The political spectrum is too limited and too limiting. Everyone is expected to be either a leftist or a rightist or possible a centrist. It's entirely too one dimensional. Why not a 2 dimensional political space or 3. I propose 2 more dimensions: up and down; and back and forth. So now instead of saying so and so is left wing, we might say he's upwing or downwing or a backist or a forthist. Or to be more exact he could be said to be an up, forth leftist or a down, back rightist. Actually he could be located at any point in the 3 dimensional political space. We can't call it a spectrum any longer since a spectrum is inherently 1 dimensional. So we will call it a political space.
Actually the old political spectrum of left and right has outlived it's usefulness. What do you call someone like me who is a preferensist? I'm neither a leftist nor a rightist. Preferensism has some elements of the traditional left and some elements of the traditional right. But even today folks usually are not entirely one way or the other. For instance, where do you stand (or sit) on the political spectrum if you're a fiscal conservative and an anti-war activist? Are you left wing or right wing? Are you liberal or conservative?
What makes the most sense is that most people are leftist on some issues and rightist on other issues. So really we should have a separate spectrum for each issue. Let's take government spending. Those who are for a balanced budget or fiscal conservatism would be on the right. Those who are for government spending beyond it's means and running up the national debt would be on the left. It can be seen that most Republicans would be leftists on this issue. Reagan quintupled the national debt. George W Bush is following in his footsteps. Clinton, the Democrat, not only balanced the budget but had something of a surplus. He would definitely be a conservative.
Preferensism extends both freedom and equality. I would call it upist and forthist rather than leftist or rightist. It also extends democracy, and in that sense it definitely is leftist since the right wing leans more toward a republic than a democracy. In the economy preferensism extends freedom and equality for the average individual with constraints on the power that any individual can wield. Therefore, it isn't similar to laissez faire capitalism which has no constraints on the power an individual can wield or the wealth he can accumulate.
See my website Social Choice and Beyond for more on this subject.
