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Comment by coding123 | Hacker News Reader

Things went too left, now "everyone" wants a republican to undo it. Well when I say "everyone" I just mean a lot of moderate democrats.

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Personally, I would guess it has more to do with people's attitudes shifting away from the COVID-cautious attitude the Dems staked out towards the Republicans' back-to-normal, outraged-at-restrictions stance.

Nobody seems to have moved to the left though. The only significant thing that passed was an infrastructure bill, and none of the Democrats in congress seemed to have made any radical opinion shifts.

The summer of 2020 included a number of radical opinion shifts among politicians. Or maybe, since we can't know a person's mind and what opinions they'd previously quietly believed, more like radical shifts in publicly stated position.

I think this was a case of playing vote chicken. There were a tiny number of democrats who were never going to vote for those bills. There are a larger group that didn't want to vote for those bills but didn't want to go against party lines. So they voted for bills knowing that they wouldn't pass. They risked nothing and still got the outcome they desired.

> The only significant thing that passed was an infrastructure bill

The American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021

Undo what? The only government-controlled "left" thing that happened is adding CRT to some school curriculums. Oh, and anti-trust enforcement is ramping up again - though that seems bipartisan. "Wokeism" and other right-wing boogeymen are cultural or corporate in nature.

I think the current Democratic administration is most notable for its fecklessness and inability to get anything at all done. Maybe that's what's driving voters away.

On the federal level the biggest problem is the economy in general and inflation and jobs specifically. As the the saying goes, its the economy stupid. Whether its the big guy's fault doesn't ever matter. People will always hold the president responsible for the economy. The effects of inflation has just hit us and prices jumped. The job market is also a mess, there's the great resignation of course but I think I speaks to a larger cultural shift in American work culture that will have long term implications.

On the state and local levels there is the tug of war between governments trying to keep covid under control and those same measures being deeply unpopular. I don't know what the solution to that is but there is a sizeable enough group of voters who just want to get on with their lives that its having an effect.

I agree that the economy is probably forefront in voters' minds, but there's nothing to "undo" in this area. I guess a Republican administration could cancel the infrastructure bill? It's not like Biden passed a series of radical policies that changed how the economy works.

It's not that simple. It isn't about a particular bill. People want their lives back. They want inflation under control, they want their jobs and retirement secure. They want to be able to buy a car without having to wait a year for it to arrive. They want to go to sports games and have holidays and watch movies and all the other things we consider normal. They want to buy a house and not have speculators and investment firms jacking up prices because the rich already saw the problem with the market so they traded their cheap cash for physical assets a year ago.

As long as COVID and the economy aren't "fixed" whoever is in power will have them as major problems.

As if a pandemic can be fixed politically.

Hey man I don't make the rules. People expect leaders to come up with solutions. Obviously it doesn't always work that way but if you can't handle the criticism then don't apply for the job. Its not exactly a secret at this point that the economy is always the president's fault even when it isn't.

We give them the resources to fix it and they don't.

Fuck, there are homes everywhere, we have the ability to dig, plant, make food, we still have the ability to transport things around. I know that no one wants to work anymore - but at this point, the entire economy is a state of feeling - and that's exactly what a president (or actually all of the leaders of the world) MUST fix. The resources are ALL there, but I think everyone is just letting it all go to shit.

Can you be more specific about what things went too left since Biden was elected? It was my impression that people are more dissatisfied about their jobs and that covid is still plaguing us.

Other people are pointing to it in the thread, but it's mostly about forced vaccines and not a damn thing about getting people N95 masks - which was one of the things Biden said he would work on getting everyone access to. And nothing was said of forced vaccines in his run up. Also the inflation and crime seems to be skyrocketing and crime is often better handled by republican leadership. I mean look at Boudin in SF. Ultra LEFT news and you get break ins.

This says it all for me:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/san-francisco-chronicle-ripped...

I know Biden isn't responsible for this, but it's just echo chambers from the top down that causes this.

edit: @nradov, thanks for the clarity there.

Biden specifically stated in December 2020 that he wouldn't impose a vaccine mandate. Regardless of whether such mandates are a good idea or not, I think many voters are upset that he lied about it.

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-joe-biden-no-vaccines-ma...

You said that political party preferences have shifted in 2021 because things have gone too far left. The things you point are are unrelated.

If you had said people are moving toward the R column because Biden hasn't met his campaign promise, that would be a valid argument. There was a shortage of N95 masks under the previous administration, there continues to be a shortage, and you ascribe that to some movement toward the left. That is a non sequitur.

As for the homeless problem in SF: again, has that issue changed since Biden took office? You have cultural myopia if you think a local SF issue is causing national polling trends to shift right. SF homelessness was an issue in 2020 when Biden was elected and people voted Dem to begin with.

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