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People who seriously identify as left-wing would often dispute this. Many on the left see the Democrats as a right-wing party, and the mainstream media as centrist, liberal, centre-right, or something else other than left. There is a sense among dedicated left-wing partisans that they are a tiny minority.
Like most of the narratives that people tell themselves about their own political tribes, this is probably false or at least illusionary, but the point is that when people complain about the absence of a left-wing media ecosystem, those probably are not people who regard most of the media as currently on the left.
This is certainly true, but I think when Democrats are talking about this in the context of losing the election they literally believe that the Democrat-aligned media is lacking, not communist-aligned media. I see this all the time on Reddit.
I believe your average non-communist Democrat sees it this way. Republican-aligned media like Fox puts party support above all else. They put no value on truth, morality or fairness and just spew misinformation 24/7, anything to help Republicans. Meanwhile the NYT is primarily concerned with Truth, Justice and Objectivity. If this shakes out to favoring the Democrats that’s just because “reality has a liberal bias” and “it’s not politics just basic human decency”, the NYT only favors the Democrats by this convergence of their values but they would not lie, cheat or steal if it helped the Democrat cause. So the NYT doesn’t count as Democrat aligned in their mind
I’ve seen many Dems on reddit lamenting the whole “when they go low we go high” strategy and wishing they could fight dirty as they perceive Republicans are.
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In general, both the Republicans and Democrats are centrist parties. And more ideologically-driven members of both parties are, IMO, correct when they say that "RINOs" or "neoliberals" are weaksauce versions of their ideologies.
Trump talks a big game about deportation and immigration, but will accomplish very little. No mass deportations will occur during a Trump presidency any more than under a Harris presidency. Trump also talks about repatriating trade, but will only implement tarriffs that will increase prices without increasing US manufacturing. Republicans also talk a lot about how great of a pro-life success Dobbs was, but as far as I can tell, handing control over abortion policy back to the states has resulted in a more pro-choice regulatory landscape than under the status quo. And there's a lot of discussion of "law and order," but the streets are unsafe even in red states, and forget about riding public transit.
Likewise, Democrats talked a big game about defunding the police, and while there were definitely areas where budgets were slashed, no actual "defunding" or "abolishing" took place. They've also talked about healthcare reform for a long time, but since 2010 have accomplished approximately nothing. Redistribution of wealth in any appreciable sense has never happened, and entitlements continue to be soaked up by boomers with fat wallets while the poor and disabled are still means-tested to the bone. Significant movement on workers' protections hasn't happened; instead delusional baristas are setting up labor unions, because when I think of exploitation of labor, I think of not putting up rainbow flags. And not, you know, what's going on in Amazon warehouses.
But while the serious economic and philosophical problems of the US continue to fester, we keep getting distracted by irrelevant culture war issues like weird sex and gender identity things and whether or not Trump is literally Hitler. It's good to know we're focusing on the important things!
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DeBoer does this:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/clinton-and-obama-gave-us-trump
The Marxist left thinks of the left-right in economic terms and considers anyone not explicitly socialist/communist as being right wing, the reactionary right considers the divide mainly in cultural terms and thinks anyone not based is essentially left wing.
I was thinking of Robinson. I always remember an incident in his debate with Chris Rufo:
This seems absurd, because it's obviously only possible to consider Jacobin "the leading leftist magazine in the country" if you have an extremely idiosyncratic definition of what counts as "leftist".
Whereas I'd say that most people would use the word 'left' to mean 'of America's two big political factions, the one that is further to the left'.
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