Probably more than two, but yes. Unless you're one of those people who believes that as long as you're left wing, you can never be extreme enough. The forum has a couple of those.

    Gurgen do you think the Democrats are left wing extremists, or am I misunderstanding? The way I see it, their only options are a right wing extremist and a centre, maybe centre-left candidate. That's the two groups.

        Gurgen so you think the democrats are too far to the left?

            the far left in the US isnt close to power. the bernie wing has been subsumed and reduced to carrying water for the democratic establishment. the leftists that turned on bernie are very much on the fringes screaming into the wind. conversely, the extreme elements of the right actually do have power and have been dictating the direction of the party since 2016. that's why the both sides argument of extreme left vs extreme right never made sense to me.

              Qwiss No I don't. But there is a group of (woke) extremists that has a disproportionate influence on the left, just like there is a group of fascists that has a disproportionate influence on the right. Obviously the symmetry is not total. The major difference is that the right candidate is now a fascist himself. Or at least a strawman for the fascists, because I don't really think Trump has any deep political convictions himself. His world is mainly about bragging about himself, groping women and eating Big Macs.

                  There's plenty of liberals about who are very sure their opinions are very sensible and everyone else is mad, and who love the public goods that emerged from the heyday of European social democracy, but prefer not to understand anything about the politics that formed those goods then, or could recreate them now.

                  Gurgen but the 'woke' contingent of the democratic party have very little proximity to power/influence at all in 2024. if kamala wins, they'll have even less because she hasn't catered to those elements of the party or the base at all. even her rhetoric is miles away from the far more progressive energy of 2020 when everyone was trying tap into bernie sanders' popularity. I don't see where there's even a comparison worth making there, considering right wing extremism has held all the power in the republican party for 8 years

                    Gazza M the far left in the US isnt close to power. the bernie wing has been subsumed and reduced to carrying water for the democratic establishment.

                    Every Bernie was fairly moderate by most western standards. He'd been seen as a centrist in most of Europe.

                      I agree bernie isn't even really far left. it sounds like gurgen is referring to the lefty doomers that are further left of sanders that see him as a betrayer of the leftist movement. those sorts have absolutely no sway in the party at all. in fact many of them have horseshoed around to be pro-trump in order to punish the democratic establishment at any cost, but again, they have no proximity to power and are very much in the minority

                        Gazza M They seem to be an outlier but a respectable polling company so their opinion holds weight.

                        Gurgen The era won’t be behind us even if he loses though. Trump is not the cause, he is a symptom. If you have a country divided by two groups of extremists while the centre keeps churning out average candidates, this is what you will continue to get.

                        Spot on

                              The wokey types aren't leftists, and they're certainly not extremists, unless you think being extremely annoying counts.

                              JazzG Selzer is not "a respectable polling company." She's the most highly respected pollster in the industry. Which doesn't mean Harris will win Iowa. But this same release in 2016 was the one serious poll that caught what was about to happen, when everyone else was talking about a Clinton landslide.

                                  Qwiss even then, the democrats have swung away from focusing on cultural issues this time around. gurgen was comparing left and right extremism, and I'm saying there is no comparison worth making no matter how you define the left

                                      RowJimmy yep. she even caught the over-polling of Biden in 2020. most pollsters had him up by 5-7 points in the swing states, but her final Iowa poll indicated it was going to much tighter, and it was. even if the margin of error is in trumps favour that only puts him at 1+ which is a terrible result. there's confluence with a few other red state polls that came out in the last few days in Kansas and Ohio, which show her being much closer than she should be in those states as well. its being driven by women, independents and eating into the margins in trump favoured rural areas. it feels like the real killer for him on election day could be the republican defection rate

                                        Gazza M oh I agree. The only people who call the democrats far left are extreme conservatives.

                                          fuck around and find out.

                                          I'm hesitant to say it, but it sounds like there might be reason to think Kamala Harris will soon removing one word from her job title..?