People often vote against their interests. They may not understand that alternatives are possible or even exist, and they can be brainwashed into thinking the other candidate is dangerous and so on... Also, the decline in quality of education isn't helping. So I don't know if there will be a backlash. Even worse, as a European, I'm afraid Musk's propaganda crosses the Atlantic and that we'll get the same fate and will vote to give up our social benefits.

We are getting more culturally conservative though - you can see that in the polls that ask people to self-identify politically.

Support for which specific policies that translates to obviously varies, but I think that's a separate question from the overall zeitgeist.

You lost me here, because the debt ceiling is a recent political construct with the only outcome being to add friction to an already high friction process and to threaten the faith and credit of the United States.

It is neither conservative nor liberal, but obstructionist

Agreed. I'm pretty sure normal folks never actually shifted left, not as much as the far-left ideology people imagined. Folks would use any plausible excuse to end the insanity progressive politics has caused. Mind you the reverse is also true of ultra conservative politics. The world is elastic in this sense, and we see corrections from time to time.