Probably an oversimplified question but how do we actually stop this?
It's fine though. It's fine.
Unions: famously devoid of men and white people.
Maybe you mean they don't specifically put men and white people at the top of their hierarchy?
Voters aren't that deep. For better or worse, no matter how badly partisans wish them to, identity politics don't matter nearly as much as basic economic issues.
To elucidate more my own 90's era influenced view, is that a list of identities is..."silly" comes to mind but isn't strong enough. "Stupid" is perhaps accurate, but lacks erudition. Perhaps "self-sabotaging" is best, as it reflects my understanding of corpo-politics as a cynical, amoral enterprise that has one goal: to win. It is a sad irony that perhaps this is an example of WHY such an enterprise cannot and perhaps should not attempt any big moral moves. It will always be ham-handed and cause harm.
Take the overt anti-male attitude of the left. That immediately alienates 50% of the population. Full stop. This is not just white men, but black men, Asian men, Latin men. It's all men. I hate this (I use the word "hate" advisedly) because it is bigotry masquerading as compassion, and it fundamentally undermines any claim to principled moral superiority the left has, or ever had. After all, if it is correct to bias against men today, what does that do to previous arguments that bias against women was wrong yesterday? Plus, on a more practical note, you simply can't win elections when you alienate 50% of the population.
I'm under no illusion that I can convince you, or anyone on the left, to change. I've no doubt that the reflexive "he's a sexist, racist, ist-ist" would be your first defense. But I'd hope that, in a moment of clarity, you'd look at the apparently unthinkable victory of Trump, especially the second term, and realize that such policies and attitudes cannot win general elections in the US even against a convicted felon, a rapist, a liar, twice-impeached, and a self-aggrandizing narcissist who is doddering into geriatric solipsism. If you can't beat him with these views, I daresay you can't beat anyone.
That's... not how it works. Democrats literally had a House speaker and the president was, as you could see, not removed despite impeachment.
We're all stuck with two more years of an increasingly demented trump. The best Dems can do is highlight to incompetence/corruption, limt the damage, and get their own brand out of the mud so they can win a strong majority in 2028.
Democracy is for good and for worse not a one-and-done thing, it is a continuous fight.
How do you think you as a voter who presumably aren't a billionaire (or CEO of a mega corporation) with politicians on speed dial who will take the call get the politicians to pass those laws?
If the electorate is asleep at the wheel, the people pushing the politicians are all pushing them one way and the car isn't going in the direction that most of the electorate would necessarily want.
If you value your democracy you sometimes have to be an active participant in it and sometimes that means turning up more than once ever X years and ticking a box.
What are they doing about DC water and energy level requirements in your own state.
If they are not required by legislation then you just deal with the change.
While you're thinking about this, realize even the Democrats are annoyed at how weaponized things like NEPA have become to slow down necessary changes.
Elections will never save you when the parties in power serve the billionaires.
2. Vote
3. Vote
4. Find every publicly accessible local forum with _your_ representatives at every level, and get on the mic. Tell your reps they will lose your vote and the votes of your entire network for complicity in harm against society on behalf of the billionaire class. Follow through on that threat.
Extreme option: Run for election yourself on the platform and get voted into office. The bar is lower than ever in some places.
Democrats aren't by default better on this issue vs republicans so you need to be more involved than just voting in the general.
If you are in a D leaning district, then register as a D and vote in the D primary. Make sure the candidate you vote for is the most likely to win who isn't captured by big business.
A good example of a datacenter friendly dem that just won by the skin of their teeth is Crowley for governor in Wisconson.
The only thing that matters is Democrats gaining control of Congress and state governments. The choice that isn't a democrat is the wrong one. The time to vote out an incumbent was the primary.
I agree, that's why I'm saying you should be involved in the primary and not just the general. Because, as I said, it's not the default position of the democrat party to be for regulating datacenters. I gave an explicit example of that where a dem is completely aligned with the republicans on DCs.
Dems win power, but they are still beholden to OpenAI, then they'll be no better than the republicans on this issue.
