice things. So what gives in California? We should be overflowing with progressive policies.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 75 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Remember that the Democratic party is NOT leftist and is NOT progressive… it is liberal, aka generally right-of-center. The few leftists we do manage to elect generally don’t wield much power, and are undermined and sabotaged at every turn by members of “their own party” as well as Republicans. The state also has a lot of very wealthy conservative extremists, and since money is power, they wield a lot without needing pesky things like votes or democracy.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago

Republicans and Democrats have been moving steadily to the right for the last 40 years. So now, Democrats are where the Republicans were in the 1980s: boring, middle of the road corporatists, friends of banks, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And the right has moved all the way into an insane asylum. We haven't had a real progressive president since Jimmy Carter and that was 50 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

it is liberal, aka generally right-of-center

A lot of people don't seem to know this in the US. If you look at most Liberal Parties, they are centre or centre right. Though some are centre left as well. That's not a full list in that link.

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party is the major right wing conservative party of Japan.

Do note that the US' centre starts farther to the right than many other developed countries.