Democrats win control of the House of Representatives
nbcnews.comI "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.
I don't think this is accurate minority power on HN to flag posts is very high. Flagging is a costless power move to surpress "off-topic" / off interest stuff. I basically can't stand looking at HN without the /active filter. The conversations usually are way more interesting
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.
I think the majority of people that actually post on HN are left leaning, but flaggers appear to be disproportionately right leaning, given the permissiveness for retaining right leaning topics and rejecting non-right leaning topics, which makes a kind of sense because historically the right has tended to censor opposing ideas rather than debating them. And I say that as having been a republican for half my life.
One thing to note is that mods can shadowban people from flagging. You can still hit the flag button but it doesn't get counted. (I'm pretty sure this happened to me at some point.)
It would not surprise me one bit if more left-leaning users got shadowbanned from flagging than right-leaning ones.
So you’re proposing user flagging intent may by evenly divided, but the bias could entirely be the mods inhibiting the left-leaning flaggers disproportionately? Is there evidence of the flag shadow ban mechanism/biased application or is that mainly suspicion?
Yes. And I’m not saying the mods are secret right-wingers who are trying to shape the discourse, but I am saying that their implicit biases may come into play when they decide who to flagshadowban. (And also which articles to manually remove flags from: anecdotally, this seems to happen more frequently with right-aligned topics.)
This site desperately needs a public moderation log.
A lot of new accounts were made that day
you not know, consistency in moderation is impossible, anyway we are orthogonal
A midterm shellacking of the party in power is not quite as man bites dog as the first nonconsecutive POTUS in a century.
This is the biggest midterm shellacking that has ever happened in US history. That's worth talking about regardless of the forum.
Texas went from almost entirely Republican cabinet to almost entirely Democrat basically overnight (in the "spending ten years to become an overnight success" kind).
Republicans in that state lost --- by very wide margins --- _every single key seat_ after a 30-year run. Nobody expected that.
Okay, fine; too political. Consider that the Railroad Commissioner, who is responsible for oil and gas policy in the state, also switched parties today and that Texas is a key state for AI datacenter and EV development.
Or that "reigning in AI" is a lynchpin of the Democrat strategy...and they now control both the House and the Senate.
Or that Kansas became a Democrat-run state for the first time in NINETY FOUR years.
Or that Mississippi, a state that everyone assumed was a Republican stronghold, STILL hasn't been called because the race is too close to call by like 50 votes.
The man has absolutely bit the dog here. This is Boston Tea Party levels of historic in my opinion.
Texas, Kansas, and potentially Mississippi voting for blue senators is remarkable.
As is the Democrat takeover of Texas (along with what that means for all the tech companies hailing Texas as the greatest place on Earth).
Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president, serving nonconsecutive terms.
Thus the "in a century" part of "first nonconsecutive POTUS in a century." Cleveland's terms in office were 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.
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.
> even if Senate doesn’t change parties Huh is this a mistake the senate is going to be at least 54/46 and a strong chance of being 56/44 its annihilation across the board house + governors + senate + local assemblies.
But you are right that real change is needed Democrats have taken just the first step in earning true victory they gotta pass stuff and get stuff done. That said the left basicaly have an undersized responsibltiy for this shift its mostly the moderates dems carrying in my opinion. Troy and Abdul are up +7 shift but are barely moving the needle when compared to Kamala's performance. Moderates though shift ruby red mage country over 25+ points in Texas, NC (especially), SC, and several other places.
I think the one exception is strangely enough florida Left candidates performed well but I think generally florida was kind of ignored this election. The money that went to Michigan probably could have won senate + governor in florida but hine sight :) I think the party actually came together more than it divided into leftist verse liberal
> "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!
There was a global trend towards anti-incumbency as a reaction to post-COVID inflation, and Harris overperformed when benchmarked against that.
Everyone (including me) would prefer it to be about their pet issue, but at the end of the day people across the world pushed the "Things cost too much, let's try someone else" button in 2024. Things cost significantly more now, so they pushed then "someone else" button even harder.
I understood it as the other party putting in lame duck after lame duck.
