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Notes -
'Particularly' leftist is a loadbearing word there. My claim was a 'pretty standard Blue-Tribe American democrat'- and standard blue tribe American democrats are not what I'd consider 'particularly leftist.'
Also- not an easy ask, given it requires characterizing things like 'what is left?'
But, since you asked-
-and with a general point that I try to not re-enter exchanges like this a day later and didn't want to go into such depth yesterday since it can easily come off as condemnatory/combative when someone feels defensive about being associated with their political opponents-
-but I think it is fair to justify the claim in a way that can try to avoid implying a tone aggression which is not intended and I have been trying to work on that-
-and thus with a giant disclaimer that what follows is personal observations and explaining thought processes and is not intended to insinuate judgement is not implying any sort of character failing on the part of Goodguy, who I have a generally positive opinion of-
/
TL;DR: Goodguy will regularly adopt the paradigms of the left-of-center spectrum even as he criticizes particular sub-strands of the left, but the former is more important than the later for placing general orientation in the American context.
Starting with paradigms in the information sphere, this is basically 'Goodguy will often incorporate the framings of the political left, even as he competes with specific elements and thus their arguments.'
In the current top level post chains this includes both the fascist accusation (notably over a tweet, not an action or style of government) that has been the go-to leftwing accusation for well over a decade, and even echoing the motions / form of 'the regretful trump supporter' confessionary meme which is currently a high focus / boosted memetic narrative being pushed on various left-dominated social media. For Trump in particular, this tendency to incorporate and use leftist framings also goes back into the last election, where Goodguy was a routine poster of basically accepting the framings of the democratic election-propaganda on the results of various media narratives, such as the race-level impacts of debates or the Trump scandal of the hour. While he bemoaned rather than celebrated the framings he was still buying into frameworks and undestandings of how Trump was being viewed with the broader American political ecosystems (because the left-wing media sphere was attempting to shape the perception to try and bolster Harris).
That Goodguy didn't vote for Harris is irrelevant- a significant part of the American left did not vote for Harris. What matters is the political-narrative framings one buys in to both understand and communicate to the world.
-Transition to point 2-
This paradigm basing has extended to other topics as well. To pick one- and only one- example, Goodguy is on the record for arguing that the 2nd Amendment should be reconsidered. The position itself is less important than the reasoning why, which- to paraphrase- was a lack of trust in other people in the country to have guns. Since they could not be trusted, they should not be allowed to, hence reconsidering the Amendment which exists to protect the right of people to have guns from encroachment from the government.
'Left' and 'right' are hard-to-define positions in the first place, but in the American/Anglo-context, this is an exceptionally left-coded attitude to rights, in which rights are derived from the government, and are something bestowed/tolerated on the basis of trust. This is something that goes into the conceptualization of 'rights' as either positive rights versus negative rights. Negative rights- the concept of which is right-coded- are 'this is a right you have unless taken away. Positive rights- the left-coded premise- is something subjected to the action of another group, i.e. 'you have a right to taxpayer-subsidized healthcare.'
Historically, this distinction between positive and negative rights goes back to the divides in the post-enlightenment, and the general conflict / tension between whether rights are inherent (and thus social contracts are about people agreeing to come together to protect their rights from infringement from others / each other), or a granted by the state (which can provide, or force, or withdraw). This, in turn, drives how to deal with fundamental assumptions of the nature of man (if man would be naturally good if society let them, a greater role for the state to provide more; if man is naturally selfish, resist the role of the state that will be ruled by selfish men who infringe), and how these things dealt with major historical events and approaches to governance (such as the French Revolution and French reign of terror and the Napoleonic civil code; the American Revolution the weak state and English common law). All of that is gross oversimplification and there is a lot of cross-pollination and no one is purely one and all that. This is relevant historical context not because of how it applies to Goodguy specifically, but the American context that Goodguy exists in.
One of the reasons that gun rights are right coded is that the American right broadly conceptualizes rights in terms of negative rights- something you have inherently, and which is deprived if it is taken away. Furthermore, as a common law derived legal system, the traditional American political system at the time of founding, what the right vaguely appeals to / towards even with inconsistencies, was established on a 'if it is not forbidden by mutual consent, it is allowed,' with that Amendment being the double footstomp underscore that, yes, the social contract was explicitly recognizing this even though the first 10 amendments generally weren't in the American constitution in the first place because they were considered so uncontroversial that it shouldn't have to be mentioned.
