this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
39 points (89.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

44089 readers
772 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I’ve always heard that Democrats in America would be considered a “right leaning” party in Europe, however I’ve wondered about someone who considers themselves progressive, where they would line up on the spectrum in Europe.

For example I want:

  • Universal Healthcare
  • UBI
  • Taxation of the rich
  • Marriage and general equality for LGBTQ+ persons
  • Better public transport and corresponding social services for all people

Is there something I’m missing in my views, or is that generally what left leaning progressives are looking for in Europe?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Your analysis completely ignores the impact of the US Senate's wonky "cloture" rule, which is a compromise from the prior practice of the US Senate filibuster.

As depicted in way too many movies, the filibuster let any single senator (or small team or senators) essentially veto any piece of legislation by putting the whole thing to a halt. The modern rule instead (in essence) requires any act.of Congress to clear a 60% vote threshold in the Senate.

There hasn't been a time in my entire life when the modern democratic party held the presidency, a majority in the house, and 3/5ths of the Senate. (Clinton had a party with segregation-era racists still in power; Obama had "blue dogs" who were nearly Republican, and Biden had a coal baron and a green party scam artist in the Senate )

[–] jjpamsterdam@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I didn't believe that specific rule to be relevant to the argument. The Democratic Party includes a wide range of opinions that, in most European countries, would be represented by several different parties. While there are some fringes on the right (Clinton's racists for example) and some fringes on the left (some Democrats even refer to themselves as democratic socialists despite being closer to social democrats in my opinion). The mainstream that has dominated all three presidencies you mentioned would likely find themselves among small c conservative or (economically) liberal parties in most European political systems that I know.

[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Political parties are creations of the electoral and governmental systems in the nations they exist in

"Most European nations" is an imprecise way of saying "dominant parlimentary unicameral legislatures". To use the UK as an example, all sovereign power is asserted by the lower democratically elected chamber of parliment. Neither the house of lords nor the king counter the assembled majority of parliment,.who from its own members appoint those who direct the government day to day. While there is a sub-national distinction, these are essentially creations of parliment and have no inherent power on their own.

Since the only thing that matters in national UK politics is parliament, all of the political energy is focused there.

In the United States this is not at all the case.. national power is split as I described before, and a similar pattern repeats at the state level with distinct difectly-elected legislators and executives. The national government was historically a creation of the states, and each state has substantial ability to act in defiance of congress's preferences.

Since there are so many different things that matter, the value of a third or fourth party is dramatically reduced. When minor parties start to win elections on their own, the major parties either adapt or die quickly. (I have remarked elsewhere that in American politics "there is no prize for second place", and a worthwhile collolary here would be "and there are so many games to play.")

You are technically correct in that if God came down and reworked all of the USA into distinct european-style nations with separate languages we would likely have similar party arrangements, with both the Democrats and the Republicans splitting into multiple parties. But if God also remade Europe into a single USA-style mega-nation made up of states with similar governments who shared a single first-language, European parties would likely congeal until there are only two.

As a practical matter, of course, neither is not a useful observations. And simplified observations of the differences between "Europe" and the USA like "the USA is far to the right of Europe" were part of what led the UK to devolve into a place where you can be threatened to silence for accurately describing a rich transphobe.