That's mere bothsidesism. America, it goes without saying, has a powerful, crazy right wing. There’s nothing equivalent on the left -- yes, there are individual crazy leftists, but nothing like the organized, lavishly financed madness on the right.
But centrists have a very hard time acknowledging this asymmetry; they love to assert that both sides are equally wrong or at fault.
So here’s what you should know: the policy ideas of the Democratic-left, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are definitely bold -- Medicare for All and a federal job guarantee, and you can make some substantive arguments against them. But they aren’t crazy. By contrast, the ideas of Tea Party Republicans are crazy (abolishing the IRS, ending Social Security, etc.); in fact, Ocasio-Cortez’s policy positions are a lot more sensible than those of the Republican mainstream, let alone the GOP’s more radical members.
There is no left equivalence to the last government shutdown, when Tea Party Republicans shutdown the government because they wanted the ACA defunded. There is no science denial on the left. There are no deficit hawks on the left, that magically become deficit doves when they are in power.