In such a right-framing construct, such rights aren't bestowed because you trust someone- rather, such rights are recognized because you don't trust the other not infringe if there isn't a clear line in the sand recognizing the right as not subject to reconsideration barring overwhelming consensus.
By contrast, in a positive rights paradigm, you are denied your rights if something is not provided that should be... but if you determine it should never have been in the first place, then not-offering is not the same as infringing. This is how deplatforming is not a violation of free speech, as it is 'just' removing someone's basis to be heard, not to talk at all (in theory). This is also consistent with the paradigm for the Napoleonic civil code, which shaped / was shaped by the European left that was the birth of the modern American left. If Napoleonic civil law was over-simplified vis-a-vis common law, it might be as 'if it is not permitted, it is forbidden'- an oversimplification, but a useful one for an underlying paradigm. (And for governance- one of the reasons for the success of civil code at a civilizational level is that a lot of things are dangerous, so 'prove to me it's safe first' has a lot of avoided costs compared to 'you can't stop him until he hurts you.' Modern american law is arguably as civil-law influenced as common-law.)
Getting back the premise of rights, in this left-rather-than-right context, a political right is extended on good faith / trust in the ability of the human recipient to use it well, and if this proves to be a bad idea then the right can be retracted (reconsidered) so as to limit it's use to abuse, because fundamentally the right is something provided (and thus subject to reversal if misused), and not inherent (and thus far higher barriers). This is why, for example, the continental Europeans have far more speech control laws than the Americans or Brits- speech is a human right, but rights are positive.
The reason I bring this up isn't that I think Goodguy wants to impose a new Second Amendment by force, or even what Goodguy thinks the balance should be, but rather how Goodguy approaches the subject of changing it. Approaching something like the Second Amendment in terms of 'we can't trust people with guns; therefore, they shouldn't have guns and we should change the laws that let people I don't trust to have guns' is a very left-coded approach, both in terms of the paradigm of positive vs negative rights and the basis of changing. Especially given the American right paradigms for resisting such proposals to resist such proposals, which includes, well, a lack of trust of the would-be regulators.
Again- it's the reason for calling this left is not the position itself. It's the underpinnings behind and process leading to the position, and the proposal of what to do (retroactively change the permissions) and why (lack of trust of the recipients).
-Transition to Point 3-
Which leads to the third general point, of the emphasis Goodguy places on formal positions rather than paradigm.
This includes Goodguy's chosen paradigm of disproof of being left-of-center. Goodguy's basis of denying that he was a leftist was basically to point that he disagreed with / did not support various leftists (woke, communists, Harris).
This is not a disproof even in a formal sense. The left-spectrum is notorious for leftist groups conflicting and not supporting eachother. This is where we get our circular firing squads, purity spirals, and so on. Even in the election this wouldn't be proof of any meaningful sort- Trump had a blow out notably because Harris cratered in Democratic turnout. Undisputed left-aligned partisans did not turn out. Non-support for Harris is completely compatible with being a Democrat, because most Democrats (or rather- Blue Tribe / left spectrum) did not actually support Harris.
It is, however, another example of a left-paradigm of how to define the left.
Every political coalition has its own way of arguing who is / is not part of the club, but one of the paradigms for examining those categorizations is 'what you claim to support' versus 'how you support it.'
The modern-historical left is generally used the former for itself, for reasons that are partly about the ideological consensus efforts of the Cold War socialist-influenced leftist movements that fed / birthed much of the modern left. One of the dynamics of this was a tendency for no-true-Leftist identification. It was useful for the Communists/Socialists in the Cold War to try and claim a monopoly over the mantle of the left, and as such to claim 'no true leftist cannot support/prioritize labor.' Claiming the paradigm gave influence... but it wasn't true. Part of the modern split in the left, between the labor-centric left and the woke-left, is that they claim different central belief systems that Must Be Believed to be Left. Which is why they often deny the other is 'not really' part of the left.