It's too late for 2026 and IMO you should vote for Ds wherever you are at. But if you want to affect change on DCs then voting in the primary for anti-dc dems is what you have to do. It's not enough to just vote in the general elections.
> they'll be no better than the republicans on this issue.
There is no reason to think this is true. I will eat a gas generator if a Democrat president orders his EPA administrator to break established rules and precedent like the current one is doing.
No I'm not. We can walk and chew gum. It's important to recognize when and how Dems fail and this is one case where more than a few are failing their voters.
> There is no reason to think this is true.
There is if people aren't involved. A Gavin Newsom president would absolutely be pretty happy to receive campaign funding from AI firms.
> I will eat a gas generator if a Democrat president orders his EPA administrator to break established rules and precedent like the current one is doing.
Break the rules, no that's unlikely. However, it's entirely possible that the same results and rubber-stamping happens with enough campaign contributions. You need to look no further than all the money that's been dumped into "clean coal" and "CO2 capture" boondoggles by democrats to understand how this sort of thing works.
I could completely see a democrat president allowing DCs to be built so long as they buy carbon offsets, which is every bit as corrupt as just telling the EPA to not regulate. It's simply just not as brazen.
But I don't think this is true of any or all democrat presidential candidates, just some. Specifically Newsom would very much pull this sort of shit.
Republicans just took a vocal public oath of loyalty to their President in which they promised to cheat in the the election. That happened. It's on video.
My claim is that you should vote for the other party. That sounds reasonable to me.
I voted in the primary against the incumbent. The incumbent won. I will vote for them because the Republican opponent is a documented sexual predator. That is literally true.
These are the "two sides" we are dealing with.
Note that this promise is itself illegal. It is a violation of 18 USC 597.
See: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=title%3A18+section%3...
He literally says he'll cut a check for $5,000 for every adult american if the Republicans win both the House and Senate in the midterms.
You don't have to take my word for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4NphZBfmnE
He's also stated that he can issue the money without help from Congress, which directly contradicts the idea that it's harmless bloviating about voting in a 120th Congress to implement specific policy:
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbLXAdvZcro&t=40s
... though that distinction shouldn't really matter.
The payout is very much a quid pro quo bribe for voters. No additional interpretation of his words is necessary: he's said it very directly himself.
Which is exactly why it doesn't apply. The money would go to even the people who didn't vote for him.
The law you're referring to is about paying people for votes. Someone giving their own money to voters who can prove they cast a ballot in a particular way.
Saying that you're going to have taxpayer-funded transfer payments is ordinary politics. If your interpretation was right then proposing to increase social assistance programs would be vote buying in violation of that law.
It's not that simple. The Democrats are shit, and lost to Trump twice because of that shittiness. Perversely, Trump has allowed them to convince themselves that they don't have to reform.
I don't expect anything to change if the Democrats gain power, they'll curb only the most egregious abuses curbed a bit, while leaving the overall thing intact. Then they'll lose again because they're shit.
You've made it clear why you think people absolutely shouldn't vote for Democrats, but haven't really stated what people should do instead, just left the implication.
No, voting for Democrats isn't enough, because they're shit. They'll probably in better shape to be reformed that Republicans, but that's not saying much. I don't have a ton of hope based on what I'm seeing. I expect they'll either go back to the behaviors that enabled Trump, or commit some anti-democratic power grab more extreme than anything Trump has ever done.
IMHO, after someone like Trump, they need to reform themselves to be an actual-majority party that can competitive almost everywhere.
This is a natural consequence of a two-party system: you will be forced to choose between two parties that both deviate from your political preferences. Casting a ballot for a third party, or abstaining from voting, are both effectively the same as voting for the party you hate the most.
You may feel some semblance of true choice by participating in primaries.
Otherwise, the only path to installing politicians you truly believe in is to change the system -- be it by reform or revolution.
This is because the people on HN, Reddit etc are a minority. The views expressed here are not publicly supported by the people who actually go out and vote. Those people are not online writing in these long threads on the same topics over and over again.