Compare this thread to one two years ago announcing Trump's Presidential victory. That wasn't flagged; thousands of comments; still US politics. No, it's clear partisanship that's hidden behind an implausible veneer of anti-politics rhetoric.
People will complain that this is on HN, but I just want to say that nothing makes me more patriotic than having faith in my fellow citizens. I am neither a democrat nor a republican. But this (House and Senate results even if Senate doesn’t change parties) shows that a good chunk of the population knows that what’s been happening at the Federal level is unacceptable.
Now let’s hope we see some real change (and that isn’t advocating for a lurch left). I have my doubts real change is possible but you have to start somewhere.
Huh. I’m just confused about the people who saw Trump v1 and voted him in again for v2.
> Damn man, cutting off my leg seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out bad. But a while later, I wasn’t happy with my life, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll cut off the other one too, see what happens. That was bad too! So when my neighbor asked me if I want to burn my prosthetic legs as well, I said - NEVER!
That is the established narrative. However everyone the Democrats put forth was objectively more qualified for the job than Donald Trump, one lost despite getting millions more votes than he, and another won.
Harris didn't lose because she was a lame duck, she lost because she wanted to appeal to the center and the right more so than the left. The race was close enough that the leftists she alienated by refusing to take a stand against Israel, alone, might have put her over the top.
and came across as rather dim. I watched her twice saying 300 million Americans died of covid. The figure was 300 k but if you can't do thousand vs million and not realise 300 million dying was unlikely should you be president?
>but if you can't do thousand vs million and not realise 300 million dying was unlikely should you be president?
My brother in Christ do you think people voted for Trump because he was the more intelligent choice? He says dumber things than that all the time, and puts them into policy.
Heck, let's make it bipartisan - Obama once said he campaigned in "all 57 states." Minor gaffes like this don't actually matter, they happen all the time. What matters is platform and policy, and the only people I've seen who had an opinion on Kamala Harris' platform were Democrats. The Republicans she wanted to court were never going to vote for her on principle, and the fence-sitters were too disillusioned and cynical to bother showing up.
I don't like Trump but he comes across as fairly high IQ if a bit corrupt and demented. I say this as a random Brit who sees odd bits on the internet.
I followed democratic strategist James Carville a bit and he said when Biden proved gaga that they should have a townhall for prospective candidates and choose the best and it was unamerican to just anoint some insider. If they had actually done that I think they would have found someone competent and won, but no and we have the current nightmare.
I think there needs to be a return to selecting people who are honest competent and represent the majority.
Considering Trump fairly high IQ and Harris dim and incompetent because the latter made a single verbal gaffe and despite the former's constant sundowning and thoroughly well documented ignorance is... certainly a position.
I’m just naive. We’re more alike than not, but hope is a powerful drug if you can get even a little bit of access to it (which is very difficult when living a normal, day-to-day life imo).
The house and senate both flipping is encouraging, but pay close attention to what comes next. There is no end to the self-inflicted challenges that the U.S. now faces. Many of them must be dealt with urgently. However, Democrat commentators are already saying that it will be to their advantage in 2028 if a Democrat controlled Congress accomplishes nothing for two years because Trump veto'd everything. This is not acceptable.
The U.S. has destabilized the globe. The conflicts they have both started and exacerbated need to be resolved in less than two years. Don't let your leaders, whichever side they're on, play politics until the next election. The U.S. has started a lot of fires. It needs to put them out promptly before somebody else does. Americans probably won't like it if that happens. That would cement the fall from unchallenged global superpower to just another misbehaving middle power.
Not me, though I do expect this thread may get flagged, because... HN.
> I just want to say that nothing makes me more patriotic than having faith in my fellow citizens.
Same. It is also very heartening to see all of that (mostly Musk) Republican donor money totally lit on fire, and to see what appears to be a lot of black voters in the south coming out to stand up for their voting rights which the Republicans keep trying to strip.
> Now let’s hope we see some real change
Realistically the Democrats won't be able to change much in the next 2 years because of veto power, but just kneecapping Trump into a full lame duck is good enough for now. And they better start passing lots of real legislation that addresses the needs of the American public, EVEN IF THEY KNOW it is going to be vetoed. Make Trump and everyone around him (JD Vance, Rubio) own all the lack of progress directly in the run-up to the 2028 election.