But- again- the paradigm of self-identifying left on the basis of adhered to central beliefs of the era, despite the generational turnover in what 'left' has meant across history, is just a paradigm. A 'how you support it' paradigm would easily go 'they are both left'- they may disagree what they consider central things, just as the Trotskyists and Stalinists hated eachother passionately, but they are both fundamentally class-based approaches of the leftist spectrum who argue that social hierarchies and contexts should be the basis of analysis and redefining class privileges, whether it's through an economic marxist or cultural marxist paradigm.
But- also again- the left spectrum is not that either woke or communist are True Left but they are true left because of marxist class-based premise. The paradigm that one had to be part of the 'marxist True Left' to be truly left was a self-framed paradigm that non-leftists are not obliged to adopt. The spectrum of leftist premise- such as the approach to positive or negative rights, or what media-sphere world view one adopts- are also parts of being 'on the left.'
So, to bring this back to Goodguy, when Goodguy denies that he is not part of the Left because he disagrees with the Marxists, cultural or economic, on important things... that is still a leftist paradigm for defining what it means to be left. The framing that being at odds with [True Left] means you are not left is simply taking the proffered paradigm and continuing to use it even if the pejorative has lost its value.
To bring another example of how such internal versus external farming paradigms exist in the wilds, it'd be like saying you are not a Christian because you are at odds with Catholic doctrine. This is a framing that only makes sense if you adopt the premise that being Catholic and Christian are synonymous, rather than overlapping, categories. The Catholics may believe that- and once upon a time millions were killed to try and in insist on that- but outside of the paradigm, others can go 'nah, you're Christian.' And they can still do that if you expand the objection to 'I'm neither Catholic OR Protestant.' (Orthodox says hi.) We can even label people as Christians even if they are part of what Catholics and Protestants would generally consider not-really-Christian cults, like Mormons, or Calvinists, and so on.
This is the power / role of where the more generally right-coded 'how you support it' paradigm starts to be asserted. They all go to buildings with crosses, read common books, praise Jesus, and otherwise have enough similarities that even though they might vehemently, desperately, and sincerely deny their commonality... they're Christian, yo.
Now, obviously, in broader society there are enough people outside the Catholic, and Christian, identity-bubbles that the narrative framing power of 'True Christian' is weak. For anyone outside of it, it comes off as kooky, and Christians are as social animals as any other humans and tend to tone that down since there are enough alternative 'I am the true faith' that they come off as equivalent rather than Obviously Correct. You'd generally have to grow up in the narrative environment to adopt and internalize such a paradigm.
-Transition to Conclusion-
But- returning to Goodguy- this is where we get his tendency to use and provide leftist paradigms without recognizing them as such.
Such as his understanding of how the Trump campaign was playing out, where he put significant weight on the framing of the left-of-center mediasphere when right-of-center info lanes were presenting very different (and in some ways substantially more accurate) characterizations. And his occasional approach to positive and negative rights. And his paradigm for defining inclusion / exclusion from the Left on positional terms.
These are all very standard Blue Tribe / left-of-center dynamics, and are entirely consistent of a left-of-center inter-left conflicts, and broadly consistent with typical left-of-center American Blue Triber.
Which is not an extremist! I do not believe this implies someone who is 'particularly leftist' as defined by positional extremity. The typical blue-tribe left-of-center democrat has a lot of things they dislike about other tribes within the American left. They, like most people, have positions that fall on different sides of a positional-alignment paradigm. They are not radical extremists.
But they do often swim in the leftist paradigm sea without recognizing the nature of the water.
And now that I've wasted far too much time on this, I shall end with 'that's, like, my opinion,' which was all the original observation was intended to reflect, and which I didn't want to go into the necessary depth yesterday because doing so directly would be far more confrontational than I wanted to be for someone who I generally like and think well of even if I disagree with them on their self-conception.
Excellently said. I would also like to note that the reason I immediately went full ball treating him like a crypto leftist is in response to his framing. I don't have the wherewithal to explain such things though so I moderated towards the centre.
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I agree hes acting leftist here.
I agree this conflicts the red tribe, but thats not the same as putting him in the blue tribe - which would be exactly what he claims. By your argument, wouldnt something like this tell us hes right-wing?
This would be a good point if you gave examples of him supporting things with class-based approaches.
Overall Im not convinced by this, because I think for this discussion you should evaluate his politics from things other than behaviour in this thread, and you havent shown me much of that.
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