I've been saying this all along. Which is why it's bewildering to me that some say he's "far left."
The center is further to the right in America. In America, supporting UHC at all is considered left-wing. Is Obama far-left? No. But he's pretty clearly left by our standards.
No, the political class in America is further to the right, not the population as a whole. A lot of this has to do with the remarkable power of businesses/corporations in America, and their outsized influence on an already extremely conservative political and electoral system. Also, the higher you go in terms of economic and social status, the higher the participation rates and influence of the people in those upper strata.
When you factor into that essentially
all of America's mainstream media is controlled under a very few conglomerates, you have an aggressively reactionary political mainstream.
Like Tweed indicated, a sizable majority of Americans like or want public schools, universal health care, "entitlement" programs, more federal spending on the poor, and less money in politics. But because the Democrats are, at best, a milquetoast center-right party, and with the Republicans getting more dogmatic and extreme....well, it's not much of a wonder why a good half of Americans don't bother to vote at all, and why many more vote, but don't care to actively participate.