I just texted this to a friend. I really do love capitalism and “corporate” and people getting rich and ra ra “America fuck yeah” but I love it in concept where that part of the country succeeds because of hard work and risk taking, not because of corruption and government favor. Let’s hope this is the start (or the revisiting?), as you said, of addressing the “needs of the American people,” the mass of people who have in some cases been fucked over for decades, and, for others, far longer.
Feels like there's going to be a lot of investigation into DoD contracts et al.
And I expect at least some of the greater Trump orbit fucked up severely in leaving an illegal paper trail, because people new to corruption aren't very good at it. Especially at the cabinet hangers-on level.
Also, the Senate can and should fucking sit on any Trump Supreme Court pick until the next election.
Because fuck McConnell and his party for stalling Garland's nomination for 293 days. Thomas or Alito can be filled by the next president.
US politics almost always gets flagged here. The mods occasionally disable flagging for these discussions. Non-US politics are less likely to get flagged, though.
It really hasn’t, though. The president’s party reliably loses seats. It doesn’t reliably get annihilated to the point of electing Democratic senators in Kansas.
I'm begging the news agencies: stop reporting things as fact that are entirely based on projections. It says so in the body of this article, this is a projection, not actual results.
This is the way that American elections work, essentially. CBS projects them, AP does a somewhat more thorough projection, and then eventually the states certify them. These projections are virtually never wrong.
Like, it's an extremely weird system, but it is how it has always worked. If you refuse to use it, you won't have a result for weeks.
Lots of things are probability and statistics so this is a truism of no value.
News outlets are, in general, extremely conservative when calling races. The usual standard is somewhere between "there are not enough outstanding votes to change the outcome" and "the uncounted votes have to be insanely different to anything likely based on previous elections". More [1].
Changing a projection has happened but it's incredibly rare.
The sub heading immediately states it is a projection, and the majority of experienced readers will understand the headline to imply a high probability projection.
Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, with a vow to combat Trump
NBC News projects that Democrats will take control of the House next year, giving them the power to investigate Trump and advance legislation to check his policies.
Projected race calls are correct 99.9% of the time.
NBC's last two projection errors were 2000 (Bush v Gore presidential race in Florida, which was universally just a fucked race) and 1960.
It is a given at this point that Democrats have, in fact, won control of the House for 2027 (as long as there isn't any Trump shitfuckery, which I think the win this year is going to be way too big for him to even try it).
> On the other hand, why aren’t we just building all this shit in the vast emptiness in the middle of the country anyway? Hmm.
Exactly. You have a power-hungry asset that needs few humans to operate, causes severe noise pollution, and can effectively be located anywhere in CONUS with minimal latency impact.
Imho, what federal and state governments should be doing is fast-tracking power and network infra to agreed locations in the mid and southwest, ideally in areas suited to solar and wind.
Pre-zone the land around for the desired mix of power + datacenter, then let private industry build what they want.
There's entirely too much empty land to make building in {small town} make any goddamn sense.
Well once we all become filthy rich from the tariffs, the ACA is replaced with something way better, and we agree to peace with Iran for the 230th time, we'll be overturning that silly amendment real quick.
He cannot "win again" in 2028 - he's already been elected twice to the presidency and the 22nd amendment bars him from an elected third term.
OTOH he could run for VP. Then were the new president to resigned or die then Trump could serve a third (un-elected) term as president! Rinse, repeat!8-))
No, he can't. The elected VP also has to be eligible to be elected as president.
The 12th Amendment says:
> But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Paired with the 22nd which restricts Presidential eligibility, Trump cannot be elected as VP. He could potentially (this would go through the courts, it is a gray area) be nominated to VP, but he cannot be elected as President or VP again.
Tomorrow, we should consider what policy decisions and mistakes the Democrats may have yet to make with their newfound power, both in the House and elsewhere.
We should ponder whether they'll fix the filibuster that has laid them low so many times. Whether they'll come up with a coherent and air-tight strategy for curbing executive overreach, both now and for the future. Whether they'll cripple America's position in AI and rocketry/orbital stuff. Whether they'll figure out how to fix the immigration issues and backlog. Whether they'll do anything meaningful about the military adventurism abroad.
But my colleagues--that is tomorrow.
Tonight--tonight, we can enjoy that there is still enough of a vestige of an animating spirit in the body politic to rise up and cause change and make the bastards sit up and take notice that election results are not forgone conclusions, that buffoonery and trickery have their limits when set against a people sufficiently animated by despair and distress and frustration and justice.
