> If Obama was a European politician, he would be clearly
> perceived to be of the center-right. On any number of issues,
> Obama is to the right of European politicians like
> Chirac, or Sarkozy, or even Cameron. It's only because
> the US political spectrum is pitched so far to the right
> that Obama could ever be perceived to be a
> "doctrinaire liberal." And it's only because
> US politics have shifted so far to the right
> that American progressives could allowed
> themselves to indulge in all sorts of illusions
> concerning Obama that were never supported
> by his political record or by his own public
> statements. It doesn't even make sense
> to bash Obama over this since he has been
> pretty forthright concerning what his stands
> are on any number of issues. It's the
> progressive who have deluded themselves.
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Obama could also fit quite easily into the British Labour Party, French
Socialist Party, or German SPD. Actually, he would fit in more easily than
in the conservative parties because of his liberal social values and the
more urban and cosmopolitan nature of the centre-left parties.
US leftists, recoiling from the Democratic party, tend to idealize the European social democrats by comparison. Like Jim, they tend to see them as being significantly to the left of Obama ad the DP. But the European social democrats have governed in much the same way as the Democrats where they have held power.
They are more progressive than the Democrats in foreign policy, but this is because they don't have the same responsibility for administering an empire. Otherwise, they have pursued largely the same domestic policies as the DP and, in some cases, have adopted ones further to the right. For example, the German SPD, Spanish Socialists, and British Labour party have all cut corporate taxes to lower levels than currently exist in the US. The Swedish social democrats helped push through pension reforms which raised the retirement age and set up the kind of private retirement accounts promoted by the Bush administration. Dutch socialists supported cuts to the country's generous disability insurance scheme and tightened eligibility requirements for welfare much as the Clinton administration did. And so on.
The fact of the matter is that the fault lines between the liberal and conservative parties in the advanced capitalist parties are pretty similar at the top, if not at the bottom. Half the American population has been infected with the militaristic jingoism produced by imperialism which you no longer find in Europe, and the DP has had to adapt to it to win election, which explains the difference in perception.