A big majority of Democrats support Medicare 4 All: https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/9394-Figure-3.... They support a public option somewhat more, but to me it seems more like they do so to soften the transition to a single-payer system. A “public option” wouldn’t be like the multi-payer systems of Germany, Switzerland, or the Netherlands. Since it would kill private competitors in the long run, it’s just a slower road to single payer.
Regarding taxes: netting transfers mixes up the tax system from the welfare system. As the article points out, our taxation is progressive but our spending is regressive. It’s a system designed to redistribute money from the rich to the middle class, not the middle class to the poor.
As to Germany, I use that as an example because it’s a large European country and I’m familiar with it. CDU has been moving left for the last 15 years: https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/hazar....
Like the above, various international party comparisons show Democrats moving left of center by 2012: https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/hazar...
As to social or religious issues, Italy or Spain would be more conservative in some respects. (Islam isn’t a recognized religion in Italy.)
The recent rise of progressives has moved Democrats sharply left in part because Europe has been moving to the right economically for decades. Low corporate and investment taxes and deregulation is gospel across the European center, but it’s disappeared among progressive Democrats. That wasn’t remarkable in 1975 but it’s remarkable today. Macron, for example, is campaigning on deregulation and a government takeover of Islam, and his major competition is to his right. Center left parties in France aren’t questioning the country’s fairly low corporate and investment taxes. Neither are those in Spain. Democrats (in particular Warren’s utterly cockamamie proposal) really stand out in that area as a throwback.
Green New Deal is a great example of this. It’s an FDR era jobs program. It stands in stark contrast to Europe, which is doing carbon pricing. Progressives seem to have developed an allergy to markets, and while the center isn’t there yet it’s not pushing back either.
I mean that’s before you get started on Sweden’s center-left party continuing to cut corporate taxes and partially privatizing social security.
Oh, I forgot about school choice. Democrats are far to the left compared to Europe in that.