And women. Let's not overlook the elephant in the room: Trump won when a woman ran against him, lost when it was a man. I know, not a lot of data points though…
(I was raised feminist by my feminist mom and while I miss her terribly, some days I am happy she's no longer here to be depressed about what a horror show the U.S. has become.)
> And women
Harris got a ton of votes despite being unelected (remember she didn't win a primary) and unpopular. This woman excuse is a cope and borderline sexist. Look how many women won their races yesterday.
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?
Not dim, just Xanned out
Trump was a convicted criminal.
>Harris was pretty bad. See Harris had a more leftist voting record in Senate than Sanders
I hear all the time the corrupt DCCC/DNC sabotaged Bernie Sanders at every turn because big donors/uniparty yadaydayada...
If I could summarize the state of political debate in the USA it would be "incoherent".
>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.
> but he comes across as fairly high IQ
Indeed. One of the few people to know there’s a “b” in “dumb.”
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.
What the Republicans failed to do, and where the Democrats have an advantage, is to legislate. The GOP barely passed any laws and Trump ruled as an autocrat, but nothing that he did will be enduring. What they need to do now is to create and enforce a wave of enduring laws. I sure hope someone has a Project 2027 for this...
"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.
> They won't have a veto-proof majority.
This is where things might be interesting though. There are 19 republican senate seats up in 2028, some in states that already flipped or almost flipped.
Do they keep kowtowing to Trump after this or do they try and save their seat through bipartisanship. I dont think they will be as afraid of Trumps' maga party trying to primary them as they would to being the reason their state flips. That did not work out too well for republicans in Texas. Now they may lose Mississippi... Mississippi. If that doesnt wake them up to do their job they deserve to be replaced.
Was going to say the same. If a thing is simply impossible due to the (lack of) numbers… what is the alternative that is acceptable?
Flipped the senate, too.
Good.
"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.
Some major changes of recent eras which you may have missed:
- Obamacare
- ADA
- Prohibition of abortion (and alcohol prohibition, to go old school)
- War in Iran
- PATRIOT Act
- ICE off the leash
- Ukraine policy
- The EPA
None of these were inevitable; all were a consequence of the particular politicians voted into office.
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).
I'm with you—I have a hope. But my hope springs from a situation having to get really bad before society wakes up and demands change.
I suppose yesterday shows that the U.S. may have finally sunk low enough. But honestly, I'm not sure. I think there is a larger reckoning still around the corner…
Learned helplessness.
> 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.
They should immediately impeach Justice Thomas
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.
He moved the entire company to TX and spent a quarter billion trying to make sure the policies remained accommodating, yet it didn't help
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.
How does one square “end slavery” with AI that is creating a race of disposable people?
The scale of blue shift seems historic. Local new and evens seem like they’ve had no impact. It seems like a national referendum that ran all the way to local races.
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.
Trump's victory in 2024 wasn't flagged.
"almost" was an important word in my comment. But yes, sometimes (as in not always) they don't get flagged or the mods remove flagging.
There are plenty more examples than this. Trump's assassination attempt and Kirk's murder also stuck around.
Nor was his assassination attempt.
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.
The last time a Kansas Democrat was elected senator was 94 years ago.
90% of the time Texas flips?
"THREAD on how data center-related ballot measures are faring tonight"
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.
flagged? wow HN showing its real colors.
Black, red and a bit of white?
Does this mean the files will finally be released?
only DOJ/Trump can release them. Maybe they'll burn em
Congress can subpoena people.
The Biden DoJ could have prosecuted, if there were evidence. Same set of files, I reason.
They thought they were gonna win the election and wanted to wait until afterwards to prosecute trump. Didn't pan out
Maybe, but Merrick Garland was a worthless, toothless AG who couldn’t even prosecute the insurrection that happened on live TV. So maybe not.
And they could have arrested and tried Trump for treason after Jan 6, but decided against it because they are feckless "moderates" who seek bipartisanship even with the scum of the Earth. Doesn't mean anything about the amount of evidence (or lack thereof) against Trump in the files.
I am sure Musk is very happy to have moved all his eggs to Texas.
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 14th made trump ineligible for the second election he won
Yes the Insurrection clause of the 14th. Colorado tried to enforce that but the US Supreme Court that Trump had packed prevented them.
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.
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!
Of course this is flagged
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.
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.
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).
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.