SoylentNews

The Donkeys are NOT "Left".
They never have been.
Click my 2008 link and see where they were 8 years ago (Right-Center).
They're also on the Authoritarian side of the horizontal line that separates them from Civil Libertarians (aka not Progressive either).
...and they have continued to drift toward the Plantation Capitalist edge and toward the police state edge since then.

The Donkeys have NEVER been about "the collective ownership of the means of production".
They have always been supporters of Capitalism.

As for European "Leftists", as soon as SYRIZA in Greece took power, they sold out the Working Class, imposing the austerity against which they had campaigned.

Podemos in Spain doesn't appear to be any better.
The "Leftist" mayors in Madrid and Barcelona appear to be pro-austerity as well.

Seattle's "socialist" city council member Kshama Sawant has been widely criticized in Socialist media for her Capitalist rhetoric.

As soon as modern self-professed "Leftists" get into office, they lose their spines.

Wanna see a "Leftist"?
Look up Eugene Debs.
(He ran for president while he was a political prisoner of Woodrow Wilson.)
N.B. Bernie has a portrait of Debs on his office wall but the 2 of them would be far apart if charted according to their politics.

...and Bernie's "joining" the Donkeys was simply a matter of political convenience; he's always been an Independent.
It simply indicates how screwed up USA's electoral system is.

-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]