Im mostly comparing it to the politics of the "left" in most other first world countries. In my opinion, candidates who arent willing to support guaranteed family leave, single payer healthcare, and more progressive taxes, arent very far left.
Of course you could definitely make an argument for that being no true scottsman, so I guess it just depends on opinion.
> The "left" that has power in the US (establishment dems) barely qualify as being left at all
You seem to interpret that statement as an opinion, but it is not a subjective statement. [1]
The U.S. isn't the only democracy in the world, and if we compare the Democratic party with other political parties around the world, they are indeed barely left-of-center.
I'm not sure an opinion piece in the nyt qualifies as evidence but that same analysis classified tons of other liberal parties as right wing (uk, switzerland etc) which seems more like they have a definitions problem due to a complete lack of clear criteria.
I’d argue quite strongly that liberalism is a moderate right to center position nowadays, so that sounds about right. So saying that the liberal parties are classified as right in such an analysis doesn’t seem like a contradiction or counter argument to me.
Frankly, I have no idea why people consider liberal to be left wing. How else would you describe an ideology that emphasizes private property, free trade, and market capitalism as anything other than at least moderate right? Sure, if you’re a monarchist that whole “equality before the law” sounds radical left, but for the rest of us… And that’s before we talk about neoliberalism and it’s emphasis on free markets and minimal government interference, which is hardly a leftist position.
The Manifesto Project has its downsides, but it's still one of the best datasets we've got [1], and the other survey-based datasets like the Global Party Survey [2] yield similar results [3]. (Note: You brought up the UK's Labor party which appears much more left here, as social & economic values are broken out into separate axes).
When viewed from a global perspective, the Republican party is firmly right-wing, but today's Democratic party is decidedly center-left on economic issues, and more closely reflects the values of the median American voter [4].
I think the "No True Scottsman" fallacy is confusing here. It's actually really sly.
The "No True Scottsman" statement must be used as the argument. It has to say that they're wrong BECAUSE they are not a true Scottsman.
What OP did was say there is The Left and there is "The Left".
The Left is against rentiers.
"The Left" supports rentiers.
He's dividing the two, but he's not saying one is wrong because they're not true leftists, he's saying one is wrong because they support rentiers.
But then he additionally says they're not true leftists, which is to say that a leftists shouldn't support them because they don't align, which is where the smell comes from.
The main argument is not a Scottsman fallacy. But there's definitely some implied Scottsmanism in the additional use of Left and "Left", which if read by the right person who is already weak to Scottsmanism will materialize as the Scottsman fallacy.
EDIT: I thought you were wrong, but under more analysis, I realized you were right, it was just complicated.
What do you call it when party A and party B were strongly in favor of the Iraq war and the opposition (C) comes solely from protestors who have no political representation?
A is "the left" to most people.
B is the right.
C is (apparently) a logical fallacy represented by 3 congresspeople and a senator.
So when the left does something you dont like, they must not be left? Smells of no true scottsman to me.