A big tech election

It's easy to over-attribute the results of an election to a few individual causes. Especially the day after. So, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. And yet, the way election results are understood after the fact clearly matters to how people and politicians react to them. In fact, due to our hyper-polarized two-party system, the way we perceive what drove election results may actually matter more to shaping how politicians vote in the long run than the preferences of their district.

So, it's worth highlighting that, among other factors, this election was an enormous rejection of the Silicon Valley oligarchy that has cozied up to Trump in his second term. To understand just how deep this theme ran through the results, I recommend starting with 404 Media's great summary of all the ways voters said no to Silicon Valley's creepy vision for the future of America. Tl;dr, Democratic candidates from local representatives to gubernatorial and senate headliners actively campaigned on reigning in big tech's abuses and corruption. When put directly to voters, data centers, the most poignant symbol of this abuse, appear likely to lose in all but one case out of more than forty.

Holding onto, and promoting, this narrative is important because it gives us a glimpse of a new kind of politics that could lead to meaningful, systematic reform to our democracy. The story of how the rich and powerful used the weaknesses of our political system to corruptly seize control and shove their dystopian, fascist ideas down our throats is clearly one that's beginning to resonate across the political spectrum. If a coalition of reformers can use it to make the case not just for economic policy changes, but for systematic reforms that return power to the people and prevent this kind of corruption in the future, we may just see a new country, and new kind of politics, start to emerge from the embers of this dark period.

Getting there won't be quick or easy. In the coming days and weeks, you will see all of the tech bros and a certain class of centrist, corporate Democrat try to spin the election as a referendum on the economy, the war in Iran, and the personality of Donald Trump. They will question whether voters truly gave Democrats a mandate to make big changes, or were just angry and looking for an outlet. They will say all we need is to return to "normal" or "politics as usual," as if that didn't lead us right to where we are in the first place. Indeed, here's the next-day "analysis" of The New York Times, perennial carrier of water for the powerful, already making the case using its trademarked galaxy-brained bothsidesism:

But the results leave open a crucial question: Did the Democrats really win? Or did Republicans just lose? The answer will become clear in the coming months, as Democrat try to retain their gains and work to win the presidency.

Our job, over the next two years, is to ignore these inane questions and hold our newly elected leaders to the standards they themselves set on the campaign trail. The economy, the war in Iran, and Donald Trump's rise to power are all connected to the oligarchic rot at the heart of the American democratic system. Exit polls showed voters understand this connection and acted accordingly. There should thus be no shrinking from seeking accountability for those who abused us, and there should be no moving on without fixing the broken levers of our system they used to inflict this abuse.

We can't start making these changes without the Presidency. It's also too soon to know exactly what solutions may be required, and how to structure the narrative about what comes next around them. If we do our jobs, those will unfold organically leading up to 2028 and well beyond. But we can use this time to start letting the story of what comes next unfold by ensuring our leaders demonstrate that they are serious about giving us what we asked for: an end to this period of corruption and oligarchy and the beginning of a new politics that's accountable to us.