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Comment by lakeviewterrace | Hacker News Reader

Yeah don't hold your breath.

The heavy anti-datacenter campaigning was primarily aimed at scaring votes out of old people and other low-information voters, and was largely successful. With that mission accomplished it's back to business as usual.

I personally observed old ladies gossiping at the polls. A lot of them don't even know what data centers are, just that they are bad and will steal their electricity and make their arthritis worse.

All politicians regardless of party are bought and paid for.

Literally every instance I've seen where the angry townspeople fought against a data center, the town council unanimously ruled against them without a vote, like the kangaroo court in The Godfather Part 2.

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Then those who believe specific datacenters need to be built should provide better arguments.

If anything the pro-build people should be for regulation so that citizens can know a local buildout means no power outages, water shortages etc. - preventing communities from rejecting DCs for purely defensive reasons.

It's clear the AI companies have not managed the message here, they have fumbled the politics. This is a deserved loss on their part.

I don't think the debate is so much about whether to build data centers as much about where to build them. In an ideal setting, the government identifies land suitable for industrial purpose, carves out dedicated zones, provisioned with necessary power and utilities, where industries can go and setup without intruding into somebody's status quo. The data center buildout at this time is happening at such a pace that they've has exhausted most of the existing zoned options, and unwilling to wait for new zones to be planned, are going out purchasing ad-hoc pieces of land and covertly having them rezoned for industrial purposes. This might sometimes might mean industries popping up behind somebody's residence or in an already resource constrained area. If you look deep, it's actually a fight between those who want to bypass urban planning in the interest of speeding up industrial development versus those who insist it is necessary.

You're expecting a nuanced debate from an electorate that has had this distilled into a purely Boolean issue: bad or good

US needs its own Narodniks, cf.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narodniks

LOL at AI chuds thinking they're part of the intelligentsia

Again, you are framing this as something done to the DC builders, rather than a discourse they are part of.

They have had 3+ years to make this argument, and they knew they needed to advocate for their own businesses. So why did they instead join in on the chorus of "we're going to take your jobs, teeheehee"?

It's an absolute own goal. If you want DCs built, direct your ire at the AI companies for reckless messaging.

The position of a pro-build democrat is untenable, when their running mates have successfully painted datacenters as dark portals to the ninth level of hell

> The heavy anti-datacenter campaigning was primarily aimed at scaring votes out of old people and other low-information voters, and was largely successful.

That doesn't explain data center's being explicitly rejected by local voters[0] who, in many of those places, also voted for their districts candidates that supported data centers, such as in FL and OH.

[0] https://datacentersontheballot.com

I think you are oversimplifying the situation. The problem were not data centers per se, but Mr. Paxton, who, except being a rather horrible person (his own party tried to get rid of him) was taking money from lobbyists and then was trying to push their agenda without taking into account any concerns.

I should clarify: I'm not talking about Texas; this trope was used across the country this election cycle, even at the most local of local elections.

Dog-catcher candidates were taking disingenuous anti-datacenter stances if they thought it could get them votes.

> All politicians regardless of party are bought and paid for.

Unnecessarily cynical but even if it were true the major parties have different ideas on holding their elected accountable.

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