Excerpt from this Substack post: https://nickrafter.substack.com/p/the-rent-may-always-be-too-damn-high
Left and right shouldn't matter. Policy is what matters. Simple as
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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A candidate might have hundreds of policies. Often they claim to support certain policies because they know those policies are popular, but don't have any real belief or intention to follow up on those policies.
Political parties are effectively a "brand" so that people who don't have the time or energy to read hundreds of policies and to ensure that the candidate claiming them is trustworthy and believes what they're claiming. Parties often kick out members who no longer align with their views. A voter can vote for a certain party's representative and know that what they're getting aligns with that party's general stance.
Left and right is a useful way to represent where various parties fall on a specific spectrum of beliefs. In reality there are multiple axes that can represent economic freedom, alignment with Christian religious beliefs, the strength of a social safety net, isolationist vs. interventionist foreign policy, etc.
But, "left" and "right" came from where groups of politicians stood in the early days of the French republic. They tended to group up with other like-minded people so even if they disagreed completely on certain things, they had generally the same world view. So, "left" and "right" is a good way to simplify things to know if in general a politician shares a certain set of beliefs.
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left and right dictate the direction of policy. given that though the republicans in the us abandoned all conservative philosophy and embraced just facism.
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In a local election that's true. When it comes to seats in a larger body, you've gotta take the bad with the good to get anything done. If we added a dozen anti-abortion democrats in the Senate, Trump would be impeached. And abortion would be stuck. A shitty trade off, but one that would move closer to removing abortion bans in the longer term.
(ignoring the house just for the example)
When it comes to seats in a larger body, you’ve gotta take the bad with the good
That's a great way to get stabbed in the back.
Look at what happened with Joe Lieberman. Dems backed him up even after he lost his primary in a bright blue state, and he repeatedly threw them under the bus.
Same with Jim Justice in W. Virginia.
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These people would wholeheartedly believe 2+2=5 if the Party says it.
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I'm smarter than they are and I had to look up how to spell "aneurysm" to say that reading this post gave me an aneurysm
I'm surprised this misconception isn't more common. Conservatives constantly run on reducing the cost of living (despite doing the opposite), so someone actually vowing to do it with a plan in mind seems perfect for this lot
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Just goes to show you what’s important to people and the efficacy of echo chambers and propaganda of the right.
People often want the same thing. But the right is so effective at repetition and corralling their followers that they aren’t able to separate the rhetoric from the politics and assume anyone saying the “magic words” is automatically on “their team” until told otherwise.
This isnt surprising one bit. Those people are probably above the average Intelligence of Americans actually.
The idiots really do ruin the world dont they.
Think of how stupid the average conservative is, then remember, half of them are stupider than that.
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This comes down to a lot of purposeful obsfucation of politics and terminology as well as subpar education in that matter.
Example, those people saying "The left" mean left of their view points and understand. But without clear definitions of their intent and meaning it becomes a pointless mire for discussion. You spend more time educating and getting clarification that you're not likely to ever make it to the discussion at hand.
A lot of what I and many USA citizens will have to do is just understand what different positions are, what certain terms mean. When they say "liberal" they mean a vague definition of "the left." Where as when I say it, I mean neo-liberals in particular which is a conservative ideology that still believes in Laissez-faire capitalism.
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