I "like" how all prominent election posts are flagged instantly today.
I know that HN owners are far-right, but it just proves time and time again that considerable amount of HN users are too.
Anything that is against current US administration policy is flagged fast and deemed as "too political for this forum" in the comment section.
Politics are always interested in you. Especially US elections, that impact not only US citizens, but essentially whole world. Tech sector included.
The owners aren't doing it. And it's not bots either.
I think that's the wrong interpretation. HN users are probably more democrat than republican but kind of anti HN being about politics.
Compare this thread to one two years ago announcing Trump's Presidential victory. That wasn't flagged; thousands of comments; still US politics. No, it's clear partisanship that's hidden behind an implausible veneer of anti-politics rhetoric.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42057647
you not know, consistency in moderation is impossible, anyway we are orthogonal
A lot of new accounts were made that day
People will complain that this is on HN, but I just want to say that nothing makes me more patriotic than having faith in my fellow citizens. I am neither a democrat nor a republican. But this (House and Senate results even if Senate doesn’t change parties) shows that a good chunk of the population knows that what’s been happening at the Federal level is unacceptable.
Now let’s hope we see some real change (and that isn’t advocating for a lurch left). I have my doubts real change is possible but you have to start somewhere.
> "this shows that a good chunk of the population knows that what’s been happening at the Federal level is unacceptable."
It also shows that a good chunk of the population does _not_ know it.
Huh. I’m just confused about the people who saw Trump v1 and voted him in again for v2.
> Damn man, cutting off my leg seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out bad. But a while later, I wasn’t happy with my life, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll cut off the other one too, see what happens. That was bad too! So when my neighbor asked me if I want to burn my prosthetic legs as well, I said - NEVER!
I understood it as the other party putting in lame duck after lame duck.
That is the established narrative. However everyone the Democrats put forth was objectively more qualified for the job than Donald Trump, one lost despite getting millions more votes than he, and another won.
Harris didn't lose because she was a lame duck, she lost because she wanted to appeal to the center and the right more so than the left. The race was close enough that the leftists she alienated by refusing to take a stand against Israel, alone, might have put her over the top.
Harris was pretty bad. See
>Harris had a more leftist voting record in Senate than Sanders https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/jul/28/kamala-harr...
and came across as rather dim. I watched her twice saying 300 million Americans died of covid. The figure was 300 k but if you can't do thousand vs million and not realise 300 million dying was unlikely should you be president?
Trump was a convicted criminal.
>but if you can't do thousand vs million and not realise 300 million dying was unlikely should you be president?
My brother in Christ do you think people voted for Trump because he was the more intelligent choice? He says dumber things than that all the time, and puts them into policy.
Heck, let's make it bipartisan - Obama once said he campaigned in "all 57 states." Minor gaffes like this don't actually matter, they happen all the time. What matters is platform and policy, and the only people I've seen who had an opinion on Kamala Harris' platform were Democrats. The Republicans she wanted to court were never going to vote for her on principle, and the fence-sitters were too disillusioned and cynical to bother showing up.
I don't like Trump but he comes across as fairly high IQ if a bit corrupt and demented. I say this as a random Brit who sees odd bits on the internet.
I followed democratic strategist James Carville a bit and he said when Biden proved gaga that they should have a townhall for prospective candidates and choose the best and it was unamerican to just anoint some insider. If they had actually done that I think they would have found someone competent and won, but no and we have the current nightmare.
I think there needs to be a return to selecting people who are honest competent and represent the majority.
Considering Trump fairly high IQ and Harris dim and incompetent because the latter made a single verbal gaffe and despite the former's constant sundowning and thoroughly well documented ignorance is... certainly a position.
It wasn't just the repeated gaffe, it was a general impression.
Then the idea of qualified is wrong.
I admire your optimism.
"Now let’s hope we see some real change. I have my doubts real change is possible but you have to start somewhere."
Well, kudos to you I guess, for having any hope at all. Mine is long lost. Democrat, Republican, it doesn't matter. Real change is a fallacy.
I’m just naive. We’re more alike than not, but hope is a powerful drug if you can get even a little bit of access to it (which is very difficult when living a normal, day-to-day life imo).
"The definition of democracy is that the party in power can lose an election."
Canadian here.
