where, by law, no politician has the power to arbitrarily sentence people to death.

What does that have to do with anything? Politics isn't just elected politicians, it's not some entity distinct from society and the economy. And you don't have to directly force someone's death to cause it and be responsible for it.

Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources ^[wikipedia]^

In my country, the construction union forces their employers to follow safety procedures on site which the government does not legally enforce. Deaths of these construction workers due to workplace accidents has dropped because of workers using their political power as a trade union, while the government (due to pressure from construction employers) aims to dilute this power. In your country, unions have gradually lost a lot of their historic power and the rate of fatal workplace accidents is around double or more than most European countries, and close to that of Russia and Thailand. Workplace health and safety policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

In both our countries, there is a housing crisis which threatens more and more people and families with homelessness. This has huge impacts on their ability to work and even survive. Government policy impacts affordability of property, how much residential property is being built, the affordability of basic needs (like food and utilities), how much employers must pay for jobs, the rights of landlords and tenants (e.g. here there is an upper limit to how much a landlord can increase prices per month), social support to homeless people or those seeking work, and the legal concerns of homelessness (e.g. anti-camping laws, jail time for seeking shelter in vehicles, food disposal policy that promotes starvation). More and more people are dying because of homelessness and its effects. Housing policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

Political policy in the US has infamously enabled widespread, normalized police brutality. This especially (but not exclusively!) affects minorities such as black peoples, queer people and autistic people, regularly and consistently leading to deaths from shooting, unjustified physical assault and sadistic negligence while imprisoned. Law enforcement policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

The 9/11 attacks killed thousands of innocent civilians. That was politics, al-Qaeda is a political organization who were responding to the direct results of US foreign policy. Hundreds of thousands more were killed overseas in the US "War on Terror", but even for its own domestic citizens, international geopolitics is, literally, life and death politics for many people.

Those are just a few example across a range of well-known political topics, not even getting into more indirect aspects like deciding where government funding goes to (e.g. heart disease research - heart disease being the single biggest cause of death), and not even diving into non-government political organizing. Politics includes the more extreme anti-abortion activists working to make even life-saving abortions illegal. Politics includes insane mass shooters targeting minority groups. Politics includes the assassination of Brian Thompson.

@DonaldJMusk @comfy Well, there are just things that are worse than death, aren't there?