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Comment by ssijak | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe, just maybe, the Democrats (and other similar parties elsewhere) went too crazy and left and did not focus on real issues ordinary people face?

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The Overton window has shifted insanely right in the US. The democrats would be considered centrist or even centre right in much of the EU.

When people say this, they just seem to mean European countries have more universal healthcare than the US does. But /keeping/ your healthcare program after it's already been invented is conservative!

European parties are definitely not to the left of the Democrats on immigration or minority rights.

Nah, there's far more to it than that. Workers' rights, consumer rights, privacy laws, and strong regulations around corporations for a start.

The issue with new rights vs preserving existing rights also applies here I think.

Lina Khan's FTC is left of most of these though. They're trying to break up Google right now!

Very much depends on the issue being discussed. Economically? Perhaps. Socially? Absolutely not. The US is far out on its own branch when it comes to things like LGBTQ issues, racial and other identity issues, immigration, etc. I’m not sure these played as much of a role as the economy in terms of this election, but they are absolutely next in line in terms of the issues looming large in voters’ minds.

Americans want a better future than what seems in the cards for the EU

Then they've chosen a poor route toward it.

Liberal isn't left. Maybe their problem is that they actually didn't go left (workers).

We just had by far the most pro-union administration in decades, eg they saved the Teamsters' pensions, and in return the Teamsters didn't endorse them. Americans don't care if you respect the working class or not, they're postmaterialist voters.

But they're also "education polarized", so they definitely care if you respect people who didn't go to college. But "respect" doesn't mean you're nice to them or even that you do things for them as a group. It could just mean you don't come off like you went to grad school.

Grocery union workers were hassling people to see their prescriptions where I live recently, before they’d let them in the store as pharmacy workers had a different contract

More local tribal groups who can ask for your papers “please” is not the way either. Unions have aligned with mafioso and pols to propagate violence. Not sure why everyone thinks the past is a good solution. Clearly the average American is a moron; who rewards them with more authority?

Dem pols are 100% useless as any real change screws them too as people. It’s pageantry on both sides. Ones just openly violent and that one won. Great.

It's more that their marketing targeted people who are already Democrats and moderate Republicans. The first group didn't need convincing, and the second group is small. The independents and swing voters they should have courted were left in the cold and either didn't vote or went for Trump. They kept preaching to choir, and the choir kept shouting "Hallelujah!", so they thought they had it in the bag.

What, in practice, was too crazy and left in the Biden administration? (Honestly asking)

Defending trans people apparently was a bridge too far for many, for one.

>Defending trans people apparently was a bridge too far for many, for one.

Which is ridiculous. Trans folks are less than one percent of the population.

Why shouldn't they be allowed to be who they are? Given the tiny number of these folks, it really shouldn't make any difference to anyone who's not trans anyway.

But, apparently, some folks, who appear to believe that their trained-in prejudices are the laws of nature, feel the need to tell other people how they should live and, even more egregiously, try to force them to do so.

That's not liberty. That's not individual rights. That's not religious freedom. Rather, it's busybodies trying to tell other people what to do.

The problem isn't the people, it's the policy.

e.g. https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...

The only reason this could happen is because of policy that prioritizes self-declared "gender identity" over sex, and over women's dignity and safety. That's the actual problem, not people just quietly living their lives.

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