The house and senate both flipping is encouraging, but pay close attention to what comes next. There is no end to the self-inflicted challenges that the U.S. now faces. Many of them must be dealt with urgently. However, Democrat commentators are already saying that it will be to their advantage in 2028 if a Democrat controlled Congress accomplishes nothing for two years because Trump veto'd everything. This is not acceptable.
The U.S. has destabilized the globe. The conflicts they have both started and exacerbated need to be resolved in less than two years. Don't let your leaders, whichever side they're on, play politics until the next election. The U.S. has started a lot of fires. It needs to put them out promptly before somebody else does. Americans probably won't like it if that happens. That would cement the fall from unchallenged global superpower to just another misbehaving middle power.
> This is not acceptable.
Unfortunately, that's almost certainly what's going to happen. They won't have a veto-proof majority.
Flipped the senate, too.
Good.
> People will complain that this is on HN
Not me, though I do expect this thread may get flagged, because... HN.
> I just want to say that nothing makes me more patriotic than having faith in my fellow citizens.
Same. It is also very heartening to see all of that (mostly Musk) Republican donor money totally lit on fire, and to see what appears to be a lot of black voters in the south coming out to stand up for their voting rights which the Republicans keep trying to strip.
> Now let’s hope we see some real change
Realistically the Democrats won't be able to change much in the next 2 years because of veto power, but just kneecapping Trump into a full lame duck is good enough for now. And they better start passing lots of real legislation that addresses the needs of the American public, EVEN IF THEY KNOW it is going to be vetoed. Make Trump and everyone around him (JD Vance, Rubio) own all the lack of progress directly in the run-up to the 2028 election.
I just texted this to a friend. I really do love capitalism and “corporate” and people getting rich and ra ra “America fuck yeah” but I love it in concept where that part of the country succeeds because of hard work and risk taking, not because of corruption and government favor. Let’s hope this is the start (or the revisiting?), as you said, of addressing the “needs of the American people,” the mass of people who have in some cases been fucked over for decades, and, for others, far longer.
Feels like there's going to be a lot of investigation into DoD contracts et al.
And I expect at least some of the greater Trump orbit fucked up severely in leaving an illegal paper trail, because people new to corruption aren't very good at it. Especially at the cabinet hangers-on level.
Also, the Senate can and should fucking sit on any Trump Supreme Court pick until the next election.
Because fuck McConnell and his party for stalling Garland's nomination for 293 days. Thomas or Alito can be filled by the next president.
There's nothing woke about this. Since 1946, the president's party has lost House seats in 18 of 20 midterms (90%).
You are responding to a studiously nonpartisan comment with the word “woke”?
Is there any more important news for hackers today? But this story gets flagged. Wild
Texas flipping is kind of up there.
Nothing like trolling a troll.
Hope Elon has a great day.
likely not a coincidence.
And now the Senate.
The rest of us can (and should) ignore all this. We proceed as planned before: de-Americanise everything; end slavery; restore sovereignty.
Curious why this is flagged? Seismic shift in US politics today.
US politics almost always gets flagged here. The mods occasionally disable flagging for these discussions. Non-US politics are less likely to get flagged, though.
Mods are complicit mostly because their employers support the fascist shit.
The biggest shareholder I think is PG and he opposes the fascist shit https://x.com/paulg/status/1851200055220306378
Yes, I mean just look at the post when Trump was elected president. Thousands of comments. This moment is just as important.
@dang i understand this is prime rage bait material, but i REALLY want to talk about this on my favorite place for discussing things
How do you feel about having a single containment zone-style submission to channel everyone's nervous energies into?
This "seismic shift" has been happening in 90% of midterms since 1946.
It really hasn’t, though. The president’s party reliably loses seats. It doesn’t reliably get annihilated to the point of electing Democratic senators in Kansas.
Yeah nah, not the house and the senate. Tell me how many times that has happened.
90% of the time Texas flips?
The last time a Kansas Democrat was elected senator was 94 years ago.
I'm begging the news agencies: stop reporting things as fact that are entirely based on projections. It says so in the body of this article, this is a projection, not actual results.
This is the way that American elections work, essentially. CBS projects them, AP does a somewhat more thorough projection, and then eventually the states certify them. These projections are virtually never wrong.
Like, it's an extremely weird system, but it is how it has always worked. If you refuse to use it, you won't have a result for weeks.
Lots of things are probability and statistics so this is a truism of no value.
News outlets are, in general, extremely conservative when calling races. The usual standard is somewhere between "there are not enough outstanding votes to change the outcome" and "the uncounted votes have to be insanely different to anything likely based on previous elections". More [1].
