America’s Stunted Political Spectrum
If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably heard elected Republicans refer to Joe Biden as a socialist. Moreover, politicians who are to the left of President Biden such as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are oftentimes referred to as communists. Now if you’re well informed on politics, you probably know these labels are false, but you might not realize how ridiculous they really are.
Despite how the media portrays it, there’s very little disagreement in mainstream American politics. For example, if you’re interested in politics you’ve probably come across the political compass test. The political compass test has you answer a series of questions and assigns you a set of two values based on your answers, one on the x-axis and one on the y-axis. This test helps you roughly estimate where your political opinions fit in the wide range of political thought. The x-axis represents economics, with an economy run by a cooperative collective agency on the far left, and a market left to the devices of competing corporations on the far right. The y-axis represents social stances, with the very top being a totalitarian state and the bottom maximizing personal freedom.
As a disclaimer, no simple political test is the most accurate determinant for actual human ideology, a simple two-axis chart isn’t nuanced enough to be 100% correct. But the political compass is a useful tool for recognizing broad trends. In the 2020 presidential primary election, all republicans and democrats running for office were in the authoritarian right quadrant except for a notable few: Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Gravel, Marianne Williamson, and Howie Hawkins. There might be a lot of bickering between both parties, but they agree on far more than they disagree on. Even a figure like Bernie Sanders who many people believe to be a radical communist barely lands on the libertarian left quadrant.
For a fair comparison, let’s take a look at political parties in the UK. In the UK, the conservative party supports universal single-payer healthcare and nearly free college. They have also pledged to cut carbon emissions down to zero by 2050. The second biggest party in the UK is the labour party, which supports social democracy and/or democratic socialism. The third biggest party is the Liberal Democratic Party, which is a centrist party. The next time you hear someone call Joe Biden a radical socialist, remember that in the UK he would be considered a centrist, or even a conservative. The conservative party in the UK is more left-leaning than the American democratic party! No matter how much Fox News tries to tell you that politicians like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are radical communists, remember that their policy positions are considered common sense in the rest of the world. Contrary to popular belief, America doesn’t have a left-wing party and a right-wing party, we have a center-right party and a far-right party.
So why is American politics this way? One of the biggest reasons is the legacy of the cold war and the red scare. Back in the days when schools had attack drills in case of nuclear war, anyone even remotely critical of the far-right American political agenda was considered a communist sympathizer to the United States’ biggest enemy. Socialists and communists were jailed, fined, and even killed during the cold war. Corporations and the wealthy used the media to indoctrinate people into associating anything they don’t like with communism, and that hasn’t changed much today.
When the incredibly charismatic Ronald Reagon won the 1980 election campaigning on deregulation, not taxing the wealthy, increased military spending, and union-busting, it nailed the final coffin in American left-wing politics. Since then, the democratic party has been trying to shift rightwards, with neoliberal politicians like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden supporting imperialist wars, implementing tough on crime policies, and allowing the wealthy to pay little to no taxes.
This neoliberal capitalist realism we live under has left America with the worst healthcare in the developed world, insurmountable student loan debt, housing being unaffordable for the majority of young people, a climate crisis, and the lowest worker unionization rate of any comparable OECD nation.
In recent years we’ve seen social democrats run for office such as Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). We’ve also seen a wave of newly elected progressives to the House such as “The Squad”. These politicians are endlessly smeared by liberal and conservative news outlets alike because at the end of the day both parties are funded by the same donors.
If you’re reading this, you might hold out hope that electoralism can solve our problems, if we only vote for the right people we can fix the issues I mentioned above. However, this has been proven false multiple times, with the DNC admitting to snubbing Bernie Sanders in 2016 in leaked emails. A similar situation occurred in 2020, with the New York Times revealing the majority of superdelegates were prepared to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination even if he had the most votes.
The harsh truth is, you can’t vote out Capitalism. It takes a collective consensus among the people to enact meaningful change. The American Revolution was a violent uprising that displayed to the world that monarchs didn’t have a divine right to rule. The Civil War was the most left-wing revolution in American history, with northern republicans forcibly seizing what southerners considered their “property”. The only time significant change has occurred in history is through radical revolution.