Changing a projection has happened but it's incredibly rare.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/how-us-news-o...
To clarify, you're complaining about the headline?
I am. It states as fact something that is projected.
To be clear, I'd love it to be true, but I don't think we should be reporting things as fact without a mathematical certainty or a concession.
The sub heading immediately states it is a projection, and the majority of experienced readers will understand the headline to imply a high probability projection.
Projected race calls are correct 99.9% of the time.
NBC's last two projection errors were 2000 (Bush v Gore presidential race in Florida, which was universally just a fucked race) and 1960.
It is a given at this point that Democrats have, in fact, won control of the House for 2027 (as long as there isn't any Trump shitfuckery, which I think the win this year is going to be way too big for him to even try it).
Why? What's he got to lose? If I were him I'd do my best!8-))
He’s not on the ballot and is too lazy to try to ratfuck this.
> NBC's last two projection errors were 2000 (Bush v Gore presidential race in Florida, which was universally just a fucked race) and 1960.
The former wasn't an error. So they've made one, 60 years ago.
The good old days of hanging chads and presidents being picked by the supreme court
I mean, hard to loose a close race when your brother is the governor, the media should've known.
"THREAD on how data center-related ballot measures are faring tonight"
https://x.com/jdcapelouto/status/2117786709173645427
Reposting from stopwatchstring's comment:
> On the other hand, why aren’t we just building all this shit in the vast emptiness in the middle of the country anyway? Hmm.
Exactly. You have a power-hungry asset that needs few humans to operate, causes severe noise pollution, and can effectively be located anywhere in CONUS with minimal latency impact.
Imho, what federal and state governments should be doing is fast-tracking power and network infra to agreed locations in the mid and southwest, ideally in areas suited to solar and wind.
Pre-zone the land around for the desired mix of power + datacenter, then let private industry build what they want.
There's entirely too much empty land to make building in {small town} make any goddamn sense.
I mean who would've thought you had to get rid of make america great again to make america great again
shit's so funny. until you forget it and get the stupids again.
MAGAGA!
Does this mean the files will finally be released?
only DOJ/Trump can release them. Maybe they'll burn em
The Biden DoJ could have prosecuted, if there were evidence. Same set of files, I reason.
Maybe, but Merrick Garland was a worthless, toothless AG who couldn’t even prosecute the insurrection that happened on live TV. So maybe not.
Of course this is flagged
I’m starting to doubt Trump can win again in 2028.
Well once we all become filthy rich from the tariffs, the ACA is replaced with something way better, and we agree to peace with Iran for the 230th time, we'll be overturning that silly amendment real quick.
The sarcasm is strong with this one
He cannot "win again" in 2028 - he's already been elected twice to the presidency and the 22nd amendment bars him from an elected third term.
OTOH he could run for VP. Then were the new president to resigned or die then Trump could serve a third (un-elected) term as president! Rinse, repeat!8-))
> OTOH he could run for VP.
No, he can't. The elected VP also has to be eligible to be elected as president.
The 12th Amendment says:
> But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Paired with the 22nd which restricts Presidential eligibility, Trump cannot be elected as VP. He could potentially (this would go through the courts, it is a gray area) be nominated to VP, but he cannot be elected as President or VP again.
The only way he could stay in the White House is if Melania got elected (the Clinton route).
> The only way he could stay in the White House is if Melania got elected
Melania is not a natural born US citizen so that would be impossible
One of his ridiculous children, perhaps.
flagged? wow HN showing its real colors.
Black, red and a bit of white?
Tomorrow, we should consider what policy decisions and mistakes the Democrats may have yet to make with their newfound power, both in the House and elsewhere.
We should ponder whether they'll fix the filibuster that has laid them low so many times. Whether they'll come up with a coherent and air-tight strategy for curbing executive overreach, both now and for the future. Whether they'll cripple America's position in AI and rocketry/orbital stuff. Whether they'll figure out how to fix the immigration issues and backlog. Whether they'll do anything meaningful about the military adventurism abroad.
But my colleagues--that is tomorrow.
Tonight--tonight, we can enjoy that there is still enough of a vestige of an animating spirit in the body politic to rise up and cause change and make the bastards sit up and take notice that election results are not forgone conclusions, that buffoonery and trickery have their limits when set against a people sufficiently animated by despair and distress and frustration and justice.
Tonight we can enjoy things.